THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...
THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...
THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...
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adherence to duration rows in pieces like Boulez’s Structures Ia in an analytical essay for<br />
4<br />
the journal Die Reihe, and also in a more theoretical article entitled, “Metamorphosis of<br />
Musical Form” which appeared in the same journal. Specifically, he objects to the fact<br />
that in such a system, the longer durations inevitably make up more of the piece than the<br />
shorter ones, and favors the following solution:<br />
4<br />
György Ligeti, “Pierre Boulez: Decision and Automatism in Structure 1a,” trans. Leo Black in Young<br />
Composers, Vol. 4 of Die Reihe (Bryn Mawr: T. Presser; London: Universal Edition, 1960, German<br />
edition 1958) 36-62.<br />
5<br />
in the first part of my orchestral piece ‘Apparitions’ I used a repertoire of<br />
durations (intervals of entry) with values attached to each element such that the<br />
product of each duration-value and the number of times that it occurred in the<br />
whole structure was a constant. By this means an equilibrium of intervals of entry<br />
was achieved: the shorter a particular duration-interval, the more frequently it<br />
appeared in the context, and so many short durations were used for every long one<br />
that the sum of the short ones equalled [sic] that of the long. 5<br />
He further notes that,<br />
In my electronic piece ‘Articulation’ I used a similar principle of distribution with<br />
the following difference however: here, the product of the individual duration<br />
values and their frequency of occurrence was not a constant, but changed<br />
according to the different kinds of texture that are used in the piece. The result is<br />
that the specific average density varies from texture to texture. Obviously one can<br />
set up numerous other statistics of distribution, depending on the specific ideas one<br />
has about the work one is composing. 6<br />
If Ligeti arrived in Cologne without the technical means to organize music without<br />
reference to meter, his experience with the electronic composition Artikulation must<br />
certainly have pushed him to develop new ways of thinking of rhythm in precisely this<br />
way, since in Artikulation these durations are literally segments of magnetic tape<br />
calculated in centimeters and cut to different lengths. In the previous chapters, we have<br />
György Ligeti, “Metamorphosis of Musical Form,” trans. Cornelius Cardew Form – Space,Die Reihe 7<br />
(1965, German edition 1960), 14.<br />
6<br />
Ligeti, “Metamorphosis,” 14, n. 28.<br />
206