After the Opera (and the End of The

After the Opera (and the End of theWorld), What Now?Jane Piper Clendinning

Following the premiere of Le Grand Macabre in 1978, Gyorgy Ligeti faced acompositional 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 PianoConcerto he wished to compose next was not clear. In the seven years between the opera

and the first book of Piano Etudes, Ligeti composed only three significant works: the Triofor Violin, Horn, and Piano (1982) and two sets of songs for sixteen-part unaccompanied

chorus—the Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Holderlin (1982) and Magyar Etud}ok(1983), setting texts by Holderlin and Sandor We}ores. This essay will examine the place

of these songs, Ligeti’s first settings of poetic texts since the 1950s, in the context of hisworks for voice, and consider their role in establishing his late style.

Keywords: Gyorgy Ligeti; Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Holderlin; Magyar Etud}ok;Late Style; Unaccompanied Choral Works; Sandor We}ores

Following the premiere of his opera Le Grand Macabre in 1978, Gyorgy Ligeti faced acompositional 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 pianoconcerto 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 theconcerto. In the interim, Ligeti composed only three significant works: the Trio forViolin, Horn, and Piano (1982) and two sets of songs for sixteen-part

unaccompanied chorus—the Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Holderlin (ThreePhantasies after Friedrich Holderlin, 1982) and the Magyar Etudok (Hungarian

Studies, 1983). This article focuses on these choral works: Ligeti’s first settings ofpoetic 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 underconsideration 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 anintroduction to Ligeti’s choral and vocal compositions prior to the opera, we

Contemporary Music ReviewVol. 31, Nos. 2–3, April–June 2012, pp. 149–161

ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) ª 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2012.717357

consider these two sets of choral works and their role in opening the way to the

compositional road ahead of Ligeti in the early 1980s.Works for voices, including accompanied and unaccompanied chorus as well as

solo voice and accompaniment, constituted a significant part of Ligeti’s composi-tional activities in his student days. This is in part because of the availability of

performances by soloists and by the abundance of choirs in post-war Hungary,including informal student ensembles in which Ligeti himself sang.2 The repertoire ofthese choirs ranged from Renaissance choral masterworks to Hungarian folk music to

recent choral compositions by local composers—repertoires that all were influentialin the development of Ligeti’s compositional style. Ligeti’s first published

composition was a song setting—Kineret (‘Galilee’, 1941) for mezzo-soprano—composed when he was eighteen years old,3 and his student works list from his years

at the Budapest Academy features many choral or vocal pieces, including two-,three-, and four-part unaccompanied choir, children’s choir, canons, duets, songs

for soloist and chamber ensemble, and three cantatas.Among his student works are compositions based on Rumanian, Slovakian, and

Hungarian folk songs, some drawing both on the folk text and melody, and others

with a melody Ligeti composed setting a folk song text. One example of the latter isIdegen foldon (‘Far from Home’, 1945–1946) for unaccompanied three-part women’s

chorus, where three of its four movements are based on Hungarian and Slovakianfolk song texts,4 but the folk-song-like settings are Ligeti’s own. There are also poetic

text settings from this same time, including Magany (‘Solitude’) for unaccompaniedthree-part mixed chorus and Harom Weores-dai (‘Three Weores songs’) for soprano

with piano accompaniment, both composed in 1946–1947. These are Ligeti’s firstsettings of poems by Sandor We}ores, a Hungarian poet whom Ligeti met soon after

composing the set of songs, and whose imaginative, mystical, and often humoroustexts would continue to be an inspiration to Ligeti throughout his life.5

When Ligeti revisited these early vocal and choral works from his student days in

the 1990s as a part of projects with Sony and Schott to prepare recordings and topublish the scores, he commented that: ‘My musical idea was a ‘‘Hungarian

modernity’’; my model was Bartok. The Three We}ores Songs from my first year ofstudies (1946) mark the beginning of a compositional development which was to be

abruptly broken off two years later by the establishment of the Communistdictatorship’.6 This promising compositional direction was halted in mid-course in

1948, when, under the Communist regime, Ligeti began walking a tightrope betweenengaging in compositional projects that would develop his skills as a composer andthe imposed artistic standards of ‘Socialist Realism’, which he notes was ‘more like

Unrealism’. That politically mandated style required non-chromatic and non-dissonant music setting propagandistic texts, and there was always a chance of

running afoul of the ever-changing compositional rules imposed by the culturalauthorities. Ligeti observed: ‘There were ways to avoid the obligatory ‘‘progressive’’

texts: one was turning to folklore; another was taking refuge in the poems of theclassic Hungarian authors who had written their works before Lenin seized power’.7

150 J. P. Clendinning

In communist Hungary between 1948 and the 1956 uprising, composing vocal or

choral works based on folk song texts or Hungarian poems on ‘safe’ subjects was theonly secure path for Ligeti, who wanted to avoid political problems. He was Jewish,

had survived the Holocaust through a sequence of lucky breaks, and had managed toevade a political trap at the end of his studies at the Academy by leaving Budapest to

study folk musics for a year in Transylvania.8 In the fall of 1950, thanks to the help ofZoltan Kodaly, after many years of financial uncertainty he had secured a positionteaching music theory, counterpoint, and formal analysis at the Liszt Academy, which

he wanted to keep by staying out of trouble. Among the folk-song-based works fromhis years at the Liszt Academy are Lakodalmas (‘Wedding Song’, 1950), Papaine

(Widow Papai, 1953) for unaccompanied four-part mixed chorus (banned after itsfirst performance for being ‘too dissonant’), and Inaktelki notak (‘Songs from

Inaktelke’, 1953) for two-part unaccompanied mixed chorus.9 Ligeti remarks in theprogram notes for the recording that he wrote ‘about fifty folksong arrangements’

prior to 1956,10 however, not that many remain; understandably some were lost inthe many transitions of his life that followed. The second path—composing settingsof poetic texts—proved even more risky. In 1952, Ligeti’s settings for soprano and

piano of five texts by Janos Arany, a widely respected nineteenth-century Hungarianpoet who should have been old enough (and dead enough) for the texts to be ‘safe’ to

use, were considered too much like Stravinsky and Debussy, and were forbidden soonafter their first broadcast on radio.

While writing choral and vocal folk-style settings for public performance as a partof his ‘public’ style, he composed his Musica ricercata (eleven short pieces for piano,

1951–1953), Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet (1953), and First String Quartet (1953–1954)—works that were too dissonant, Western, and avant-garde for public

performance—‘for his bottom desk drawer’.11 These works were not to see a properpublic performance until 1969 and 1970. His return to texts by Sandor We}ores in thecomposition of Ejszaka/Reggel (Night and Morning, 1955), two pieces for three-part

mixed unaccompanied chorus with simple diatonic canons creating a polyphonictexture, clearly point the way to his later choral styles, but these, too, ended up ‘for

the bottom desk drawer’ and were not premiered until 1968.After his departure from Hungary in 1956, Ligeti sharply changed direction:

though he continued to compose some choral and vocal works, he abandoned choralsettings of both Hungarian folk-song-based and poetic texts. Between 1956 and 1977,

Ligeti set phonetic nonsense syllables making an ‘invented language’ in Aventures(1962–1963) and Nouvelle Aventures (1962–1965) for soprano, alto, bass and seveninstrumentalists, traditional Latin sacred texts in the Requiem (1963–1965) for

soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, two mixed choruses and orchestra, and Luxaeterna (1966) for unaccompanied sixteen-part mixed chorus, and phonetic text in

Clocks and Clouds (1972–1973) for twelve-part women’s chorus and orchestra, but nopoetic texts. A further change is that only one of his compositions for vocal forces

from this time is unaccompanied (Lux aeterna); the others set voices with chamberensemble or orchestra. There are at least a half dozen good reasons for leaving behind

Contemporary Music Review 151

the very type of settings that had gotten him through the dark years of the

Communist regime: they would not communicate with European audiences ofthat time, translations were not readily available of Hungarian into Western

European languages, songs sung in Hungarian were politically problematic becauseof the cold war, the folk-like compositions were a part of his past instead of his

future, they represented the repressive restrictions under which he workedbetween 1948 and 1956 at a time he was reveling in his new-found freedom, and,most importantly, there were many new and exciting compositional opportunities

to explore.Some of the features of his choral works prior to 1956, including employment of

canons, are developed further in the choral settings from this time. These techniquesare especially notable in the ‘Kyrie’ movement of the Requiem and in Lux aeterna,

both of which employ microcanon: a term I coined for a subcategory of Ligeti’sbroader category micropolyphony, where a melodic line is set against itself in many

voices with entrances at short time intervals to form the musical texture.12 The ‘Kyrie’movement, for twenty-part chorus (four each of Sopranos, Mezzo-Sopranos, Altos,Tenors, and Basses) has two canon melodies—a conjunct one for the ‘Kyrie’ text and

a contrasting wedge-shaped one for the ‘Christe’ text—which are simultaneously setinto microcanons in voice-part groups, starting with Mezzo-Sopranos and Altos.

These two microcanonic melodies layered in waves shape the movement. Lux aeterna,perhaps the best known of all of Ligeti’s choral works, has three main sections, each

featuring microcanonic construction: the first and last sections feature a single canonmelody, while the middle section has two. The microcanonic melodies and their

canonic setting span and shape each section.13 As expressive and beautiful as theseworks are, the lack of a poetic or folk text and the manner in which the Latin texts are

set—where the words are often unintelligible—make the expression of ideas andemotions more abstract and limit the works’ avenues of communication to themusical realm, but also frees the composer from constraints of text or meaning in the

compositional process.Then, there was the opera, Le Grand Macabre, which consumed most of Ligeti’s

efforts from 1974 to 1978, including the time spent revising it into Scenes andInterludes and dealing with productions across Europe. By all biographical accounts,

the composition and subsequent production issues with the opera left Ligeti drained,as did personal issues from that time, including the death of his mother, the

dissolution of a decade-long personal relationship outside his marriage, andunspecified health problems.14 Ligeti had a secure teaching position at theHochschule fur Musik in Hamburg, where he taught composition and analysis from

1973 to 1989, and Hamburg had provided a convenient base from which to travel forpremieres and festivals, but by the end of the 1970s he had tired of it15—perhaps

because that was the longest time in his adult life he had worked in one place. Withmore than twenty years having passed since his departure from Hungary, he also

seems to have had a time of reflection on his past there—evidenced among otherthings by the titles given his two little harpsichord pieces from 1978 (Hungarian Rock


and Passacaglia ungherese)—and enough distance to look back at elements of his

compositional life he left behind at that juncture.By the late 1970s, Ligeti had achieved standing as one of the significant European

composers of the post-1945 era. His compositions were featured in a variety offestivals and concert series, eventually including one in Hungary, yet he also must have

been deeply aware of opportunities that he had missed and directions he had not takenbecause of his life circumstances, and also that the time stretching ahead of him was nolonger infinite—his choices now would determine what his legacy would be. All of

these are a normal part of reaching mid-life—where one can see more clearly thanbefore what has transpired, as if from a hilltop looking back down at the road one has

taken, but the path of descent and the valley ahead, where one must now go, isshrouded in mist and uncertainty. This is a time in life that often requires a person to

choose a direction, and to find a way forward. Ligeti could have rested upon his laurelsand continued writing pieces like those that had brought him fame or he could have

stopped creating new compositions altogether, though that did not seem to be muchof a choice, or he could choose something new and reinvigorating—but what?

The late 1970s were also a time of change and uncertainty in the compositional

world. The burst of energy of the European Darmstadt avant-garde, with which Ligetimaintained a peripheral relationship, had fizzled out. Both serial and aleatoric

techniques had become passe. Ligeti attributes his lack of compositional productionbetween 1977 and 1982 to this generalized aesthetic crisis:

Aside from two small pieces for harpsichord, I did not complete any compositionsbetween 1977 and 1982. I was in fact working continuously, but I wrote hundredsof sketches, only to abandon them. This was not some ‘‘personal crisis,’’ but part ofa general one: in the 70s, many composers of different generations werequestioning the primacy of the Darmstadt School. Of course, this ‘‘primacy’’ wasonly an illusion of artists and journalists who belonged to the circle (as I did, albeitcasually 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 tendenciesseemed to be on the rise. Though Ligeti never was subsumed in any of these

compositional trends, including those of the Darmstadt School, his working methodsfrom 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 ofPiano Etudes, one of the essential elements of Ligeti’s post-opera style is the influenceof Bartok—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—whichbrought a renewed focus on rhythmic and metrical complexity.17

During his time of compositional crisis and stalemate after the opera, returning topoets he had long admired and once again setting texts for unaccompanied mixed


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 hislife. 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 ideasabout 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 Cantorumof Stuttgart for large choral works, and the texts he chose to set in these two choralworks certainly seem significant, coming at this point in his life. The three Holderlin

poems—‘Halfte des Lebens’ (‘Halfway through Life’), ‘Wenn aus die Ferne’ (‘If froma 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, andlonesomeness). The text from ‘Halfte des Lebens’ is provided in Figure 1 as an

example. Text elements of each of these Holderlin poems speak to looking both backon times past and ahead to an uncertain future. Ligeti’s settings of these texts arefilled 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 ofthe composer’s state of mind, as he is feeling the effects of middle-age.

The Weores texts selected for the Magyar Etud}ok also seem significant. The title forthis 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 thecollection. Ligeti selected Etudes 9, 49, 40, and 90 for the three movements,

combining two poems—both with references to frog sounds—for the second. Likeother of Weores’ 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 andtime. The brief Weores poems he set twenty-eight years earlier in the choral worksEjszaka 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 ‘Halfte des Lebens’ (English translation by David Feurzeig).


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 iciclesmelting 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, withsounds 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 ata fair with street merchant cries advertising apples, sleds, clothing, mead, and acircus.21

The Drei Phantasien nach Friedrich Holderlin (1982) feature many of thecompositional 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 Holderlin texts. In

this composition for sixteen-part unaccompanied mixed chorus, Ligeti once againdraws 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), butthe durations assigned to the pitches are not canonic; in the Drei Phantasien, both

the pitches and durations are canonic, though two different durational sequencesare sometimes applied to the canon melody, creating additional rhythmic and

metrical complexity as the melody is set in canon. Instead of the long canonicmelodies 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 offor 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 maybe transposed, either by a consistent interval or by a series of different intervals.

The melodies here also differ from those of Lux aeterna because microtonalinflections 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, creatinga ‘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 HamburgConcerto (1999).22

I use the term pattern-meccanico for pieces, such as Continuum (1967), whereLigeti employs a type of compound melody created by the interaction of a few

musical lines, each representing several contrapuntal strands, where each line isconstructed from repeated small groups of pitches that I refer to as patterns.23 Theterm ‘pattern-meccanico’ derives from Ligeti’s term meccanico, meaning ‘in a

mechanical or machine-like manner’. In the Drei Phantasien, a variety of shortmicrocanons are combined with longer pattern-meccanico and pattern-meccanico/

microcanon segments juxtaposed with short contrasting chordal and non-canoniccontrapuntal passages to form the musical structure. Phrases and subphrases of the

texts are set individually, highlighting the components of the poems, and playing onthe sounds of the words as well as their meanings.


The organization of the first movement, ‘Halfte des Lebens’, illustrates the

combination of techniques typical of these pieces. The movement divides into threelarge 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 theunison 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 shownin Figure 3. A second microcanon enters in the Basses, then the SAT microcanonsbranch 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 paralleltritones 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—theflowers, 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 isconstructed with pattern changes like those of the pattern-meccanico texture,

effectively combining the two techniques. This section, and the movement, ends in ahomorhythmic chordal cadential pattern.

In the Magyar Etud}ok (1983), Ligeti returns to texts by Sandor We}ores, butexplores 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 2 Ligeti, ‘Halfte des Lebens’, graph of the formal elements.


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 isthat the text of each movement features sound effects—drops of water, eveningsounds, and market cries—and is set onomatopoeically. Unlike those of the Holderlin

songs, these texts are light-hearted short poems, but both sets of texts evoke a sense ofplace and time.

The first movement of the Hungarian Studies is created entirely from a melodicallyand rhythmically strict mirror canon. The canon melody consists of eighth notes

separated by long spans of rests, to be sung ‘Moderato meccanico’—mechanically, ata 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 pitchclasses. 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. Aswith 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 singledurational 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 forthe beat units in both meters—the half note in 2/2 lasts as long as the dotted half in

Figure 3 Ligeti, ‘Halfte des Lebens’, Opening Microcanon, bars 1–4, sopranos and altos.ª1983 Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG, Mainz, Germany. Reproduced by permission. Allrights reserved.


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 quarternotes 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 somany 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 mirroringprocedures controlling pitch level, both time and pitch intervals between entries, andthe 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 quitedistinct 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 Frenchchace 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 canonictechniques combined with hocket, echoes, and other effects. The phrases of both textsare 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 andpresented 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 alsoemployed 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 oftextures 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 andinteract to create a complex polyrhythmic texture.

The three choral works grouped in the Hungarian Studies share little in commonwith 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 hiscomposition students at the Hochschule fur Musik in Hamburg. These pieces aresignificant 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 andrhythmic complexities. Both these pieces and the Drei Phantasien lead toward the

new style by combining aspects of Ligeti’s pre- and post-1956 compositionaltechniques.


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 ofthe poets of the 1982–1983 choral works: Der Sommer (‘The Summer’, 1989), for

soprano and piano accompaniment, setting a text by Friedrich Holderlin, and Sıppal,dobbal, nadihegeduvel (‘With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles’, 2000) for mezzo-soprano and

four percussionists (who play a large, diverse battery of percussion instruments),setting texts by Sandor Weores. Ligeti’s only other vocal composition following thesixteen-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 sceneyet 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 compositionalstyles of the 1960s and 1970s that had brought him international success, or even

stopped composing altogether (which he essentially did by not completing any newworks 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 thecompositional 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 arsenalthe Bartok-influenced style emblematic of his Piano Concerto. Looking back

fortunately did not mean a retrogression to a compositional world long past andabandonment of what he had learned in the meantime; instead it led to the

integration of his early stylistic elements with new compositional ideas from worldmusics 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 hisefforts in the 1990s to revise and publish selected early works from the 1940s and1950s 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 in1978–1982 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 andthe Piano Etudes.

Notes

[1] For detailed analytical comments on the Drei Phantasien and Magyar Etudok, seeClendinning (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 Balint Balassa for the first movement,

with the second and third movements based on Hungarian folk song texts, and the fourthmovement on a Slovakian folk song text.

[5] For more on Ligeti’s employment of poems by Sandor We}ores, see the recent article: Mandi-Fazekas and Fazekas (2011).


[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 bothprofessional 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 amsure it is not original to him, but it was advice he gave repeatedly and applied himself withgreat success. (He has been a prolific composer of choral church music, with over 2000compositions in print).

[19] Holderlin (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, butrather that ‘the icicle drips water’. The translation by Szalai is likely the better rendition ofthe original image.

[21] See the essay elsewhere in this issue by Amy Bauer for additional comments on thesetexts.

[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. MusicAnalysis, 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 Gyorgy Ligeti. (Unpublisheddoctoral dissertation, Yale University).

Clendinning, J. P. (1993). The pattern-meccanico compositions of Gyorgy Ligeti. Perspectives ofNew Music, 31(1), 192–234.


Clendinning, J. P. (1995). Structural Factors in the microcanonic compositions of Gyorgy Ligeti. InE. Marvin & Hermann, R. (Eds.), Concert music, rock, and jazz since 1945: Essays andanalytical studies (pp. 229–256). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Holderlin, F. (1996). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 2: A cappella choral works (D. Feuerzeig,Trans., pp. 23–25). Sony 62305.

Ligeti, G. (1996a). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 1: String quartets and duets (S. Spencer,Trans., pp. 7–12). Sony 62306.

Ligeti, G. (1996b). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 2: A cappella choral works (A. McVoy & D.Feuerzeig, Trans., pp. 9–14). Sony 62305.

Ligeti, G. (1996c). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 4: Vocal works (A. McVoy & D. Feuerzeig,Trans., pp. 9–18). Sony 62311.

Ligeti, G. (1998). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 7: Chamber music (A. McVoy & D. Feuerzeig,Trans., pp. 7–20). Sony 62309.

Mandi-Fazekas, I., & Fazekas, T. (2011). Magicians of sound—Seeking Ligeti’s inspiration in thepoetry of Sandor We}ores. In L. Duchesneau & W. Marx (Eds.), Gyorgy Ligeti: Of foreign landsand strange sounds (pp. 53–68). Suffolk: Boydell Press.

Steinitz, R. (2003). Gyorgy Ligeti: Music of the imagination. London: Faber and Faber.We}ores, S. (1996). Liner notes to Gyorgy Ligeti Edition 2: A cappella choral works (A. M. Szalai,

Trans., pp. 25–26). Sony 62305.


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