In 2023 the Austro-Hungarian composer would be 100 years old. DW broadcasts a concert on YouTube with music “stolen” for the film “2001, a space odyssey” – a testament to the quality of György Ligeti’s work. There are several terms to designate Western concert works composed from the second half of the century 20: new, avant-garde, contemporary music. Name aside, it tends to be reputed to be too complex, purely cerebral, not very accessible. Above all, nothing that seduces the ears or makes the body sway with the rhythm. But if that’s a rule (and it’s not!), it has exceptions.
György Ligeti was born on May 28, 1923, in Diciosânmartin (today Târnăveni), in the Transylvania region of Romania, to a Hungarian Jewish family. During World War II, he was part of a forced labor brigade when the rest of the family was sent to Nazi concentration camps. Only his mother survived, his father and brother were murdered.
Having started to study music at the age of 18, Ligeti completed his studies in Budapest. In 1956, following the failed popular uprising against the occupying Soviet forces, he fled to Vienna.
Determined to break with the dogmas of music, not only the classics, but also those of the so-called “true” avant-garde, he began to develop his own style, combining folk influences with tasty dissonances, dramatic ruptures and a rhythmic-harmonic filigree technique, inspired by medieval polyphony, which Ligeti called “micropolyphony”.
The “Stolen” Song from 2001, A Space Odyssey
In 1961, the orchestral piece Atmosphères, with its hypnotically fluid, almost impressionistic structures, served Ligeti as a definitive gateway to the Western musical avant-garde.
From then on, his name began to be mentioned in the same breath as those of the already established Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio or Karlheinz Stockhausen, some of the giants who would dominate the history of classical music in the second half of the 20th century.
In a sequence of seductively revolutionary works, in 1966 the Hungarian composer published Lux aeterna, in which, over the syllables of the Latin text of the mass for the dead, the mixed a cappella choir metamorphoses into iridescent sound masses and almost electronic surfaces.
Shortly after, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick listened to both works, liked them, and included them in his 1968 science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey – without first asking permission or clarifying who owned the copyright.
Percussionist and composer Lukas Ligeti, György’s son, tells what followed during his stay in Germany for the Moers Festival: “One day, my father went to watch this film that everyone said was so good. When he heard the song, of course he was speechless and shocked.”
After the session, one lady commented that the only thing she liked was the music (the 2001 soundtrack also includes, by the way, the Blue Danube waltz, by Johann Strauss II, and the iconic introduction to the symphonic poem Also sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss). When Ligeti thanked him, commenting that the music was hers, the old lady dismissed him: “Yes, my boy, of course.”
The composer sued the American director for the “theft”, but the case ended up being resolved out of court. Kubrick would again use Ligeti’s music in The Shining (1980) and in his final work, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – this time with prior permission and paying the due copyright.
Poem for 100 metronomes and other jokes
After Vienna, György Ligeti lived in Berlin and the United States, and taught composition at the University of Music and Theater in Hamburg. Throughout his career, he maintained a relatively rare trait in a “serious artist”: an irrepressible, iconoclastic, almost childish sense of humor.
Thus, his only opera, Le Grand Macabre, is a caustic satire on the Last Judgment, orchestrated by a chorus of car horns. Also impossible to take seriously but surprisingly thought-provoking is his Poème symphonique, in which 100 metronomes, each at a different tempo, are triggered simultaneously.
Until his death, in June 2006, he remained curious about all manifestations of music, beyond ready-made formulas, whether traditional or modern. Thus, from the 1980s he dedicated himself to studying Central African music, especially that of the Pygmy Aka people.
In an era less concerned with undue “cultural appropriations”, this influence is manifested both in the Trio for violin, horn and piano (1982), as in some of the 18 Études for solo piano (1985-2001), or in the piano concertos (1985 –88) and for violin (1989–93) and orchestra.
These and other mature Ligetian works are exuberantly dynamic, containing passages that are almost danceable – only almost, as polyrhythms (superimposition of two or more rhythmic structures) and asymmetries give them an element of unpredictability and even danger.
African influences from father to son
Lukas Ligeti tells how György was fascinated when listening to music from the Central African Republic: “My father was always looking for polyphony. There he heard a whole new form of polyphonic music, which has some things in common with Renaissance music in Europe, but is otherwise performed quite differently.”
The 57-year-old Austrian-American musician inherited his father’s interest in multiple ethnic influences, and describes his output as “intercultural experimental music”, also including jazz and electroacoustic sounds. A milestone in his training was an improvisation workshop he gave in Adidjã, Côte d’Ivoire, while still a young student, sponsored by the Goethe Institute.
Since then, Lukas Ligeti has performed with musicians across Africa, from Egypt to Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya. For 16 years he has maintained, with two members from Burkina Faso and two from Côte d’Ivoire, the group Burkina Electric, which participates in the Moers Festival 2023, held from May 26th to 29th.
Dedicated to jazz but open to experimental music, the event in the Rhenish city includes a section dedicated to Africa every year. And in its 52nd edition, it also honors the centenary of György Ligeti, with a concert in which the SWR Vokalensemble choir performs Lux aeterna. In the second part, the eight singers from Trondheim Voices, from Norway, present an improvisation inspired by this piece by the anti-dogmatic master.
The Moers Festival concert on May 28, 2023 will be streamed live by DW at 10:00 pm (Berlin time), on their YouTube channel DW Classical Music.
#Ligeti #avantgarde #discovered #African #music