THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

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