Musica Ricercata by Gyrgy Ligeti

An Analysis - By Chanan Hanspal

The significance of Musica Ricercata is that each movement adds one more note to
its harmonic structure, starting with two notes in movement one, three notes in
movement two and so on. Some movements are less tonal than others; it seems
the only relationship between these movements is the successive addition of notes.

Movement I A, D.

Movement II F, F#, G.

Movement III Eb, C, G, E.

Movement IV Bb, F#, A, G, G#.

Movement V C#, D, B, Ab, F, G.

Movement VI E, C#, B, A, F#, D, G.

Movement VII F, C, Eb, Bb, G, D, A, Ab.

Movement VIII D, E, B, C#, A, G, G#, C, F#.

Movement IX C#, A#, F, D, F#, A, C, G#, B, D#.

Movement X D, D#, E, F, Gb, Ab, G, C#, B, A#, A.

Movement XI E, F, F#, Eb, D, Db, G, C, B, G#, A, Bb.

Movement I - Sostenuto

The principle note used is [A] and starts off in a syncopated manner played
staccato; the left hand keeps a continuum of quaver notes playing the [A] up and
down the octave while the syncopation occurs in the right hand rhythmically
rubbing against the regular type rhythm in the bass clef. As there is a limited
melodic/harmonic resource, the tension of this piece resides in the rhythm.

At various points, Ligeti uses accents on certain notes to emphasis dynamic

development; the interjection of high octave [As] contributes to the development
of the piece. Once the rhythmic continuity has finished, there are staccatissimo
expressed [As] played in octaves, the space of silence between them is also a good
way to create tension particularly after a rhythmic constant. The attacks get closer
and closer giving the impression of speeding up; Ligeti uses an interesting device to
do this without increasing the tempo, he starts with a group of minim triplet values,
proceeded by four attacks on each beat of the 4/4 time signature, then a crotchet
note quintuplet, crotchet note sextuplet and finally a crotchet note septuplet. The
piece concludes on the second note of the movement [D].
This movement uses the pitch class A almost exclusively (D is introduced as the final note,
thereby providing an impetus to the rest of the movements). Ligeti develops this single pitch
class by exploiting the dimensions of rhythm and timbre (an example of timbral counterpoint). A
thunderous beginning leads into a gradual crescendo and accelerando consisting of
layered polyrhythms in various registers. The coda, a metered accelerando, pounds out several
more octaves of A before we finally hear D. The relationship between D and A is reinforced by
the holding of both subharmonics and overtones of D, which contain A (a result of the harmonic
series).

Ever since - some forty years ago - I heard them for the first time, they have had
me in their grip: Ligetis Aventures. And they have not lost that grip after all
these years. Quite the contrary. The same goes for two other works from 1962:
Atmosphres and Volumina. In this essay, however, I confine myself to the
unparalleled Aventures, in my view perhaps apart from Alban Bergs
Wozzeck the only great, though negative opera of the twentieth century. For,
even though the work in the best tradition of Weberns Bagatelles lasts for
a mere eleven minutes, there is a great deal to say about it. Not least because it
is governed by the discrepancy between word and deed.
UNEASE IN
LANGUAGE

To begin with, there is getis intention to create an imaginary language.

When a composer wants to write for voices, he faces the problem that voices
cannot sing unless they articulate words. Words are borrowed from a text to
which the composer has to subordinate himself. If he wants music to speak for
itself, he obviously can resort to speechless instruments. But when he cannot
refrain from writing for voices after all, voices are the primeval instruments
and when he wants those voices to speak for themselves at that, he inexorably
has to neutralise the text some way or a another. There are lots of possibilities.
The early polyphonists used to reduce the text to a mere filler. When it turned
out to be too short in relation to the melody, it was adapted by singing several
notes on one and the same vowel. Also the tempo of speech was not always
respected: it often was thoroughly slowed down (cantus firmus). To the effect
that language was robbed of its meaning and reduced to pure sound. Another
method is to choose a random vowel or syllable and to simply repeat it: as with
the syllables do re mi fa sol la si used for singing notes, the lalalala used
when one has forgotten the text, not to mention the inventive improvisations of
jazz-singers.

Not otherwise does Ligeti proceed in his Aventures. He wants to write for
voices without having to subordinate himself to a pre-existing text. By his own
account, he attempts to create a text in an imaginary language. He therefore
lets the words fall apart in isolated syllables such as ku, pi, kh, poe, tha,
tho in measure 24*. Sometimes those isolated syllables are joined to new
words such as tu-hai or kitupa, equally in measure 24, as did Schwitters in
his Ursonate. But elsewhere Ligeti goes even further: he lets the syllables fall
apart in separate vowels or consonants. Also these may be joined to sequences
of vowels, such as uu-oo-aa (measures 4, 28, 48, 93), or of consonants, such
as 'tschthsdcfddj' (measure 20-23 stage whisper) or 's-z-zj-sch' and 'f-v'
(measure 44). And every reminiscence of words is entirely lost when Ligeti lets
a sequence of vowels change in a sequence of consonants pronounced with
the mouth closed (varying around the m), whereby the vibrato is gradually
transformed in a babbling movement of tongue, lips and cheeks (Plappern)
(measure 65 to 89). In these cases, a linguistic logic is transformed into a purely
musical one: the need to exploit all the possibilities of the voice. Instruments
cannot pronounce different vowels and from the consonants only always the
same. Voices have no such shortcoming: they can produce a real
Klangfarbenmelodie on their own which induced Berio to make the trombone
speak nevertheless by manipulating the sourdine, singing in and so on.

Also from the normal tempo of speech does Ligeti deviate, not only by
immoderately stretching it, as in the nuhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidha in
measure 47, but also by excessively speeding it up, to the extent that one
wonders how the singers succeed in pronouncing it altogether. Thus, in
measure 47, the Olympic runner has to pronounce
PEtomopodonorobolotodorobomono DEpamabla CIdurulumupumuTHODJ (see
excerpt above) in top speed, and articulate at that! Although Ligeti hesitatingly
adds: not at the expense of speed...

It remains to be seen, then, whether Ligeti is really out at creating an - although

imaginary - language. Since not only does he reduce language to what is music
in it - its sonorous body - he also spares himself the detour through language by
introducing plain non-verbal elements: pure auditory expressions. Also these
are not absent in classical music: just think of the countless interjections such
as Oh!, Oh weh!, Ah!, Oim! or of the more contemporaneous Yeah!
Yeah!. The fact that these are noted down with letters, like words, nearly
conceals the fact that we have crossed the boundaries of language. All the
more so, since we are not dealing here with more or less standardised
insertions in a text, but with a extended range of non-verbal expressions. Some
of them can still pass for words in that they are noted down with letters: the h-h-
h (panting) in measure 1, the hmmm in measure 8, the bh and psst in
measure 92 and the ahaa! in measure 98. But others are just indicated with
their name: laughing in measure 6, babble in measure 90. And just like
vowels and consonants, also these purely auditory expressions are joined to
entire sequences, like in the continuum Rusperen, Lachen, Weinen, chzen,
Sthnen en Rcheln in measure 12-14. Also the already mentioned stage
whisper (noted down as a sequence of consonants) belongs here. Since, even
when it is words that are whispered, these only become a whisper when they
are no longer understandable and hence are transformed in a purely auditory
phenomenon.

And as if that did not suffice, with Ligeti - just like with Schwitters - the auditory
expressions are joined with what we call kinetic stimuli: the various sounds
with which man uses to endorse his movements think of Japanese fighting. In
traditional music we have Papagenos Heisa, heisa, hopsasa! and
Brnnhilders Heiatoho!. Their counterparts in Ligeti are the threatening gesture
endorsed with vvvv in measure 6 or the mechanical - clockwork-like -
movements of the singers in measure 45 which are articulated with tit cit kit.

The last ties with languages are, finally, severed when Ligeti introduces real
sounds, such as the explosion of a paper bag.

UNEASE IN MUSIC

Ligeti, then, does not so much create an imaginary language. He rather

dismantles language as such and finally disposes of it altogether. And Ligetis
rage does not stop short of language. In his endeavour to free music from the
fetters of language, Ligeti seems to want to get rid of music itself. For all the
above-mentioned sounds are no longer sung on the tones of a melody and are
no longer embedded in a harmonic accompaniment nor woven into a
polyphonic fabric. At first sight, it seems impossible to tell those sounds from
natural sounds as they can be heard in the real world.

It would be deceiving, though, to understand this metamorphosis, in the vein of

Rousseau, as a return to a supposed primeval state when language was hardly
discernable from music. Or, to state it in ontogenetical rather than
phylogenetical terms: as a regression of language and music to the source
whence they originated in individual life: the primeval scream, weeping.

For all that sounds is not music. Auditory expressions and kinetic stimuli are
real phenomena: they belong to the auditory appearance of man, just like a face
to his visual appearance. And just like visual reality, also auditory reality can by
conjured up. For there is also something like auditory mimesis: as when the
actress imitates Desdemonas dying scream or the singer don Giovannis cry of
terror when he is driven in hell.

But, as is immediately apparent from these examples: not every auditory

imitation is music. To become music, it must fit the pattern of fixed tones and
the concomitant tonality, and submit to the regularity of metre, which transforms
the sequence of impulses into rhythm. Such was already the fate of Vivaldis
murmuring brook or Beethovens cuckoo, not to mention human speech
elevated to singing in the opera. If it cannot put up with such transformation, it
remains what it has always been: pure auditory imitation, just like the recording
of a bird or the dialogue of the actors, the auditory counterparts of the visual
imitation of a bird on a painting or a character on the scene. We thereby do not
leave the realm of art. Ordinary auditory imitation can conjure up not only
existing reality, such as dialogue and the sounds of nature, but also the most
divergent imaginary worlds. That is amply demonstrated by a lot of electronic
music, which, in the decennium preceding the creation of Aventures, began to
reclaim this new mimetic domain. But, for a good understanding of the true
nature of Aventures or of the development of music and audible art in
general it is important to tell ordinary from musical auditory mimesis.

Because the point is precisely that the very characteristics that elevate ordinary
auditory mimesis to music are borrowed from what is sound in language! When
speaking, we use tones with a fixed pitch pertaining to a scale in a specific
mode. And because of their diverging duration and weight, the syllables of the
words generate rhythm and metre. Auditory expressions, on the other hand,
have no fixed pitch: they freely glide through musical space. And - apart form
laughing and panting - they are not rhythmically articulated: that applies only to
words. Only when subordinated to language is the gliding of sound replaced
with a movement between fixed pitches and only through joining syllables to
words is generated articulation and hence rhythm and metre. That is how
auditory mimesis usurps the magic that binds the ear to speech. Music even
enhances that magic by replacing the gliding between fixed pitches with
sustained pitch and metre with regular measure. Only thus do the hysterical
yells of a angry woman develop into the coloraturas of Mozarts Queen of the
Night. And that transformation not only concerns auditory expressions, but
speech itself: when music stages speaking beings, they are transformed into
the divine beings Rousseau imagined in primeval times. Even though, in fact,
these are nothing more than the imaginary beings that saw the light of day
through music.

But music also borrows elsewhere. Whereas it takes its hypnotising spell from
language, it takes its contagiousness from the power of kinetic stimuli to
provoke and synchronise movement (Bhler). And that is all the more easy
when repetition is predictable, as with the articulation of words, but foremost
with marching, trashing or rowing. Whence measure. Which, once adopted
through music, also facilitates the coordination of singing.

As it happens, the very characteristics that transform ordinary auditory mimesis

into music have been corroded during the twentieth century. With atonality and
dodecaphony, first the magic of tonality is broken, then the sympathetic-
synchronising power of measure, until finally only isolated tones in an
unarticulated time are to be heard in serial music, which no longer makes use of
a measure that can be felt, but merely of a notational measure. And also this
development goes hand in hand - although timidly and merely occasionally -
with a relapse of singing on a fixed and sustained pitch into speech gliding
between pitches: think of the Sprechstimme in Schnbergs Pierrot Lunaire. In
this sense, Ligetis Aventures are the accomplishment of this trend. In the
tradition of Stravinsky, the elimination of language in music is far less dramatic.
Here, it manifests itself above all in the increasing importance of what music
owes to the kinetic stimuli: the unleashing of pure rhythm in Le Sacre du
Printemps.

AgAgainst this background it becomes apparent that Ligetis unwillingness to

submit himself to the demands of language is only a faade, hiding a far more
deeper unwillingness that is not perceived as such: the unwillingness to further
dwell in the realm of music. Or to call a spade a spade: the unease in music.

IS THIS STILL
MUSIC?

The unease in music should not be mistaken for the anti-mimetic lan that has
wreaked havoc in the plastic arts by now for some hundred and fifty years.
Already the title of Aventures should prevent us from doing so, not to mention
the titles of the two other masterpieces Ligeti wrote in 1962: Atmosphres and
Volumina. Nobody will doubt that in Aventures Ligeti conjures up an entire
world through sound.

Even though we still are moving within the confines of art, by giving up
sustained pitch and metre it seems as if we have left the realm of music. geti
unknowingly seems to admit this when he calls his Aventures a mimodrama.
from way back, theatre has been the natural habitat of non-musical auditory
mimesis: its constituting element is dialogue, pure auditory mimesis of
dialoguing dramatis personae, and also behind the scene there is ample use of
auditory mimesis of a whole array of sounds: from thunder with metal plates,
through wind with silk, to horses hooves with coconuts. No doubt, theatre is
more than mere auditory mimesis: the actors are moving in the visual dimension
as well. Also in Aventures, the musicians are supposed to endorse their
auditory acting with a whole array of facial expressions, gestures, postures and
even full-fledged actions.

No opera, then, but speechless mimodrama without music. But it would be

misleading to simply reduce Ligetis Aventures to speechless theatre. Even
when screams like vvv are accompanied by a threatening gesture, they could
as well do without, and then merely conjure up the concomitant movement.
Whoever merely listens to Aventures, misses the visual aspect of the drama,
but precisely therefore might imagine the evoked movements more accurately
then when they are actually performed through the singers/actors. What is
more: in passages like the great solo for the baritone in measures 47-48, the
gestures of the body have become movements of the voice, to the extent that
we cannot possibly conceive how they could be adequately performed by an
actor. Here, auditory mimesis has swallowed visual mimesis. The acting of
Ligetis musicians comes to resemble the sporadic and incoherent expressions
and gestures of the singer of a song, rather than the full-fledged acting of an
actor on the scene. Which also manifests itself in the fact that Ligeti relegates
the task of performing to actors on the scene, whereas the singers are hidden
behind the scene.

In addition, the mere fact that it is the voice that is 'gesticulating' and not the
body, should remind us that we have somewhat overshot the mark by asserting
that in Aventures music threatens to be dismantled to pure auditory mimesis:
however unwillingly, the sounds continue to move between the fixed pitches of
the scale. To be more precise: some of them are meticulously noted down with
notes (such as the laugh in measure 7), others with crosses and blocks (such
as the desonorised coughing in measure 7), still others have been replaced
with linguistic signs (such as the question marks in the final solo see the
example above referring to the gliding intonation of a question). It should be
granted, however, that they thereby seem not so much to be elevated to the
level of music. Rather do they seem to cling with their fingers on the fringe of
the rock while threatening to fall in the abyss. And their anchoring in music is
further enhanced by the fact that they seldom stand on their own: thus, the
laughter in measure 7 seems to burst out of the long sustained tone played by
the instruments. Such a thing can never be heard in the real world. But it is a
magnificent evocation of the in our case repressed tension that is building
up before being released in the laugh. It cannot fail to remind us of the final
scene in Mozarts don Giovanni, where the slowly built up tension is released in
an awful scream: in both cases the unbroken expression breaks through the
fetters of music a time-honoured mimetic trick.

And the certain impression that we are still dealing with music is, finally, only
enhanced through the intervention of instruments. They are the real anchors
that prevent Aventures from drifting away to the waters of pure auditory
mimesis. Strange enough, since precisely in the beginning of those same sixties
when Aventures saw the light of day, the avant-garde was trying out various
new ways of playing, whereby every conceivable sound was got out of
instruments that were deliberately not designed for it: think only of Ligetis own
Volumina for organ and the already mentioned Sequenzas by Berio. In sharp
contrast with the freely experimenting voices, in Ligetis Aventures the
instruments are producing rather familiar sounds. Only sporadically do they
walk more adventurous paths as in the impressive passage in measure 98
where the players have to rub their instruments with paper or their fingernails.
Such reversal is all the more strange since instruments are after all designed to
idealise the human voice that is why their whole make-up is focused at
producing articulated sounds on a fixed pitch. While their forebears relapse in a
pre-musical world of natural sound, their descendants continue testifying to
what has been lost they are the rock on which the suicidal voices are trying to
cling. Thus, the rather conservative instruments are the counterparts to the
through their regression revolutionary voices.

Here as elsewhere the eminent mimetic instinct of Ligetis saves him from
ending up in a blind alley.

THE SCALE OF EMOTIONS

robert piccart

Thus, while Ligeti aimed at reversing the traditional relationship between

language and music through trying to coaxe language out of the sound of
music, he threatens not only to free music from language as such, but also to
rob it from all that is language in music itself.

There are more discrepancies between intention and deed in Aventures. Take
the scale of emotions that Ligeti lies at the base of his work. Already in
Schnbergs dodecaphony (twelve-tone music) all the twelve tones of the
chromatic scale were organised in a fixed sequence: the series. In serial
music this serial principle was so extended as to encompass other dimensions
- other parameters - of music: not only rhythm, dynamics and timbre, but also
space and so on. In Aventures, Ligeti adopts this procedure, although he no
longer focuses on pitch, rhythm, timbre and dynamics but on expressions. He
proposes a spectrum of groups of expressive characters as follows: the first
"group" comprises expressions of irony, mockery, derision, abnegation; the
second embodies melancholy, glum, sad, depressive characteristics; the third
consists of mirthful, humorous, joking expressions; the fourth is erotic, full of
desire but also of aggression, linked with frustrated desire; and the fifth makes
use of fear, the ghost-like, the mesmerizing.
What first catches the eye is that the flag does not cover the cargo: not all the
expressions in Aventures fit in the scale. Where, for example, shall we place
that masterly outburst of the baritone in measure 47-48? It is the caricature of a
wildly gesticulating patriarch we cannot help to be reminded of the meanwhile
famous chimps that are trying to demonstrate their dominance. At best we could
categorise it in a combination of two expressive groups: irony and agression.

And that reminds us of a second shortcoming of Ligetis scale: it has no

inherent logic. Not only are opposing emotions such as eroticism and
agression subsumed under one and the same category, other poles have to
manage without their opposite. Thus we would expect a group of manic
characters as a counterpart to the caractres dpressifs. But there are none.
Unless we understand the group irony, mockery, derision, abnegation' as such.
But why, then, not include the third group 'mirthful, humorous, joking
expressions' as well?

And the second shortcoming lays bare a third one: the scale is eminently
incomplete. A superficial listening to the work immediately reveals that not the
whole spectrum of human expressions is covered. Of the broad array of
feelings expressing love, we only get erotic sounds such as giggling, heavy
breathing and voluptuous moaning. And in view of the magnificent bloom of
love in classical music that is surely rather meagre.

Behind the all-encompassing order suggested by the serial procedure goes

hidden the complete opposite of it: sheer arbitrariness. Or rather: a remarkable
one-sidedness. It is as if one would let a pure tonal melody pass for of a twelve-
tone series. Obviously, Ligeti did not submit to a serial logic. Rather was he led
by its complete opposite: mimetic logic. He is out at evoking a specific world,
and in that world there is no room for the whole array of expressions, let alone
for a succession totally determined by a serial principle.

UNEASE IN LOVE

Suppose we so extend the spectrum that it comes to encompass the whole

array of emotions. It would immediately become apparent that it cannot become
complete as long as we restrict ourselves to pure auditory expressions. To
begin with, the purely auditory expressions of love are rather limited: the sound
of a kiss, mmm, panting and the screams of the orgasm, and thats it. Already
broader is the spectrum of verbal expressions: lovers address each other with
short, gently whispered phrases, and they love to echo each other. But only in
singing is fully unfolded the whole array of loving feelings as the old Darwinist
philosophers of art, who regarded the calls of rutting animals as the primeval
song, already knew. In the song, the verbal expression of love is not only
elevated and brought to full bloom through extending echoing with singing
together, it is also enriched because only music knows to convey all the
tenderness and passion that real lovers express through facial expressions,
gestures and postures. Further, in contrast with love, which is rather inaudible
by nature, aggression and dominance are rather noisy affairs, which hence
would tend to be over-represented in a scale of pure auditory expressions. But
also here it applies that anger and rage do not so much express themselves in
yelling, stamping, kicking and throwing, as in the way of speaking. And it is only
music that succeeds in elevating and enriching those expressions by equally
evoking the concomitant facial expressions, gestures and postures through
sound: think only of the impressive tones with which Mozarts Commendatore
drives don Giovanni into hell. For the mystery is precisely that those sustained
tones are conjuring up the imposing posture of an impressive appearance: such
a posture is not precisely audible in the real world! It is, on the contrary, rather
its motionless silence that petrifies us. This is music at its best: it is able to
conjure up not only movement, but also motionless standstill through non-
moving sound.

Thus, the spectrum of emotion cannot become complete unless it comes to

encompass also verbal, but foremost musical expressions. The reverse is
equally true: when we take the spectrum of emotions as a point of departure, it
immediately becomes apparent that Aventures does not encompass the whole
spectrum of auditory expressions. We miss the battle cry, the alarm, the crying
for help, the yelling in panic, the burst of anger and above all the primeval
scream: weeping.

A veritable scale of the emotions, then, would consist of a progression from the
most elementary expressions to their musically most unfolded forms. And on a
second axis would figure the whole array of emotions. Only on such a
chessboard of combined parameters could be properly played a genuine serial
game.

Such double shortcoming of Ligetis scale of emotions is not only inspired by

mimetic considerations. It uncovers the deeper resistance that lies at the roots
of the unease in music, that in its turns lies at the roots of the unease in
language. The unease in music itself has its roots in the unease in love in all its
forms: the taboo on music is merely the expression of an underlying taboo on
love not otherwise than the mimetic taboo (see: The erotic eye, in
preparation).

UNEASE UNDER TERROR

Out of these elements Ligeti builds a serial structure, in which the various
emotions are polyphonically interwoven. No opera, hence, with a linear story
divided in separate numbers, but a sequence of various combinations of
emotions determined by a serial logic. Also here language in the sense of a
story is refused. We spare the reader the trouble to further analyse this
structure. For we stumble here on another discrepancy between intention and
deed. The disconcerting simplicity of Ligetis construction is rather a farewell if
not a parody on the serial procedure, than an extension to the new parameter
of emotions.

For everything seems to indicate that Ligetis serial logic has been no more
than an occasion, if not an alibi to unabashedly set foot on the mimetic domain
that came into view through serial music. To understand this, we have to look
through the trees of the structural to see the wood of what is conjured up
through it no differently than Ligeti, who used to point out that serial music
sounds otherwise than it was thought out.

Let us, then, in his very own Aventures listen to what there is to be heard with
the naked ear. The work falls apart in nine episodes**, often neatly separated
by full measures of rest. Five of them (I,II,III,VI,VII) are introduced by long
sustained tones, as if it were the strophes of a song. Every episode is centred
around the appearance of a kind of supervisor. His presence is intimated
through a sustained, threatening tone, which is only absent in episode IV, VIII
and IX. That threatening tone is not the announcement of the impressive
appearance of a respectable figure such as Mozarts Commendatore calling
don Giovanni to account. Rather is it the prelude to the indecent, if not obscene
sounds with which the supervisor indicates that he is stirring himself: measure
6 in episode I and measure 11in episode II. When also the subordinates are
stirring themselves ever more audaciously, the supervisor bursts out in an
ostentative display of power: the heated oration in 47-48 and the loud slams in
50 and 57 of episode V, the catching Ahaa! in measure 58 of episode VII. Until
he is somewhat reassured and retires in the swelling threatening tone in
measures 105-107 of episode VII. To finally become silent in episodes VIII and
IX.

The sustained tone just like the motives creeping around the sustained tone
of the Commendatore in the finale scene of Mozarts don Giovanni is equally
the expression of the way in which the terrorised subordinates are shirking out
of fear for the supervisors all-seeing eye that is resting upon them. But when
the supervisor happens to turn his back, or to content himself with producing
obscene sounds, the subordinates seize their chance to indulge in some
forbidden activity. According to the horny laughter and the consequent giggling
of the girls, the greedy panting in episode I is released in some transgression or
other. To judge from the sounds in measure 15 and 16, the subordinates have
done something that makes them disperse. In episode III they seem to seize
their opportunity without catching the supervisors eye: they hastily whisper or
eagerly proceed to action, scattering now and then, until the threatening
presence of the supervisor makes them calm down. But in IV there is no
stopping them any longer. They lash out at one another. Which provokes the
heated oration of the supervisor. Whereupon they burst out again and are
called to order by the supervisor wreaking havoc. So that they behave well
again and eventually sink in the hypnosis of terror. In VI they renew their
provocations of the supervisor, but, after some self-restricting admonitions,
they subdue to terror again. When they seem to plan another forbidden
undertaking in VII, the supervisor, only pretending to look the other way,
catches them red-handed. On his Ahaaa! the sinners are paralysed into
veritable musical pillars of salt in episode VII: by their loudly immobility they are
trying to outdo each other in proving that they have done nothing wrong! In VIII
they clash with each other. Whereupon the supervisor reaps the fruits of his
divide and conquer in episode IX.

All this cannot fail to remind of the proceedings in boarding schools, classes,
play-grounds, work-floors, offices, barracks, not to mention all kinds of
hierarchies. Or also: of a troop of baboons where the alpha-males are anxiously
trying to defend their dominant position. Or more striking still: of Freuds
primeval father trying to monopolise all the women in the horde, facing the
constant attack of the excluded sons trying to make a deal behind his back, until
the primeval father chases, castrates or kills them. Also herein do Ligetis
Aventures have something in common with Mozarts don Giovanni, where
throughout the whole opera the scoundrel is trying to escape the growing horde
of deceived husbands, to finally be called to account by the Commendatore -
even when there is worlds apart between the struggle of the champion of
monogamy and the sympathetic libertine on the one hand, and the terror of an
obscene power-mad person against a revolting mob, that, as a way of
resistance, only knows to bring forth the grimace of pure transgression.

The nearly strophic structure of Aventures, then, is not only a parody on serial
composition. The serial unpredictability - and here again Ligetis eminent
musical-mimetic instinct is popping up is transformed into the striking
rendering of the way in which life under terror is structured. In a world where
everything has to be done in the dark and where behind every corner lurks
betrayal Ligeti was born in 1923, is a Jew and a Hungarian - there is no
place for any organic flow. Thus, unpredictability becomes the red thread that
binds all the strophes internally and among themselves.

Ligetis reinterpretation of formal procedures is all the more masterly because

there is a perfect match between the world conjured up and the means used.
No better way to render the breakthrough of the repressed than to let the
auditory expressions in which it is embodied break loose from the order of
language and music. And no better way to render the chaos unleashed through
the terror of the primeval father than to parody the terror of serial over-
structuring and to let it loose on a material that thoroughly resists structuring as
such. That is why this work could only have been written at the moment when
the hegemony of the serial principle was contested from all quarters. By
confronting serial music with its true face, Ligeti delivers it a final blow while at
the same time laying bare the truth of human relations in our era.

EASE IN THE IMAGE

And that brings us to the last contradiction between word and deed. Up to now,
we completely passed over the fact that Aventures' is not at all absolute music:
there is a libretto written by the master himself. Hence, the above is merely a
rendering of the way in which I have been approaching the work for a long time.
For, by reason of circumstances beyond my control, only much later could I lay
hands on the libretto and still later could I witness a real performance of the
piece. That is the fate of most of the music in my collection. For I can only
blame the circumstances for the fact that in the case of Aventures the
transition to the second and third phase took so long. As a matter of fact, I have
always to overcome a certain resistance when reading the text to vocal music.
And such hesitating develops into straight unwillingness when it comes to assist
at a real performance of an opera. For, even though some works think of
madrigals, songs of Schubert, the Tristan only gain when the text is taken into
consideration, as a rule I cannot but experience a confrontation with the visual
dimension as a straightforward disenchantment. All too often does the
introduction of the visual element spoil the music, because the world conjured
up in music is totally different from the world as it appears in the visual
dimension. From a musical point of view, the love-duet of Tristan and Isolde is
completely convincing. But, on the scene, you have to witness how the poor
singers are desperately trying to pretend that they love each other. The problem
is related to that of the relation of program-music to its program. The 'Fantasia
quasi Sonate' "Aprs une lecture de Dante" a work of that other great kindred
spirit and fellow countryman of Ligetis may be considered as the continuation
of Beethovens endeavour to merge the sonata and the sonata-form, as in the
Grosse Fuge. When reading the program, one cannot escape the feeling that
the richness of the music has been given a narrowing interpretation: it loses
more than it gains.

All these considerations justify a first approach of vocal music as if it were pure
music. And that goes especially for Ligetis Aventures. For, great was my
surprise when I laid eyes upon the libretto! I could not possibly link the scenes
described in it with the music, unless I had meticulously transferred the
indications from the libretto to the score, measure for measure.

And then it became fully apparent that the libretto - as if it were a greedy polyp -
takes control of the music and disturbs its coherence by placing all the elements
in a new context. Thus, in the beginning we hear several voices the whole
group of subordinates heavily pant, but only the baritone appears through a
cut in the curtain. Here, there are less actors than suggested in the music. The
reverse is true in measure 47-48, where, on the hysterical outcry of the
baritone, first a first double and then a second one appears, until they are finally
joined by the real baritone. The baritone is split not only simultaneously, but
also successively: he lends his voice - as far as it does not merge in the
background music as such - successively to a cavalier-poet, an Olympic
runner, a North-Pole traveller with looking glasses and a professor teased by
his female pupils. And, finally, the coherence is utterly destroyed in that the
libretto introduces lots of events that are merely visible. Think of the Golem in
the first place. He does not make any noise, and his movements are nowhere
represented in the score: he appears some measures before the end of the
scene (i.e. before measure 46), silently makes two or three strides in measure
50, to finally dissolve in the dark. At best, you could consider the sustained tone
as his musical appearance, were it not that it is to be heard throughout the
entire mimodrama as the embodiment of the terror of primeval father, of which
the Golem is merely the faint shadow in folk-lore. Is it not rather surprising that
the only figure on the scene that could pass for a primeval father has
completely detached itself from the very music wherein he has so convincingly
been embodied in flesh and blood? And the same goes also for the three
sculptures of Laokoon, the series of slides, the steam-engine and the anatomic
wax-model. It looks as if Ligeti has attempted to combine an existing musical
logic with a superposed visual logic into an encompassing whole. But the visual
logic cannot possibly be reconciled with the compelling musical and mimetic
logic of this marvellous music. It reminds me of the way in which Stockhausen
transformed his 'Kontakte' in 'Originale' (in 1961!)

Hence, rather than with a mise-en-scne of music, we are dealing here with a
visualising away of the music, a veritable mise-hors-musique. It immediately
reminded me of the way in which a dreamer tries to makes his dream more
coherent Freuds Sekundre Bearbeitung. Even though not the transposition
of images in words is responsible for the censure here, but the transposition of
music in images. And even though, paradoxically enough, the strong narrative,
if not strophic character of the music, is translated/censured through the
dreamlike, incoherent - surrealistic - imagery as we know it from the
contemporaneous theatre of Ionesco and Becket. It thus turns out that Ligeti
released music from the fetters of language only to subordinate it to a new
reign: that of the image.

THE EK-STASIES OF LIGETI

In Aventures, Ligeti summons up new mimetic means in view of the disclosure

of mimetic domains hitherto left fallow in music. But these new mimetic means
are not at all a new musical language, in which everything can be expressed.
They have only a restricted mimetic domain: the attempts to escape from the
all-pervading terror.

That becomes apparent as soon as Ligeti begins to compose a new

composition in the same style between 1962-1965: the Nouvelles Aventures.
Despite - or as a consequence of - the attempts to concoct a new whole out of
parallelisms and oppositions to Aventures, the mimetic impact has thoroughly
faded. Which did not prevent Ligeti from presenting both works as a new whole:
Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures. Musikalisch-dramatische Aktion in 14
Bildern.
And it comes to its apogee when Ligeti writes his Grand Macabre (1974-1977):
a full-fledged opera after a libretto of Michel de Ghelderode. Even though Ligeti
had to go to some lengths to find a suited text, the way he walks here is the
very opposite of Aventures: he no longer hesitates to subordinate his music to
the strange logic of a pre-existing story. As a consequence, also his musical
means have to be adapted. The sighs, cries and screams that in Aventures
were wriggling out of the grasp of music and language, are now nestling in their
musical and linguistic envelope again. Hesitatingly though. For what we get to
hear is not the full melodic and harmonic music of the classic period, but the
musical medium of the twentieth century, that, as already mentioned, begins to
forsake precisely the characteristics that elevate auditory mimesis to music. We
get a mixture of Bergian melodies, Schnbergian Sprechstimme, and
conventional spoken passages like in the German Singspiel. The imaginary
language of Aventures survives only as an indecent episode in the periphery of
a whole that is enveloped in music and language, as a kind of reversed
atavisms in the musical regression towards a more familiar medium.

Such linking up with the pre-serial mimetic means of the twentieth century is
convincing as long as we are dealing with the burlesque figures in Ghelderodes
universe. But it is totally incompatible with characters like Amando and Amanda,
the couple in love, utterly at loss on the scene as well as in music. Already
within the confines of Ligetis scale of emotions there was no room for a couple
in love, as little as in Freuds primeval horde. And that goes especially for Le
Grand Macabre. In order to let a loving couple convincingly sing, it will not
suffice to fall back on the means developed by Schnberg in his Pierrot Lunaire
or by Berg in his Wozzeck. Only a return to the world of the Salom by Richard
Strauss, or, better still, of the Tristan by Wagner would do Verdis Traviata or
Mozarts Figaro would be too much of a good thing. But also here the unease in
music continues to haunt Ligeti: it seems as if he is only ready to fall back on
the kind of music that is already corroded by the very taboo on music. The
same Ligeti that was ready to go back to Berg when it came to embody the
primeval father in the more concrete, burlesque characters of le Grand
Macabre, is not prepared to fall back on Wagner. Only as an allusion, if not as a
caricature, is the latter present in Ligetis music, just like in the finale scene of
Aventures, where the moaning of the alto cannot fail to remind of Isoldes
Liebestod. Still, the musical rapture of Amando and Amanda, however
disfigured, has something of the melancholy tune that Bela Bartok another
great fellow countryman of Ligetis lets resound amidst the rhythmic turmoil of
the last movement of his fifth quartet only to soon let it be sucked up in the
whirlpool of the forces unleashed again or of those Nachtmusiken and other
epiphanies in Bartoks works. And it is surely no accident that also Ligetis
Nouvelles Aventures introduce a similar breakthrough of caricatured music
(also from the point of view of content: church music!). Those breakthroughs of
homesickness seem to be the counterparts of that sardonic laughter resounding
in the beginning of Aventures: the embodiment of the parodying stance taken
by Ligeti on contemporary music in the first place, but witness the mise-hors-
musique of Aventures also on his own music. That is why that very laughing
that Ligeti cannot give up has something of the jeering of don Giovanni, whose
demonic urge is after all merely a vain effort to silence the voice of the
Commendatore, resounding deep in his inner self. And it speaks volumes that
the sacredness of that call breaks through in Atmosphres and Volumina.
These - this time unbroken - epiphanies express the longing stirred by the
unease under the reign of terror. Only in these works is accomplished - as well
on the level of music as on the level of content - the mystic elevation of
Wagners Tristan, otherwise than in Richard Strauss Salom or Schnbergs
Pierrot Lunaire. All this makes it all too plain that the taboo on music is itself
merely the epiphenomenon of the underlying anti-ideal and anti-utopian taboo
on love in all its forms.

That is why the real accomplishment of Aventures is not to be found in

Nouvelles Aventures or Le Grand Macabre, but in Volumina and Atmosphres.
While, in the Nouvelles Aventures, the mimetic domain is fading away behind
the mimetic means, in Le Grand Macabre it is extended without finding the
proper mimetic means. In Aventures, on the other hand, the newly discovered
mimetic means perfectly match the newly discovered mimetic domain. They are
not torn apart in that mimetic means and mimetic domain each go their own
way.

That is what Ligetis Aventures have in common with other masterpieces, such
as Schnbergs Pierrot Lunaire, Richard Strauss Salom or Wagners Tristan.
And it remains to be understood why, ever since the Tristan, such
breakthroughs are only followed by their decay and not by any further
development.

Wherewith Ligeti's Aventures be granted their due place in the Pantheon of

Music!