THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

In the more analytical vein of interpretation, only one serious study of Glissandi
exists, and even this is a very short article, written by Roberto Doati, the English version
of which appeared in the journal Interface. Doati claims an analytical method derived
from the psychologist and acoustician, Stephen McAdams, which consists of five areas of
inquiry:
1. Reading the acoustic surface;
2. Organization of acoustic information into coherent auditory ‘images’;
3. Segmentation and extraction of the musical lexicon;
4. Building structural relations;
5. Following a musical discourse. 12
According to McAdams, this organizational process is directed primarily at intrinsic
musical structures, although it should “provide the structural and procedural grounds for
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eventually investigating aesthetic and emotional aspects of musical experience,” yet
Doati often jumps not only between these areas of intrinsic concern, but even outside this
system, characterizing the sounds without reference to specific dimensions of sound or
their relationships to each other. While Doati identifies many features salient for
differentiating types of glissandi (range, direction, harmonic spectra versus filtered noise)
these criteria are never explicitly stated, and are applied ad hoc, often associated with
other undefined terms pointing to outside associations; throughout the article, Doati
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identifies different types of glissandi as, “bartokian,” “ironic,” or “personal,” without
explaining these associations either in terms of their constituent material or their
12Roberto
Doati, “György Ligeti’s Glissandi: An Analysis,” Interface 20 (1991), 80; originally in Stephen
McAdams, “Music: A Science of the Mind?” in Music and Psychology: A Mutual Regard, Contemporary
Music Review 2 no. 1(1987), 34-35.
13McAdams,
“Music: A Science of the Mind?,” 36.
14Doati,
“Glissandi,” 82, 83, and 85.
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