THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

schematic, form. There is a succession of sections up to a middle point and from
there out, the material of the piece is doubled–there is, then, so to speak, a way of
thinking in row-manipulation, “a la mode”. Here there aren’t really any rows, but
from the middle to the end the piece goes once backwards in retrograde, and
simultaneously the original shape repeats once again, in which, however, most of it
is filtered out so that only traces of it are there, actually appearing on the tape. As
I finished and listened to it more often, I found that the compositional standard
[niveau] which I set for myself was not reached. Insofar is it a lacking piece and
on account of this I wished that it not be publicly performed. Artikulation was
then to a large extent built up from the experience of that which I made badly in
Glissandi. 2
Ligeti’s criteria for self criticism here point to a problem both with the technical quality of
the sounds produced (and there are noticeable imperfections in the montage work, for
example, abrupt level changes as material overlaps between large sections of the work),
but also–as one can glean from the description a la mode–with the relationship between
the form of the work, which is quasi-serial, and the more local material, in which sections
are quite independently conceived. Stockhausen, on the other hand, used the series in a
more thoroughgoing fashion to derive both the large scale formal divisions, the
distribution of material within each division, as well the surface details of the piece.
Yet as mentioned above, Ligeti did eventually relent and allowed the piece to be
premiered and released on record. While Ligeti does not elaborate on the reasons for this
change of heart, this analysis will at least endeavor to demonstrate ways in which his short
description is, indeed, oversimplified. While Glissandi is not strictly serial, especially in
comparison to the works of Stockhausen or Koenig, and while it does sound very
2
Koenig, Gottfried Michael. “Ligeti und die Elektronische Musik” in György Ligeti: Personalstil –
Avantgardismus – Popularität, Otto Kolleritsch, ed. Vienna: Universial Edition, 1987, 19. This quote
came from Ligeti, himself, from the transcription of a discussion that followed Koenig’s paper. This, and
all other translations, are the author’s unless otherwise stated.
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