LIGETIS ARTIKULATION

Artikulation is an electronic composition. Ligeti composed it in January-February

1958 and its realization in sound took place in February -March1958, in co-operation
with Gottfried Michael Koenig and(in part) Cornelius Cardew;:at the Studio of
Electronic Music of the West German Radio (WDR) in Cologne. The original version is
for four tracks, but a two-track version also exists. Artikulation is 3 minutes 47
seconds long. The first performance took place on 25 March 1958 in Cologne, in the
Musik der Zeit concert series of the WDR.
When working with electronic sounds at the studio in Cologne,Ligeti did not feel
inclined to organize the material through and through in all imaginable (and above all
governable) parameters,as is usually the case at first. Instead, he heard in various
forms of sounds a similarity to language and decided to compose an imaginary
conversation, a sequence of monologues, dialogues and multi-voiced disputes, in
which characteristic intonations stand for literal meanings.The piece is called
Artikulation because in this sense an artificial language is articulated: question and
answer, high and low voices, polyglot speaking and interruptions, impulsive outbreaksand humor, chattering and whispering. Ligeti himself says about this quasi
programmatic idea: Certainly I have an aversion to everything that is demonstratively
programmatic and illustrative. But that does not mean that I am against music that
calls forth associations; on the contrary,sounds and musical coherence always
arouse in me ideas of consistency and colour, of visible and recognizable form. And
vice versa: I constantly combine colour, form, texture and abstract concepts with
musical ideas. This explains the presence of so many non-musical elements in my
compositions. Sound-fields and masses that flow together, alternate with, or
penetrate, one another; suspended nets that tear or become knotted; damp, viscous,
spongy, fibrous, dry, brittle, granulous and compact materials; threads, short
flourishes, splinters and traces of all kinds; imaginary edifices, labyrinths,
inscriptions, texts, dialogues, insects, conditions, occurences, coalescence,
transformation, catastrophe, decay, disappearance; all are elements of this non
puristic music. (1960) In another publication Ligeti comments on the musical idea
of Artikulation, the linking and combination of sounds in conditions of aggregation:
First I chose types with various group-characteristics and various types of internal
organization. An investigation of the relative permeability of these characters indicated
which could be mixed and which resisted mixture. The serial ordering of such
behaviour-characteristics served as a basis for the erection of the form. In the detailwork I attempted to obtain contrast between the types of material and between the
modes of amalgamation,whereas the over-all plan was a gradual, irreversible
progress from the heterogeneous disposition at the beginning to the complete
mixture and interpenetration of the contrasted characters at the end.

Composition

The materials were handled in such a way as to produce a speech-like result. By

combining the various elements, quasi sounds, syllables, words, sentences,
texts and languageswere created. These terms are purely analogies of sound, not
of grammar
The composer split up bits of tape into a system of boxes. Each box contained a
number of bits of tape with sound characteristics in common. The system of boxes
was devised from predetermined (serial) plans and permitted the selection of
individual bits of tape to be left to chance.This procedure, then, can be considered a
combination of serial and quasi aleatoric methods of composition. The system of
boxes comprised the following categories:
a) combination of materials (see below)
b) pitch distribution
c) duration relationships
d) intensity relationships
Both pitch and duration followed in detail a certain predetermined scale. Seen
globally, however, the pitches were classified in high, middle and low ranges and
combinations of the three, to which the system of boxes referred. The lenght of the bits
of tape was determined by a tempered time-scale. The values of the series were
obtained by repeated multiplication by the factor 11/10, rounded off to millimetres of
tape. The frequency with which the bits of tape were used (the statistical distribution) had to decrease as the length of tape increased. Thus there were, for one
material, 150 bits of tape 1 cm in length, and one bit of tape 150 cm in length (76 cm
equalling 1 second, since the studio apparatus was operated at the tape speed of 76
cm/sec., that was then still in use). This relationship of tape length to number
guaranteed an uniform distribution of the material in question.The bits of tape were
stuck together and used up according to the plans mentioned above. The result was
ten lengths of tape lasting from 11 to 43 seconds, the homogeneous and
heterogeneous texts.
These texts were then scanned to find individual words (not literal words, of
course), and on this basis they were cut up into smaller bits - words. Ligeti treated
the bits of tape with words precisely as he hadtreated the bits of tape with sounds:
he arranged them in a system of boxes and stuck them together, according to previously-made plans, to form kilometre-long tapes, whose soundcontents were called
languages.The long languages were cut up in turn into sentences. All the pieces
of tape were again arranged according to group characteristics and assigned to a
system of boxes whose categories met the requirements of the formal concept of the
work. The pieces of tape were accordingly distributed among four tracks and stuck
together to make Artikulation.
(Mostly from Rainers score)

Artikulation

languages

texts

sentences

words
sounds

FIG. 1