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Remembering György Ligeti
By Peter Burwasser
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György Ligeti is one of those artists who, while hardly a household name, has amassed an enormous influence in the musical community, and in subtle ways, the cultural sphere as a whole. He has become a great source of inspiration to a generation of composers, but there are also obvious references in pop culture, most famously, the inclusion of his music in the landmark Stanley Kubrick film, 2001, A Space Odyssey. Ligeti’s Lux aeterna became, at the time of the movie’s release in 1968, the voice of the future, brashly devoid of conventional technical parameters, but very direct, and certainly emotional. Almost paradoxically, this voice of the future was far more accessible than what was then the paradigm for new music, namely, a strictly serialist approach which was alienating listeners in droves. By the time of the composer’s death, in the spring of this year, Ligeti’s style had become even more inclusive, even as it retained a highly individual profile.

If the music of Ligeti has made its way into the contemporary artistic esthetic by way of stealth, this season in Philadelphia presents an unusually generous array of the music of Ligeti up front and center. It is not as if his music has never been played here. In recent seasons, Kimmel audiences were treated to a luminous performance of the Violin Concerto, courtesy of Yasmin Little, with the extraordinary accompaniment of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle, and the Pennsylvania Ballet has danced to his music. The main showcase this season is from Orchestra 2001, which presents a season long tribute, originally conceived as a celebration of an amazing career, but now appearing as a memorial. Each of the five Orchestra 2001 programs will include a work of Ligeti, crossing a range of styles and vintages.

In October, pianist Linda Reichert played a Ligeti Etude at a Settlement Music School concert. Reichart, the artistic director of Network for New Music, and no slouch at the keyboard (she is also on the Settlement faculty) slyly described the work as one of the “easy” Etudes. These wonderfully lively works, daunting though they may be, deserve a wider audience. On January 7th, from the stage of Field Concert Hall at the Curtis Institute of Music, the first lady of American new piano music, Ursula Oppens, will be joined by Mathias Tacke, violin, and Carl Williams, horn, in the Horn Trio of Ligeti.

But who was Ligeti? As is the case with so many twentieth century artists, it is indispensable to examine Ligeti’s biography when considering his evolution as an artist. He was born in Transylvania, Romania in 1923 into a Hungarian-Jewish family, which moved back to Hungary shortly thereafter. Like nearly all aspiring Hungarian musicians at the time, his early heroes were Bartók and Kodaly. A life in music was launched in the intensely musical city of Budapest, but war and politics came to dominate most of Ligeti’s youth. The Holocaust consumed most of his family, and Ligeti himself survived a Nazi labor camp. After his liberation, he witnessed, like all of Eastern Europe, the grotesque irony of one awful tyranny replaced by another.

The Hungarian communists were very faithful Stalinist toadies, and by 1948 all of the arts, including music, were highly proscribed by the cultural commissars. Even the music of Bartók, the national musical hero, was largely prohibited, with the exception of his most conventional sounding works, such as the Concerto for Orchestra and the Piano Concerto No. 3. The exploding new music scene in the West was made invisible to Hungarian artists. During this period, Ligeti wrote beautiful folk influenced music, much of it vocal, in the manner of Kodaly. At the same time, Ligeti, and many of his colleagues, were writing what they called “bottom drawer” work, that is, music which could not be performed but was merely hidden away for some future opportunity for exposure. And the carefully built walls were not completely impassable; Ligeti’s wife was able to procure underground copies of treatises on twelve tone composition.

And yet nothing of his extraordinary imagination or inklings of new trends could prepare Ligeti for the reality of the new music scene he would encounter in the West. In 1956, following the heartbreaking and brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolution by Soviet tanks, Ligeti and his wife walked across the Austrian border to begin a new life. Ligeti found himself in Cologne, Germany, where he met Stockhausen and Boulez, among other leading lights of the avant-garde. For the still youthful Ligeti, the experience was akin to a little boy let loose in a candy shop. He was especially enamored of the concept of Klangflächenkomposition, which stresses the primacy of the mass and texture of the sound itself, as opposed to any clear articulation of melody, harmony and rhythm. This philosophy, which is embodied in the Lux aeterna, would come to dominate his style for the mature period of his career. Much of this music was harsh and forbidding, but there was also a great deal of humor and even joyousness in his work, especially in contrast to the grim work of so many of his modernist colleagues.

Ligeti himself described the change in his work after 1956 as a 180 degree turn. By the late sixties and early seventies, he shifted his focus again, this time away from the total chromaticism of his most daring work. This he described as a 90 degree turn; he refused to abandon his affinity for avant-garde art, but became interested in the U.S. West Coast scene, in particular, the exotic micro-tonal music of the great American original Harry Partch. He also explored more non-Western material, including African music. The result of this late in life cultural tourism resulted in a vibrant, distinctive body of work that managed to include, in a masterfully cohesive manner, a remarkable lifetime of influences.

This musical season in Philadelphia presents a rare opportunity to experience the delightful, strange, provocative and profound work of a twentieth century giant. Perhaps this modest celebration will presage more Ligeti in seasons to come. Every generation of artists produces a small sliver of work that transcends their time; there is every reason to believe that Ligeti has given us music for the ages.

Peter Burwasser is the classical music critic for the Philadelphia City Paper and a regular contributor to Fanfare magazine and Philadelphia Music Makers. As a freelance writer, he has also contributed articles and reviews to the Philadelphia Inquirer, WRTI Program Guide, and Carnegie Hall Playbill.