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Keywords: György Ligeti; Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Hölderlin; Magyar Etüd}
ok;
Late Style; Unaccompanied Choral Works; Sándor We}ores
Following the premiere of his opera Le Grand Macabre in 1978, György Ligeti faced a
compositional crisis: how to proceed? The opera had taken him far from his
compositional styles of the 1960s and early 1970s, but the way forward to the piano
concerto he wished to compose next was not clear. Seven years would pass from the
opera to the first book of Piano Etudes, followed at last by the completion of the
concerto. In the interim, Ligeti composed only three significant works: the Trio for
Violin, Horn, and Piano (1982) and two sets of songs for sixteen-part
unaccompanied chorus—the Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Hölderlin (Three
Phantasies after Friedrich Hölderlin, 1982) and the Magyar Etüdök (Hungarian
Studies, 1983). This article focuses on these choral works: Ligeti’s first settings of
poetic texts since the 1950s and his first unaccompanied choral compositions since
Lux aeterna (1966). Though they certainly are of interest to the music analyst,1 under
consideration here will be their place among Ligeti’s choral and vocal compositions
and especially their role at this juncture in Ligeti’s compositional career. After an
introduction to Ligeti’s choral and vocal compositions prior to the opera, we
Aside from two small pieces for harpsichord, I did not complete any compositions
between 1977 and 1982. I was in fact working continuously, but I wrote hundreds
of sketches, only to abandon them. This was not some ‘‘personal crisis,’’ but part of
a general one: in the 70s, many composers of different generations were
questioning the primacy of the Darmstadt School. Of course, this ‘‘primacy’’ was
only an illusion of artists and journalists who belonged to the circle (as I did, albeit
casually and with a certain skepticism).16
The radical experimentalism of the 1960s and early 1970s was giving way to
minimalism in the United States, and neo-tonal and neo-Romantic tendencies
seemed to be on the rise. Though Ligeti never was subsumed in any of these
compositional trends, including those of the Darmstadt School, his working methods
from the 1960s already seemed tapped-out by the works just prior to the opera. As we
know now, with awareness of the completed Piano Concerto and the first book of
Piano Etudes, one of the essential elements of Ligeti’s post-opera style is the influence
of Bartók—he had to ‘return to his roots’ to move forward, which included re-
engaging some of the compositional directions he abandoned when he left Hungary.
He also would be invigorated by his renewed engagement with world musics, science,
and mathematics—interests spanning in various ways back to his youth—which
brought a renewed focus on rhythmic and metrical complexity.17
During his time of compositional crisis and stalemate after the opera, returning to
poets he had long admired and once again setting texts for unaccompanied mixed
154 J. P. Clendinning
chorus may have seemed like a way to break the stasis and to move forward,
especially if the texts had special meaning and significance to him at that point in his
life. As one of my former composition teachers used to say, ‘if you don’t know where
to start when composing, begin with an inspiring poetic text—it will give you ideas
about both form and content, and before you know it, you are writing music. . . ’18
Ligeti had received commissions from both Swedish Radio and the Schola Cantorum
of Stuttgart for large choral works, and the texts he chose to set in these two choral
works certainly seem significant, coming at this point in his life. The three Hölderlin
poems—‘Hälfte des Lebens’ (‘Halfway through Life’), ‘Wenn aus die Ferne’ (‘If from
a distance’), and ‘Abendphantasie’ (‘Evening Reverie’)—are filled with images of the
abundance of mid-life (ripe yellow pears, wild roses, drunk with kisses, spring time,
nightingale’s song, golden world), but also look ahead to old age, represented with
images of winter (coldness, silence, rattling weather-vane, dusk, darkness, and
lonesomeness). The text from ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ is provided in Figure 1 as an
example. Text elements of each of these Hölderlin poems speak to looking both back
on times past and ahead to an uncertain future. Ligeti’s settings of these texts are
filled with text-painting as well as drawing on the sonic and rhythmic characteristics
of the words. The shifting images and ambivalence of the texts could be reflective of
the composer’s state of mind, as he is feeling the effects of middle-age.
The Weöres texts selected for the Magyar Etüd}ok also seem significant. The title for
this work comes from the title of the texts—where each of the individual poems is
entitled Etude plus a number representing the placement of that poem in the
collection. Ligeti selected Etudes 9, 49, 40, and 90 for the three movements,
combining two poems—both with references to frog sounds—for the second. Like
other of Weöres’ poems that Ligeti set, these texts have a strong sense of playfulness
combined with direct references to sounds and images that evoke a sense of place and
time. The brief Weöres poems he set twenty-eight years earlier in the choral works
Éjszaka and Reggel (Night and Morning) had ‘night’ paired with the words ‘silence’
and ‘beating of my heart’, and ‘morning’ evoked by the church tower tolling at dawn
Figure 1 Text for ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ (English translation by David Feurzeig).
Contemporary Music Review 155
and a rooster’s ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’. The poems for the Hungarian Studies present
three different places and images: the text of the first movement represents icicles
melting and dripping ‘Csipp, csepp’ (‘Drip, drop’) and the water droplets ‘knocking
at the door’;20 the second movement is set in a meadow near a frog pond, with
sounds of flocks of birds, swarms buzzing, bells calling us to rest, and the calls of frogs
‘brekekex’ (the Hungarian version of ‘ribit’); while the third movement takes place at
a fair with street merchant cries advertising apples, sleds, clothing, mead, and a
circus.21
The Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Hölderlin (1982) feature many of the
compositional techniques Ligeti developed in the 1960s and 1970s, but the
techniques are integrated and layered to a degree not evident in previous works,
motivated by the poetic phrasing, rhythm, and meaning of the Hölderlin texts. In
this composition for sixteen-part unaccompanied mixed chorus, Ligeti once again
draws on microcanon and pattern-meccanico as structural features—two of his
favorite compositional techniques employed in works from the 1960s. In the 1960s,
he uses strict pitch canonic techniques in works, such as Lux aeterna (1966), but
the durations assigned to the pitches are not canonic; in the Drei Phantasien, both
the pitches and durations are canonic, though two different durational sequences
are sometimes applied to the canon melody, creating additional rhythmic and
metrical complexity as the melody is set in canon. Instead of the long canonic
melodies of Lux aeterna, which create entire large sections, the microcanons here
are shorter—setting a single phrase of text—and may be complete, or may break off
or wander off prior to completion of the canon. The canon entries may be at the
unison or octaves, as was typical in the microcanonic works from the 1960s, or may
be transposed, either by a consistent interval or by a series of different intervals.
The melodies here also differ from those of Lux aeterna because microtonal
inflections are employed—a technique Ligeti explored in the Second String Quartet,
Clocks and Clouds (1972–1973), and other earlier works that do not exactly produce
quarter tones, but slight ‘out-of-tuneness’ in regard to equal temperament, creating
a ‘blurring’ of the pitches and intervals. This is a compositional idea he worked out
in more detail later, by combining modern valve and natural horns in his Hamburg
Concerto (1999).22
I use the term pattern-meccanico for pieces, such as Continuum (1967), where
Ligeti employs a type of compound melody created by the interaction of a few
musical lines, each representing several contrapuntal strands, where each line is
constructed from repeated small groups of pitches that I refer to as patterns.23 The
term ‘pattern-meccanico’ derives from Ligeti’s term meccanico, meaning ‘in a
mechanical or machine-like manner’. In the Drei Phantasien, a variety of short
microcanons are combined with longer pattern-meccanico and pattern-meccanico/
microcanon segments juxtaposed with short contrasting chordal and non-canonic
contrapuntal passages to form the musical structure. Phrases and subphrases of the
texts are set individually, highlighting the components of the poems, and playing on
the sounds of the words as well as their meanings.
156 J. P. Clendinning
The organization of the first movement, ‘Hälfte des Lebens’, illustrates the
combination of techniques typical of these pieces. The movement divides into three
large sections: bars 1–17, bars 18–28, and bars 29–50, as illustrated in Figure 2. The
first section, setting the first stanza of the poem, begins with a microcanon at the
unison in the Soprano, Alto, and Tenor sections (twelve parts), with the canon pitches
set using two durational series, with entries at a quarter note displacement, as shown
in Figure 3. A second microcanon enters in the Basses, then the SAT microcanons
branch off by section. A fleeting transposed microcanon passes through the Alto and
Soprano parts in bars 13–14, leading to the cadential figure in bars 15–17.
Section 2, bars 18–28, does not feature either microcanon or pattern-meccanico
techniques. Instead, there is a non-canonic, homorhythmic counterpoint in parallel
tritones and perfect fifths followed by a chordal passage. These choices again seem to
be motivated by setting the text (‘Alas, where shall I find—when winter comes—the
flowers, and where the sunshine?’). Section 3, bars 29–50, combines microcanon with
pattern-meccanico in the Alto and Tenor parts. They are joined by the Sopranos,
while the Bass parts sustain notes with long durations. This microcanonic melody is
constructed with pattern changes like those of the pattern-meccanico texture,
effectively combining the two techniques. This section, and the movement, ends in a
homorhythmic chordal cadential pattern.
In the Magyar Etüd}ok (1983), Ligeti returns to texts by Sándor We} ores, but
explores new types of rhythmic features that would become characteristic of his late
style. While each movement of the Drei Phantasien is like a quilt of carefully
Figure 3 Ligeti, ‘Hälfte des Lebens’, Opening Microcanon, bars 1–4, sopranos and altos.
ª1983 Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG, Mainz, Germany. Reproduced by permission. All
rights reserved.
combined small components composed with a variety of techniques, each of the three
Hungarian Studies is woven completely from a single pattern. These truly are etudes
(studies): each represents a concentrated working-out of one compositional idea that
is closely linked to images in the text. One aspect shared with the Drei Phantasien is
that the text of each movement features sound effects—drops of water, evening
sounds, and market cries—and is set onomatopoeically. Unlike those of the Hölderlin
songs, these texts are light-hearted short poems, but both sets of texts evoke a sense of
place and time.
The first movement of the Hungarian Studies is created entirely from a melodically
and rhythmically strict mirror canon. The canon melody consists of eighth notes
separated by long spans of rests, to be sung ‘Moderato meccanico’—mechanically, at
a moderate pace. Only twelve voice parts of the sixteen part chorus participate in this
setting, with the canon melody transposed to begin with each of the twelve pitch
classes. An expanding chromatic wedge is created by the shape of the canonic line,
and also the pitch level of entries. The canonic entries illustrate the text—featuring
the sounds and description of an icicle dripping, and drops knocking at the door. As
with some of the microcanons in Drei Phantasien, two rhythmic patterns are assigned
to the canon melody. Here, though, the two rhythmic patterns are made from a single
durational sequence notated in two different meters: Choir II enters first in 2/2 meter
(rhythm 1) and Choir I in 6/4 meter (rhythm 2). Since the tempo is the same for
the beat units in both meters—the half note in 2/2 lasts as long as the dotted half in
158 J. P. Clendinning
6/4—the durational sequence consisting of eighth notes and rests is completed more
quickly in 6/4, with three quarter notes per beat in the same time span of two quarter
notes in 2/2. Perhaps this reflects icicles that are not melting at quite the same rate,
with one audibly dripping faster than the other at the beginning, before there are so
many drips at the same time it is not possible to distinguish the sound of individual
drops. Once the canon is set in motion, entries are proscribed by intricate mirroring
procedures controlling pitch level, both time and pitch intervals between entries, and
the alternation of the two meters. The finished composition results from these pre-
compositional decisions. It is a tour de force of strict canonic writing, and quite
distinct from Ligeti’s other microcanons in its precise adherence to the pitch and
rhythm sequence.
The two texts of the second movement present several sound images, which are set
in a manner reminiscent of fourteenth-century sound-effect songs, such as the French
chace and the Italian caccia—both forms of popular music in which scenes, such as a
hunt or a bustling marketplace, were set in a humorous manner using canonic
techniques combined with hocket, echoes, and other effects. The phrases of both texts
are set in pairs, with each pair from the first poem accompanied by an ‘N’ or ‘Z’
sound effect. The bell sound ‘bim-bam’ is separated from the rest of its phrase and
presented as a sound effect, and the second text, about the sound of the frogs, comes
in whenever frog sounds are mentioned in the first text.24 This type of effect is also
employed in the last movement of this set and in some parts of the Drei Phantasien.
The last movement of the Hungarian Studies is reminiscent of the market scene
(‘Who will buy?’) in the musical Oliver! (words and music by Lionel Bart, 1960) and
also the opening market scene (‘Belle’) in the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast
(words and music by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, 1991).25 All of these
market scenes have potential precedents in Renaissance pieces with similar types of
textures and multiple competing texts. In this movement of the Hungarian Studies,
five street vendor cries are set, each with its own melody that is independent in pitch,
rhythmic structure, meter, and tempo from the others. The melodies overlap and
interact to create a complex polyrhythmic texture.
The three choral works grouped in the Hungarian Studies share little in common
with each other as far as compositional techniques used, except that they all in one
way or another explore contrapuntal techniques associated with Renaissance music—
repertoire Ligeti studied and sang in Budapest, taught at the Liszt Academy (where
one of his duties was as a teacher of counterpoint), and discussed with his
composition students at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg. These pieces are
significant in that they represent a return to setting texts in Hungarian by one of
Ligeti’s favorite poets, and must have brought back memories of years long past—
other places and times. They also represent an exploration of musical elements that
would be significant in other works of Ligeti’s late style, including metrical and
rhythmic complexities. Both these pieces and the Drei Phantasien lead toward the
new style by combining aspects of Ligeti’s pre- and post-1956 compositional
techniques.
Contemporary Music Review 159
These two unaccompanied choral works were to be Ligeti’s last in this genre, but
there are two later works for voice and accompaniment setting poetic texts by one of
the poets of the 1982–1983 choral works: Der Sommer (‘The Summer’, 1989), for
soprano and piano accompaniment, setting a text by Friedrich Hölderlin, and Sı́ppal,
dobbal, nádihegedüvel (‘With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles’, 2000) for mezzo-soprano and
four percussionists (who play a large, diverse battery of percussion instruments),
setting texts by Sándor Weöres. Ligeti’s only other vocal composition following the
sixteen-part choral works is the Nonsense Madrigals (1988–1989 and 1993) for six
singers (two altos, tenor, two baritones, and bass), which sets texts in English.26
In Le Grand Macabre, the end of the world does not signal the end of the opera—
instead, the end of the world comes at the end of the third scene, with another scene
yet to come.27 At the age of fifty-five when the opera premiered, Ligeti was a well-
established composer, and could have chosen to continue with the compositional
styles of the 1960s and 1970s that had brought him international success, or even
stopped composing altogether (which he essentially did by not completing any new
works for about five years). Instead, he looked backwards in order to move forward.
He chose to seek inspiration in the texts of poets he had admired for years, and to
return to choral composition. His return to his ‘roots’ included re-embracing the
compositional materials and genres significant during both his student years and his
time at the Liszt Academy and re-establishing as a part of his compositional arsenal
the Bartók-influenced style emblematic of his Piano Concerto. Looking back
fortunately did not mean a retrogression to a compositional world long past and
abandonment of what he had learned in the meantime; instead it led to the
integration of his early stylistic elements with new compositional ideas from world
musics that intrigued him, along with aspects of his signature styles of the previous
two decades. This time of looking back may also have provided an impetus for his
efforts in the 1990s to revise and publish selected early works from the 1940s and
1950s and to record performances of them as a part of Sony’s Ligeti Edition,28 a
project eventually completed by Teldec. The compositional crossroads Ligeti faced in
1978–1982 could have led in many directions, but it took him here—to these two
beautiful and intriguing choral works, and ultimately on to the Piano Concerto and
the Piano Etudes.
Notes
[1] For detailed analytical comments on the Drei Phantasien and Magyar Etüdök, see
Clendinning (1989, Vol. 1, pp. 303–335 and Vol. 2, pp. 176–208, 219–222).
[2] Steinitz (2003, pp. 39–40).
[3] Ibid., p. 16.
[4] In this work, Ligeti chose a text by Renaissance poet Bálint Balassa for the first movement,
with the second and third movements based on Hungarian folk song texts, and the fourth
movement on a Slovakian folk song text.
[5] For more on Ligeti’s employment of poems by Sándor We} ores, see the recent article: Mándi-
Fazekas and Fazekas (2011).
160 J. P. Clendinning
[6] Ligeti (1996c, p. 9), Sony 62311.
[7] Ibid., p. 10.
[8] These details of Ligeti’s life during and immediately after World War II are documented by
Steinitz (2003, pp. 19–21, 28–30).
[9] Though these works languished in obscurity for many years, their scores are now
available from Schott and they were recorded in the 1990s for the Sony Ligeti Edition,
Vol. 2.
[10] Ligeti (1996b, p. 10), Sony 62305.
[11] Ligeti (1996a, pp. 7–8), Sony 62306.
[12] Initially presented in Clendinning (1989, Vol. 1, pp. 47–48).
[13] Both of these pieces are discussed in detail in Clendinning (1995). See also Bernard (1987,
1994).
[14] Discussed in Steinitz (2003, pp. 253–255).
[15] Steinitz (2003, p. 212).
[16] Ligeti (1998, pp. 11–12), Sony 62309. Despite Ligeti’s assertion to the contrary, there are
good reasons to believe his ‘compositional block’ for this extended span of time was both
professional and personal.
[17] These interests are discussed by Stephen Taylor elsewhere in this issue.
[18] This great advice to a young composition student was from Bob Burroughs, composer in
residence and composition faculty member at Samford University from 1971 to 1980. I am
sure it is not original to him, but it was advice he gave repeatedly and applied himself with
great success. (He has been a prolific composer of choral church music, with over 2000
compositions in print).
[19] Hölderlin (1996, p. 23), Sony 62305.
[20] We} ores (1996, p. 25), Sony 62305. Page 2 of the score only includes a German translation of
the poems, and the German text does not include the ‘knocking at the door’ image, but
rather that ‘the icicle drips water’. The translation by Szalai is likely the better rendition of
the original image.
[21] See the essay elsewhere in this issue by Amy Bauer for additional comments on these
texts.
[22] The Hamburg Concerto is discussed elsewhere in this issue by Mike Searby.
[23] Initially presented in Clendinning (1989, vol. 1, pp. 156–158). The use of pattern-meccanico
techniques in Continuum is discussed in Clendinning (1993).
[24] These texts are discussed in more detail by Amy Bauer elsewhere in this issue.
[25] There is no particular reason to think that Menken and Ashman were aware of Ligeti’s choral
works, or vice versa.
[26] These pieces are discussed by Wolfgang Marx elsewhere in this issue.
[27] For a synopsis of the opera, see Steinitz (2003, pp. 224–227).
[28] For more details, see Steinitz (2003, pp. 343–353).
References
Bernard, J. (1987). Inaudible structures, audible music: Ligeti’s problem, and his solution. Music
Analysis, 6(3), 207–236.
Bernard, J. (1994). Voice leading as a spatial function in the music of Ligeti. Music Analysis, 13(2–
3), 227–253.
Clendinning, J. P. (1989). Contrapuntal techniques in the music of György Ligeti. (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, Yale University).
Clendinning, J. P. (1993). The pattern-meccanico compositions of György Ligeti. Perspectives of
New Music, 31(1), 192–234.
Contemporary Music Review 161
Clendinning, J. P. (1995). Structural Factors in the microcanonic compositions of György Ligeti. In
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Feuerzeig, Trans., pp. 9–14). Sony 62305.
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Trans., pp. 9–18). Sony 62311.
Ligeti, G. (1998). Liner notes to György Ligeti Edition 7: Chamber music (A. McVoy & D. Feuerzeig,
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Mándi-Fazekas, I., & Fazekas, T. (2011). Magicians of sound—Seeking Ligeti’s inspiration in the
poetry of Sándor We} ores. In L. Duchesneau & W. Marx (Eds.), György Ligeti: Of foreign lands
and strange sounds (pp. 53–68). Suffolk: Boydell Press.
Steinitz, R. (2003). György Ligeti: Music of the imagination. London: Faber and Faber.
We} ores, S. (1996). Liner notes to György Ligeti Edition 2: A cappella choral works (A. M. Szalai,
Trans., pp. 25–26). Sony 62305.
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