Wehinger, Rainer, Ligeti: Artikulation, elektronische Musik; eine

Horpartitur (Mainz: Schott, 1970), excerpts

LIGETI’S ARTIKULATION

p. 7
I. A. “Artikulation” –
is an electronic composition. Ligeti composed it in January-February 1958 and its realization
in sound took place in February-March1958, in co-operation with Gottfried Michael Koenig
and (in part) Cornelius Cardew, at the Studio of Electronic Music of the West German Radio
(WDR) in Cologne. The original version is for four tracks, but a two-track version also exists.
“Artikulation” is 3 minutes 47 seconds long. The first performance took place on 25 March
1958 in Cologne, in the “Musik der Zeit” concert series of the WDR.

– and its musical conception

“When working with electronic sounds at the studio in Cologne, Ligeti did not feel inclined to
organize the material through and through in all imaginable (and above all governable)
parameters, as is usually the case at first. Instead, he heard in various forms of sounds a
similarity to language and decided to compose an imaginary conversation, a sequence of
monologues, dialogues and multi-voiced disputes, in which characteristic intonations stand
for literal meanings.
The piece is called ‘Artikulation’ because in this sense an artificial language is articulated:
question and answer, high and low voices, polyglot speaking and interruptions, impulsive
out-breaks and humor, chattering and whispering.”1
Ligeti himself says about this quasi programmatic idea: “Certainly I have an aversion to
everything that is demonstratively programmatic and illustrative. But that does not mean that
I am against music that calls forth associations; on the contrary, sounds and musical
coherence always arouse in me ideas of consistency and colour, of visible and recognizable
form. And vice versa: I constantly combine colour, form, texture and abstract concepts with
musical ideas. This explains the presence of so many non-musical elements in my
compositions.
Sound-fields and masses that flow together, alternate with, or penetrate, one another;
suspended nets that tear or become knotted; damp, viscous, spongy, fibrous, dry, brittle,
granulous and compact materials; threads, short flourishes, splinters and p. 8 traces of all
kinds; imaginary edifices, labyrinths, inscriptions, texts, dialogues, insects, conditions,
occurences, coalescence, transformation, catastrophe, decay, disappearance; all are
elements of this non puristic music.” (1960)2
In another publication3 Ligeti comments on the musical idea of “Artikulation”, the linking and
combination of sounds “in conditions of aggregation”: “First I chose types with various

1
From U. Dibelius, Moderne Musik 1945-1965, R. Piper & Co. Verlag, München 1966.
2
From Ove Nordwall, Ligeti document, PA Norstedt & Söners förlag, Stockholm 1968. ….
3
György Ligeti, “Metamorphoses of Musical Form,” in die Reihe VII, Theodore Presser Co., Bryn Mawr, PA,
1965.
group-characteristics and various types of internal organization. An investigation of the
relative permeability of these characters indicated which could be mixed and which resisted
mixture. The serial ordering of such behaviour-characteristics served as a basis for the
erection of the form. In the detail-work I attempted to obtain contrast between the types of
material and between the modes of amalgamation, whereas the over-all plan was a gradual,
irreversible progress from the heterogeneous disposition at the beginning to the complete
mixture and interpenetration of the contrasted characters at the end.”
p. 9

B. How “Artikulation” was realized

Explanation of the most important technical terms

For more detailed information on the electronic sound material and the technical apparatus
of the WDR studio in 1958, the reader is asked to consult the “Score, and instructions for
realization” of Gottfried Michael Koenig’s “Essay”, published by Universal Edition, Vienna, in
1960.4
Our description of how “Artikulation” was realized must be limited to pointing out the most
significant steps in the composer’s “craft”–a highly refined technique of working with tape.
Between the, as it were, boundary stones of the process there was usually no end of time-
consuming manipulations (cutting, sticking together, etc.) which today can be simplified, if
not taken over completely, by computers and punch-card storage systems.

Musical terminology, it will be understood, has gradually encroached upon the fields of
mathematics and technology. The word “parameter”, for example, often stands as a
general term for sound characteristics such as pitch, intensity, duration, timbre, and spatial
position of the sounds source.
The elementary components of electronic music are sinus tones, impulses, and noise.
They are produced by generators.
Sinus tones–simple harmonic oscillations–are so to speak the “atoms” of every sound
process. When arranged in layers they produce a tone-mixture (also called a complex
sound) which can vary acoustically from a purely harmonic sound to a noise-like sounds.
The number of individual tones and the intervals between them have a direct effect on the
sound produced, in that interference of a statistical (and thus noise-like) nature increases
as the frequencies of the partials become closer. Tone-mixtures of a definite, special order
are called harmonic and subharmonic spectra.

Harmonic spectrum: a frequency is multiplied by 2, 3, 4 … n. The initial tone itself may be

missing, but it is present as the difference of the partials. Part of the spectrum range can
likewise be missing.
p. 10
Example:

4
See allo die Reihe I, Electronic Music, Theodore Presser Co., Bryn Mawr, PA, 1965. K. Stockhausen, Texte
zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, vol. 1 … H. Eimert, “Einführung in die electronische Musik,” …
(20 Hz, 40, 60, 80) 100, 120, 140, 160, 180, 200 Hz.
Subharmonic spectrum: a frequency is divided by 2, 3, 4 …n.
Example:
1000 Hz, 500, 333, 250, 200 (166, 143, 125, 111, 100 Hz).
Here again, part of the range can be missing.

Noises and impulses consist of the whole range of audible frequencies. They differ as to the
time component: noise is stationary, “timeless”; and impulse–an extremely short energy
thrust–sets in motion a resonating system that dies away more or less quickly.
Impulses and noise are modified by filtering. Unfiltered noise is also called “white noise”.
The filtering process filters out of the whole audible range a frequency band that, depending
on ambit (e.g. octave, third, etc.), can have a noise-like to tone-like sounds. Once these
sound materials are stored on tape, they undergo further treatment. By changing the speed
of the tape, a sound process is not only stretched or compressed in time, but also
transposed to another register. Continuous changing of the tape speed produces a
glissando effect.
With ring-modulation it is possible to combine single sound signals or groups of signals with
one another and to alter their sounds.
An intensity value is fixed for each sound process, and a “hard” or “soft” entrance of the
sound. A continuous variation of intensity values is known as an “envelope”. Reverberation
and synchronization (copying various separate sounds materials one on top of the other)
are father means of shaping electronic music. Finally, a multi-track apparatus can be used
to fix the spatial placement of the sound source, that is, the sound can be make to “stand”,
“jump” or “flow” in space.
p. 11

The realization
Extensive experimental preliminary investigations as to what kinds of artificial phonetic
“sounds”, “vowels” and “consonants”, “syllables” etc., could be produced by the various
basic electronic materials, had their origin in Ligati’s detailed study of literature on
phonetics. His special interests were analyses of acoustic spectrum and proportion of noise
in sounds; the transient process and fade-out process in plosives; and time-proportions of
consonants and vowels in spoken languages.
Before and during his work at the Cologne studio, Ligeti made a large number of sketches,
several of which are reproduced below.
We print these sketches solely by way of illustration and not as an explanation, which by
themselves they cannot claim to be, since most of the 110 extant working sketches are
written in Hungarian and can only be understood in the overall context.5 Three principal
methods of composition were employed; an experimental, empirical method, a quasi-
aleatoric method, and a predetermingin, quasi-serial method.
The experiments with the studio apparatus led to the selection of 42 basic materials (Fig. 1).
These includes sinus tones; harmonic and subharmonic spectra, with various glissando
forms as well; noises in all possible filterings and glissando forms; special types of noises

5
c.f. R. Wehinger, György Ligeti, “Artiulation”. The dissertation contains an analsis of the
compositional sketches and detailed technical information on the evolution of the aural score.
and spectra, associatively denoted as “coughing”, “sneezing”, “barking”; “dry” impulses
(non-resonating, unreverberated) and “wet” impulses (resonating, reverberated);
reverberations of harmonic spectra, transformed into glissando-like forms; reverberations of
noises; various combinations of different types of noises and impulses.
These materials were produced on the basis of definite plans, according to the
characteristics required by the musical concept, and were stored on tape (Fig. 2).
The plans covered pitch, duration, intensity, enveloped, and the structure of the various
compounded materials, In Fig. 3, there are details concerning harmonic spectra, for
example spectrum b (upper half of the Fig.): eight individual tones a equal intervals (63 Hz
difference) in the range between 440 Hz and 880 Hz.
The result was an immense number of short bits of tape. This vast p. 17 quantity could be
inventoried and kept readily at hand only by dividing it into groups with common
characteristics. The composer split up the bits of take into a system of boxes. Each box
contained a number of bits of tape with sound characteristics in common. The system of
boxes was devised from predetermined (serial) plans (Fig. 4) and permitted the selection of
individual bits of tape to be left to chance.
This procedure, then, can be considered a combination of serial and quasi aleatoric
methods of composition.

The system of boxes comprised the following categories:

a) combination of materials (see below)
b) pitch distribution
c) duration relationships
d) intensity relationships
Both pitch and duration followed in detail a certain predetermined scale. Seen globally, however, the
pitches were classified in high, middle and low ranges and combinations of the three, to which the
system of boxes referred.
The length of the bits of tape was determined by a “tempered time-scale” (Fig. 5). The values of the
series were obtained by repeated multiplication by the factor 11/10, rounded off to millimetres of
tape. The frequency with which the bits of tape were used (the “statistical distribution”) had to
decrease as the length of tape increased.
Thus there were, for one material, 150 bits of tape 1 cm in length, and one bit of tape 150 cm in
length (76 cm equaling 1 second, since the studio apparatus was operated at the tape speed of 76
cm/sec., that was then still in use). This relationship of tape length to number guaranteed an uniform
distribution of the material in question.

The bits of tape were stuck together (Fig. 4) and used up (Fig. 6) according to the plans
mentioned above. The result was ten lengths of tape lasting from 11 to 43 seconds, the
homogenous and heterogeneous “texts”.
The materials were handled in such a way as to produce a speech-like result. By combining
the various elements, quasi “sounds”, “syllables”, “words”, “sentences”, “texts” and
“languages” were created. These terms are purely analogies of sound, not of grammar. Fig.
7 shows the stepwise construction of the composition.

A material compound (“text”) was homogeneous if its separate components were capable of
coalescing, and therefore were not distinguishable; a compound was heterogeneous if its separate
materials were antipathetic and therefore distinguishable. The following ten types of p. 18 texts
proved to be suitable for use: Text 1 was compounded of “coughing”, Text 2 of “coughing” and types
sounds

FIG. 7
of noise with “explosion-like” envelope. Sinus tones, 20-Hz noise6–linear and in glissando form– and
“barking” were proposed for Text 3, while Text 4 consisted of “dry” impulses and Text 5 of “wet”
impulses. Text 6, called “sandpaper”, was made of noise; Text 7 was produced from noise, filtered
and unfiltered impulses, “sandpaper” and other materials.
The preparation of Text 8 was governed solely by the instruction that it was to be assembled from
completely heterogeneous materials. Noise, “sandpaper”, reverberated noise and “glissando
explosions” made of Text 9, and Text 10 included harmonic and subharmonic spectra, linear and in
glissando form.

From these “texts” the composer cut single “words”, after evaluating their musical
usefulness; but he also worked up whole “texts” into dense conglomerates by
synchronization, transposition and retrograde motion. These conglomerates were likewise
cut up into “words”.
Several of the “words” underwent further alteration by transposition, retrograde motion,
synchronization, reverberation and ring-modulation; finally, their intensity was modified, i.e.
they received an envelope.
Ligeti treated the bits of tape with “words” precisely as he had treated the bits of tape with
“sounds”: he arranged them in a system of boxes and stuck them together, according to
previously-made plans, to form kilometre-long tapes, whose sound contents were called
“languages”.
p. 19

The pans included:

a) types of texts
b) duration, as well as vertical and horizontal density of the “words”
c) register (mean pitch position)
d) mean intensity
e) ring-modulation
The long “languages” were cut up in turn into “sentences”. Several of the “sentences”
underwent further alteration: they were chopped to form “splintered” passages, and were
synchronized to form tumultuous passages; whole sentences were also ring-modulated
together.

All the pieces of tape were again arranged according to group characteristics and assigned
to a system of boxes whose categories met the requirements of the formal concept of the
work. The pieces of tape were accordingly distributed among four tracks and stuck
together to make “Artikulation.” (cf. Fig. 8 and 9).

6
See fn page 23.