Eric Drott - Ligeti in Fluxus

Ligeti in Fluxus
Author(s): Eric Drott

Source: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Spring, 2004), pp. 201-240
Published by: University of California Press
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Ligeti in Fluxus
ERIC DROTT
Introduction
O ne of the more curious episodes in Gy6rgy

Ligeti's long and varied career was his brief flirtation with the Fluxus
group. Following the successful premiere of his orchestral work Atmo-
spheresduring the Donaueschinger Musiktage festival in 1961,l Ligeti
composed a handful of pieces that are exceptional within his oeuvre:
the short, self-mocking orchestral work Fragment(1961); his graphically
notated organ work Volumina(1961); the textless theater piece Aventures
(1962); and three pieces that would ultimately be included in Fluxus 201
publications and performances-the Trois Bagatellesfor David Tudor
(1961), Die Zukunft der Musik-eine kollektiveKomposition(1961), and
PoemeSymphoniquefor 1oo metronomes (1962). With the exception of
Fragment,these pieces share a commerce with some of the more radical
or experimental techniques circulating in the contemporary music
world at the time. Graphic scores had become prominent over the
course of the 1950s, a reflection (and, at times, tacit critique) of musi-
cal notation's steady reification. The theater piece, Aventures,was repre-
sentative of the growing tendency among composers to explore the ges-
tural, non-semantic dimension of language in their vocal works, at the
same time that it linked into contemporaneous movements in sound
I wish to thank Robert Morgan, Patrick McCreless, Kristina

Muxfeldt, Sumanth Gopinath, Phil Rupprecht, and Marianne
Wheeldon for their helpful comments on the (many) earlier
versions of this essay.
According to Ligeti, the premiere was met with "a great scandal and great ap-
plause at the same time." Ligeti, cited in Marina Lobanova, Gy6rgy Ligeti: Style, Ideas, Poet-
ics, trans. Mark Shuttleworth (Berlin: Ernst Kuhn, 2002), 383.
TheJournalof Musicology,Vol. 21, Issue 2, pp. 201-240, ISSN 0277-9269, electronic ISSN 1533-8347.
? 2004 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's
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THE JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY
and concrete poetry. And finally, all but one of Ligeti's Fluxus pieces
partook of the nascent text-score format; both Die Zukunft der Musik and
Poeme Symphonique discard conventional musical notation, opting in-
stead to treat the musical score as a purely textual artifact.
Despite the existence of this link, which lends an otherwise dis-
parate group of works some semblance of internal coherence, the
group as a whole fits uneasily into the more conventional contour of
Ligeti's output. As a result, the artistic choices Ligeti made during this
period have struck some commentators as puzzling. As Richard Toop
notes, "After Atmospheres, Ligeti was ... well placed to assume a promi-
nent place in the avant-garde. Yet far from hastening to follow up on
the success of this work, he seems to have gone out of his way to under-
mine any idea of himself as 'the next great composer.' "2 Particularly
problematic are his three Fluxus pieces, since the prevailing ethos of
the Fluxus group-that art should be rejoined with life-finds little
common ground with the views Ligeti would later espouse on the mat-
ter. In an interview from 1974 he states: "I see myself as the extreme an-
tithesis toJohn Cage and his school."3 Or, more to the point:
202 At the end of the fifties and beginning of the sixties came the happen-
ing movement from America. I was interested in an ambiguous way. I
made some happenings-you know my piece for 1oo metronomes?-
but I had the feeling that I am not a happening[s] person. You know
the Fluxus group? I am not belonging there. After a time I had the
feeling they take their job too seriously. And I am not serious like peo-
ple like LaMonte Young and George Brecht or even Cage. I will tell
you exactly what is between me and these happening people. They
believe that life is art and art is life. I appreciate very much Cage and
many people, but my artistic credois that art-every art-is not life. It is
something artificial. And for me all the happenings are too dilettante.4
2
Richard Toop, GyorgyLigeti (London: Phaidon, 1999), 8o. Most commentators on
Ligeti's music tend to view his Fluxus works as frivolities, in line with Ligeti's later assess-
ment of the pieces. Besides Toop, see for instance Paul Griffiths, GyirgyLigeti (New York:
Robson Books, 1997), 38-39; and Pierre Michel, GyorgyLigeti (Paris: Minerve, 1995), 55-
56. Ulrich Dibelius is an interesting exception. Dibelius argues that these and other
works composed from 1961 to 1965 are key to understanding Ligeti's aesthetic: "They
should be understood as ironic inversions of real and existent relationships, as a sort of
exaggerated negative mirror of his own aesthetic position" (sollten sie als ironische
Umkehrungen real existierender Verhaltnisse, als eine Art Spiegelung, der eigenen as-
thetischen Position im Negativbild der Ubertreibung verstanden werden). Ulrich Di-
belius, GyorgyLigeti:eineMonographieim Essays(Mainz: Schott, 1994), 75.
3
Ligeti, "'Meine Musik ist elitare Kunst': Gy6rgy Ligeti antwortet Lutz Lesle," Mu-
sica 28/1 (January/February 1974), 39.
4
Ligeti, in "Ligeti Talks to Adrian Jack," Music and Musicians 22 (July 1974), 30. As
his later statements evince, Ligeti's attitude toward Cagean experimentalism has hard-
ened over the years. In an interview from 1978, Ligeti provides a possible historical expla-
nation for the general disenchantment he felt with regard to Cage and the post-Cagean
DROTT
Given such posterior disclaimers, perhaps Richard Toop is right when

he suggests that Ligeti's contributions to Fluxus can be chalked up to
the appeal of the group's "irreverence and novelty."5Perhaps Ligeti felt
an urge to mock the insularity and pretentiousness of the Darmstadt
scene. Or perhaps he was at the time more sympathetic to the group
than his subsequent protestations in support of aesthetic autonomy
would lead one to believe. Whatever the cause (or causes) behind his
erstwhile contributions to the group, the contributions themselves shed
light on the complex interactions between those composers who sought
to transform music at the level of form, style, or subject-matter and
those who sought to transform it at an institutional and social level.
To reconsider Ligeti's Fluxus pieces is not necessarily to bestow
upon them some fresh aesthetic valuation-in a sense, the pieces them-
selves defy such a valuation. Rather, the three pieces may be regarded
as symptoms of the tensions that existed within the field of contempo-
rary music circa 1960, tensions that pitted the broad mass of modernist
composers against the smaller fraction of those who sought to trans-
form the position of music and the other arts within society as part of a
larger strategy of transforming society as a whole. In this essay I will draw
on Peter Burger's theory of the avant-garde in order to help clarify such 203
tensions. My aim in interpreting Ligeti's Fluxus pieces in terms of the
distinction Burger draws between avant-garde and modernist impulses
is not to reinforce his binary oppositions, nor is it to deconstruct these
oppositions entirely; the former tack runs the risk of hardening flexible
positions into rigid categories, while the latter runs the different (but
no less treacherous) risk of obscuring very real divisions of aesthetic
avant-garde: "A typical feature of the 6os was colourfulness: the discovery of fin de siecle
tastes, of ornaments; that was the time of flower power, of hippies.... All this colour
brought with it in Western Europe some kind of free and easy mentality in the 6os. Since
1972, or 1973, since the oil crisis, the 7os brought another change of mentality. The
colourful, hippy mentality is still with us but is much less significant. The soul has gone
out of Happenings and of Cage's principle about the identity of life and art." In Gyirgy
Ligeti in Conversationwith Peter Varnai, Josef Hdusler, Claude Samuel and Himself, trans.
Gabor J. Schabert, Sarah E. Soulsby, Terence Kilmartin and Geoffrey Skelton (London:
Eulenberg Books, 1983), 75. (That Ligeti dates the failure of the avant-garde project
from the economic crisis of the early 1970S is significant. This crisis apparently marked
the triumph of the capitalist world system, which in turn put to rest the last vestiges of
what Perry Anderson has called the "imaginative proximity of revolution" so crucial to
the utopian imagination of the avant-garde.) More recently Ligeti has restated his general
antipathy toward the avant-garde in harsher tones.Whereas before he took care to soften
his disagreement with Cage by noting his personal respect for the man, he now no longer
pulls his punches: "I was not impressed with him. Almost everyone was impressed, Cage
was honored like a holy man .. ., but I had come from a communist dictatorship in Hun-
gary. For me there was no unity between life and art." Ligeti in 'TrdumenSie in Farbe?'
GyorgyLigetiim GesprichmitEckhardRoelcke(Vienna: Paul Zsonay, 2003), 99.
5
Toop, Ligeti,82.
and ideology. Rather, I wish to explore the various points of contact and
slippage between these two poles, since these points shed light on what
it was precisely that various groups held in contention: whether music
would remain a relatively autonomous field of cultural activity, or
whether it should be folded into the broader horizon of everyday life.
Fluxus
Fluxus in its early stages (a period that stretched roughly from
1962 to 1964) occupied one of the more radical positions within the
contemporaneous art world. It may best be understood as one node
within a broader network of resurgent avant-garde activities that took
shape in the late 195os and early 196os, a network that included such
diverse tendencies as happenings, lettrisme,COBRA, and situationism. A
key figure in spurring this resurgence in the United States was John
Cage, whose popularization of chance techniques and indeterminacy
exerted a tremendous impact on the individuals who would later partic-
ipate in Fluxus. In many cases this impact was felt directly. Dick Higgins
and George Brecht, for instance, took Cage's famed course in composi-
204 tion at the New School for Social Research in the late 1950s, while Nam
June Paik's conception of music was radically transformed by the con-
certs and lectures Cage gave at Darmstadt in 1958.
Before it coalesced into a group, Fluxus wasjust a name-the name
of a proposed publishing venture, where the works of a broad, inclusive,
and international group of avant-garde artists, composers, and poets
would be anthologized.6 The principal figure in organizing, collecting,
printing and promoting these materials-in other words, the driving
force behind the establishment of Fluxus as a collective artistic enterprise
-was the graphic designer George Maciunas. His opportunity to as-
sume the mantle of the New York avant-garde'sleading impresario came
when the magazine Beatitudeeast collapsed in 1961, leaving a collection
of scores, poetry, and essays that La Monte Young had put together for
publication there without a home. Into this breach stepped Maciunas,
who offered to put his design skills to work on the project, which would
ultimately be published under the title An Anthology.
Among the variety of innovative works presented in An Anthology,
one particular genre-the event score-would later become central to
6 Evidence of Maciunas's inclusive

conception of Fluxus can be seen in his original
plans for the Fluxus yearboxes. Each of the seven yearboxes Maciunas initially intended
to produce were to cover either a specific geographic region, or some historical an-
tecedent to Fluxus; Yearbox no. 1 was to be the "U.S. Yearbox," no. 2 was to be the "West
European Yearbox," no. 3 was to be the 'Japanese Yearbox," and so forth. See the plans
for the yearboxes reprinted in Fluxus Codex,ed. Jon Hendricks (Detroit: The Gilbert and
Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1988), 104-22.
DROTT
Fluxus. The event score typically presented a set of short, simple, and
often prosaic instructions, outlining an action that in principle could
be performed by anyone.7 Young's contribution to An Anthology,his
CompositionsI96o, are representative. For instance, his CompositionI960
#2 instructs the performer to build a fire in front of an audience and
let it burn. The event is striking for a number of reasons. First of all,
Young transforms a nominally non-musical occurrence into music by
fiat, or better, into a sort of mixed media performance, since the visual
and performative dimensions of the piece are just as important as the
audible component. In addition, there is an evidently transgressive
quality to the work, owing partially to the fact that its performance
would most likely break the fire code in a conventional theater. The
piece further invokes a thinly sublimated form of violence or danger; in
this interpretation, the fire could be understood as connoting arson,
pyromania, or some other type of destructive, rebellious behavior.
In other pieces from the same series, the event acts as a commen-
tary on the social conventions surrounding musical performance. In
Young's Composition1960 #6 the performers are to "sit on the stage
watching and listening to the audience in the same way the audience
usually looks at and listens to performers." (As we will see later on, the 205
critique of audiences for their passivity became an important theme in
Fluxus events.) But even events that were less explicitly confrontational
still tested the social conventions surrounding music and art in general.
George Brecht's Drip Music, whose score is reproduced as Figure 1, pro-
vides a case in point. Dripping water-a familiar, quotidian, and often-
times irritating sound-becomes the sole content of the piece. In some
ways this event is more provocative than Young's, since it does not ex-
pressly push at the philosophical concepts and social customs that un-
derlie musical production but encourages the reader (or would-be per-
former) to adopt a different attitude toward everyday auditory
experience. The piece bears an affinity to Duchamp's readymades in its
reduction of musical composition to an act of selection or framing. At
the same time, the piece shows the clear influence of Cage's work,
drawing in particular upon the idea that any environmental sound-
source can serve as the basis for music, even a boring or irritating one.
In DripMusic, the mundane rises to the category of music.
7 Owen Smith has succinctly described such pieces as "concrete, simply-structured

events, dryly humorous and unabashedly literal." Owen Smith "Fluxus: A Brief History
and Other Fictions," in In the Spirit of Fluxus, ed. Janet Jenkins (Minneapolis: Walker Art
Center, 1993), 28. For discussions of these and other Fluxus events from a musical per-
spective, see Douglas Kahn, "The Latest: Fluxus and Music," in In the Spirit of Fluxus,
101-20; Michael Nyman, ExperimentalMusic: Cage and Beyond, (Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1999), 72-88. For a discussion of Fluxus scores as textual objects, see Liz
Kotz, "Post-CageanAesthetics and the 'Event' Score," October95(Winter 2001): 55-89.
Before Maciunas could assemble and publish An Anthology,he was

forced to join the army as a graphic designer in order to escape debts
he had accrued. In late 1961 he was stationed in Wiesbaden, where he
was able to acquaint himself with the German new-music scene.8 It was
at this point, while continuing to work on An Anthology,that Maciunas
hit upon the idea of producing similar anthologies on an annual basis,
volumes which would bear the name "Fluxus."He further decided to
turn Fluxus into the platform for an artistic common front, which
would incorporate within its scope a comprehensive range of recent
musical and literary tendencies. Although this artistic ecumenicism
would prove to be short-lived, it nonetheless succeeded in bringing into
close proximity composers whose aesthetics and ideologies otherwise
diverged.9 To bring this project to fruition, he began enlisting everyone
who was anyone to participate in the projected Fluxus yearbooks-
including Ligeti.1o
Modern and Avant-garde

One reason why Maciunas's early, expansive conception of Fluxus
206 did not last was the steady hardening of his political agenda through
the early 196os. As his notion of art's social function took form, so too
did his attitudes concerning how Fluxus should promote his espoused
program. As a result, the variety of work that he presented under the
auspices of Fluxus would become narrower as the years passed.
An idea of Maciunas's evolving stance can be gleaned from the vari-
ous manifestos he wrote. In his earliest programmatic text, "Neo-Dada
in Music, Theater, Poetry, Art" (1962), Maciunas provides a purport-
8 The involvement of
composers associated with the Darmstadt Ferienkurse in early
Fluxus activities was limited. At one extreme was a composer like Paik, who became one
of the most active members of the Fluxus group. A more common response was one of
diffidence, as was the case with figures like Sylvano Bussotti and Dieter Schnebel. Paik re-
calls that "Maciunas first wrote in the middle of 1961 to three persons in Europe: Poet
Hans G. Helms composer Sylvano Bussotti, and myself. Helms and Bussotti ignored this
mysterious American, and I was the only person who responded to him." NamJune Paik,
"George Maciunas" in Ubi Fluxus ibi motus I990-I962, ed. Gino Di Maggio (Milan: Nuove
edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta, 1990), 247.
9 The idea of joining different art groups into a common front accords with the
communitarian ethos that Sally Banes identifies in Fluxus and other Greenwich Village
art movements of the period. See Sally Banes, GreenwichVillageI963: Avant-GardePerfor-
mance and the EffervescentBody (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1993), 35. (My thanks to
Sumanth Gopinath for bringing Banes's work to my attention.)
'0 As Ligeti himself has recounted, his initiation into the Fluxus group was summary.
He was approached by Maciunas, who simply said to him "Ligeti, I want you." Ligeti,
"Music-MakingMachines," in liner notes to MechanicalMusic, Sony CD SK 62310, 8.
DROTT
FIGURE 1. George Brecht, Drip Music (DripEvent)
DRIPMUSIC (DRIPEVENT)
Forsingle or multipleperformance.
A sourceof drippingwaterandan emptyvessel are
arrangedso that the water falls into the vessel.
Secondversion: Dripping.
G. Brecht
(1959-62)
edly comprehensive map of artistic activity.Along one axis he charts the

various artistic media, ranging from "time arts" at one end to "space 207
arts" at the other. Along the other axis runs a scale from "illusionistic"
art to "concrete" art. In spite of its title, Maciunas's essay spends very lit-
tle time elucidating what is meant by the term "neo-dada." Rather, the
bulk of the essay is devoted to discussing "concretism." According to
Maciunas, concrete art does not seek to divert attention away from real-
ity (as does illusionistic art), but instead draws the audience's attention
to the reality of the material used in the production of art. At the far-
thest end of concretism, art itself trails off, turning into "anti-art."He
explains that "'anti-art' forms are directed primarily against art as a
profession, against the artificial separation of a performer from [the]
audience, or creator and spectator, or life and art."'1 Still, the ostensi-
bly antagonistic dimension of this type of production, inherent in the
term, does not entail at this stage an active attack upon art so much as
an attitudinal shift that would render art as an autonomous sphere
unnecessary: "If man could experience the world, the concrete world
surrounding him (from mathematical ideas to physical matter) in the
same way he experiences art, there would be no need for art, artists,
and similar 'nonproductive' elements."12
11 Maciunas, "Neo-Dada in Music, Theater,

Poetry, Art" (1962), repr. in UbiFluxus,
216.
12 Maciunas, "Neo Dada" in UbiFluxus, 216.
Hence Maciunas's early conception of anti-art is indebted to the

Cagean notion that art is what one perceives to be art. As more people
adopt this notion, Maciunas holds, the de-professionalization of art will
necessarily follow. By 1963, however, Maciunas's faith in the natural
spread of this idea had faded, and this in turn led to a sharper formula-
tion of how the desired de-professionalization of art might be achieved.
In the first "Fluxus Manifesto" (1963), Maciunas dispenses with any bal-
anced, panoramic vision of the art-world and instead advocates an ac-
tive struggle against art and its supporting institutions. Fluxus should,
in his words, "PROMOTEA REVOLUTIONARYFLOOD AND TIDE IN
ART. Promote living art, anti-art, promote NON ART REALITYto be
fully grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes, and profession-
als." The vocally oppositional stance Maciunas thus stakes out is carried
through to the end of the manifesto, where he states that the goal is to
"FUSE the cadres of cultural, social & political revolutionaries into
united front & action."'3
The call for politically engaged or committed art is hardly unprece-
dented within modernism, though the particular path Maciunas pur-
sued represents a departure from the usual strategies employed by the
208 mainstream of modernist political art. It may be helpful to turn to Peter
Buirger'sstudy, Theoryof the Avant-Garde,to help make sense of Maciu-
nas's position.l4 According to Burger, the avant-garde is distinguished
from modernism in general in terms of its anti-institutional stance.l5
Whereas modernism, as it is customarily understood, is concerned with
stylistic or formal innovation, the avant-garde is concerned with a gen-
eral reconfiguration of art's position and function within society as a
whole. Specifically, Burger holds that the so-called historical avant-
garde movements (dada, futurism, constructivism, and surrealism) im-
13 Maciunas, "Fluxus Manifesto," (1963), repr. in UbiFluxus, 217.

14 Peter Burger, The Theoryof the Avant-Garde,trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis:
Univ. of Minnesota Press: 1984).
15 Although Burger's separation of the avant-garde from a largely apolitical mod-
ernism has long since entered into the critical discourse in literary studies and art history,
it has received little attention within the Anglo-American musicological community.
Burger's text has received greater attention from European musicologists. Hermann
Danuser has adopted the dichotomy into his fourfold division of 20th-century musical
culture (traditionalism, 'mittleren' music, modernism, and avant-gardism). See his "Kul-
turen der Musik-Strukturen der Zeit. Synchrone und diachrone Paradigmen der Musik-
geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts," in Musikpddagogikund Musikwissenschaft,Taschenbiicher
zur Musikwissenschaft,vol. 3, ed. Arnfried Edler (Wilhelmshaven, 1987), 189-209; see also
his "Gegen-Traditionen der Avantgarde," in Amerikanische Musik seit CharlesIves:Interpreta-
tion, Quellentexte,Komponistenmonographien, ed. Hermann Danuser, Dietrich Kamper, and
Paul Terse (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1987), 101-12. A more critical evaluation of the
applicability of Burger's work to music can be found in Gianmario Borio, Musikalische
Avantgardeum I96o: Entwurf einer Theorieder informellenMusik (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag,
1993), 14-15-
DROTT
plicitly recognized the ideological function of art under capitalism. Art,

in this view, is seen as a site where the unfulfilled needs, desires, and
attitudes of society at large can be enunciated. But because art as an
institution within bourgeois society is charged with the task of ensuring
the separation of art from the quotidian social world-in other words,
the task of preserving its autonomy-the enunciation of these needs,
desires, and attitudes lacks social effectiveness. (This critique would ex-
tend to even those politically engaged works that adhere to such institu-
tional forms.) The avant-garde seeks to rid art of its institutionally en-
shrined autonomy so as to discharge its heretofore congealed social
and political energies on the one hand, and help overcome the alien-
ation that characterizes everyday life in advanced capitalism on the
other: "The avant-gardistes proposed the sublation of art-sublation in
the Hegelian sense of the term: art was not to be simply destroyed, but
transferred to the praxis of life where it would be preserved, albeit in a
changed form."l6 Or, as Maciunas's 1965 "Fluxus Manifesto" put it, the
goal is "to establish the artist's nonprofessional, nonparasitic, nonelite
status in society."'7
This precis of Burger's thesis simplifies his argument a great deal.
Even so, it should be apparent that the positions Maciunas staked out 209
in his early manifestos bear an unmistakable resemblance to the posi-
tions Burger ascribes to the historical avant-garde movements (a resem-
blance which is due in no small part to Maciunas's interest in and
knowledge of these latter movements). It is not too farfetched, then, to
see in Fluxus performances and scores a belated expression of the
avant-garde impulse, especially given the fact that outside of Futurism
music possessed a relatively low profile in the historical avant-garde
movements.l8 (It is worth noting that this conception of the avant-
garde diverges quite radically from that which is commonplace in the
musicological literature; in the latter, the avant-garde is not defined in
terms of its claims of political progressiveness but rather its claims of
i6
Burger, Theory,49.
17 "Fluxus Manifesto" (1965), repr. in UbiFuxus, 2 21.
18 The virtual absence of music in the historical avant-garde is significant. While one
may contend (as Bfirger does) that the post-war avant-gardes were condemned to failure,
since the shock of anti-art cannot be replicated, this position becomes more difficult to
maintain vis-a-vismusic when one considers that the realm of concert music was largely
exempt from dadaist and surrealist provocation. Besides, the social conditions that gave
rise to the historical avant-garde had not entirely dissipated in the decades immediately
following World War II. As Perry Anderson has observed, the three preconditions for
the avant-garde-the existence of a vestigial aristocratic class, who plays an outsized role
in determining taste; the excitement generated by nascent technologies; and the imag-
ined proximity of social/political revolution-were on the wane during this period, but
were not entirely spent. See Perry Anderson, The Originsof Postmodernity(London: Verso,
1998), 78-92.
representing the technical or scientific cutting-edge.)19 Like the histori-

cal avant-garde, Fluxus self-consciously adopted an adversarial attitude
toward the institutional status of high art and toward the aesthetic as a
field of activity cut off from everyday life. And like the historical avant-
garde, Fluxus's anti-institutional and anti-aesthetic stance contained
within it points of conceptual slippage-points through which the polit-
ical program espoused by Maciunas might be deflected.
The notion of the "Institution of Art" represents one such point.
According to Burger, this phrase refers to art's function within bour-
geois society as a whole. Thus it refers to art as a totality. Yet this way of
conceiving of art's institutional status is situated at a somewhat abstract
level. The Institution of Art thus described is composed of-indeed,
only comes into being through-the activity of a variety of local and
real institutions: concert halls, publishing houses, conservatories, jour-
nals, systems of private and public patronage, academic discourse, ritu-
alized behaviors, and the like. The Institution of Art is made manifest-
or better yet, concretized-through these discrete institutions, a
situation which poses a tactical problem for the avant-garde. For the at-
tack on the institutional status of art can only be directed at concrete
210 targets, despite the fact that the overarching target is the edifice as a to-
tality. In the ideal avant-garde provocation, an attack on the part stands
for an attack on the whole. But the discrepancy between these two lev-
els provides an opening, a potential for the diversion of the avant-garde
impulse, since it is easy for the ultimate aim of the anti-institutional
stance-the reconfiguration of art's social function-to become ob-
scured by these various local struggles.
Burger is not unaware of the fact that the institutional status of art
can be contested only within the concrete, local sites that comprise the
institution itself, although he limits his considerations to two broad are-
nas: those of production and reception. At the level of production, he
observes that Duchamp's readymades, for instance, call into question
"all claims to individual creativity.... Duchamp's provocation not only
unmasks the art market where the signature means more than the qual-
19 Furthermore, the scientific concept of the avant-garde prevalent in musicological

discourse often refers to groups affiliated with the very institutions that groups such as
Fluxus target: academia in the United States, state-funded radio stations in Europe, festi-
vals such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, and publicly funded facilities such as IRCAM.
On the other hand, the definition of the avant-garde posited by Bfrger corresponds in
many important respects with what writers such as Cage and Michael Nyman have identi-
fied as "experimental" music (e.g. the latter like the former usually spurns institutional
affiliation). But despite the prominence of a number of politically engaged composers
within the experimental music tradition (such as Christian Wolff, Cornelius Cardew, and
Frederic Rzewski), the tradition as a whole only intermittently exhibits the sort of political
grounding that Bfirger imputes to the historical avant-garde.
DROTT
ity of the work; it radically questions the very principle of art in bour-
geois society according to which the individual is considered the cre-
ator of the work of art."2o At the level of reception, he observes that the
avant-garde's productions generally encourage a more active role on
the part of the audience: "It is no accident that both Tzara's instruc-
tions for the making of a Dadaist poem and Breton's for the writing of
automatic texts have the character of recipes. This represents not only a
polemical attack on the individual creativity of the artist; the recipe is to
be taken quite literally as suggesting a possible activity on the part of
the recipient."21
Buirger'ssuggestive comments point to analogous functions within
Fluxus events. Clearly, Brecht's and Young's events (described above)
derogate the composer's status. By reducing composition to an act of
framing of some commonplace event, they not only indicate that any-
one can be a composer; in addition, they tacitly disparage the social
mechanisms-conservatory training, for instance-that provide com-
posers with a seal of legitimacy for their activities. Other Fluxus events
set themselves against the customs surrounding the performance and
reception of musical works, as we will see shortly. But once again, it is vi-
tal to bear in mind that such specific attacks may be deflected, inten- 211
tionally or not, from a full-fledged social critique of art's institutional
status. For instance, attempts to implicate audiences more directly in
the production of the work may simply open up new institutional venues
without substantially altering the social function of music. In the late
1950S and i960s, a number of composers imagined a liberation of au-
diences from their sedentary position as consumers of musical works
through the establishment of galleries or spaces where listeners could
circulate freely, exercising in this way some measure of control over the
resulting musical experience. In his essay "Momentform," Stockhausen
proposed such a model of musical reception.22 Cage's Music Walk
represented an early attempt to bestow upon listeners this freedom of
movement. Both of these inspired Nam June Paik's unrealized Sym-
phonyfor 20 Rooms (Paik would ultimately succeed in presenting some-
thing akin to his Symphonyduring his Exhibitionof ElectronicMusic and
20
Burger, Theory,52.
21 Ibid., 53.
22
The impetus behind Stockhausen's endeavor is to give listeners the opportunity
to come and go as they please during the performance of a work and thereby to relieve
their boredom should their interest in the work wane. He draws a comparison with art
galleries, where audiences are not obliged to view a work for a fixed period of time. The
putative control he gives to the listener is limited to the binary choice: to listen or not to
listen. (However, his later works, such as Musikfiir ein Haus, offered listeners a greater de-
gree of flexibility in moving around the performance space.)
Television).23 By the 197os, with the flourishing of sound installation as

an independent genre, the utopian schemes sketched, heralded or oth-
erwise prefigured in previous decades had come to fruition. But the ac-
tivation of audiences that this development portended hardly made a
dent in the Institution of Art. Rather, it dislocated certain forms of
musical production, shifting them from one institutional milieu (the
concert hall) to another (the art gallery).
Another point of slippage lies in the aesthetic itself of the avant-
garde. This may appear to be something of a contradiction, given the
avant-garde's opposition to the aesthetic as an autonomous sphere. But
just as it is important to distinguish the Institution of Art from its com-
ponent institutions, so too is it important to distinguish the Aesthetic-
understood as a mechanism separating art from social practice-from
aesthetics-understood in the commonplace sense as style or design.
From this perspective, it is evident that Fluxus did not renounce aes-
thetics in the latter sense. Quite the opposite. The objects and events
produced under its aegis possess a number of common aesthetic fea-
tures: simplicity verging on minimalism; an emphasis on process; the
exploration of the intermediary zones between different art-forms; a
212 healthy dose of humor; and the incorporation of conventionally non-
musical (or non-aesthetic) materials. To this, one may add that the
physical appearance of Fluxus event-scores (such as Brecht's, repro-
duced in Figure i) is fairly consistent, owing its particular style to Maci-
unas's proclivities as a graphic designer.
As I hope to demonstrate in the following examination of Ligeti's
Fluxus pieces, the friction between what may be called the "avant-garde"
and "modernist"wings of the contemporary musical field emerges out
of these points of ideological and aesthetic slippage. Bearing in mind
that few if any works fully instantiate the characteristics of the two types
but will inevitably fall somewhere between these aesthetic-ideological
extremes, we may nonetheless see the contest between the poles of
avant-gardism and modernism as being most pronounced at the points
where the two come into close contact, in the very zone where the dis-
tinction seems to cloud over. This overlap is possible because of the
23
Paik, in his "Essayto the 'Symphony for 20 Rooms'" (his contribution to An An-
thology),notes Cage's and Stockhausen's dual inspiration for his proposed work (suggest-
ing that his work will mediate in some way between the opposing positions these two com-
posers occupied): "It was Stockhausen's idea to let listeners leave and come into the
concert hall freely. John Cage wanted to compose his 'Music Walk' for two rooms of the
'Galerie 22' in Dfisseldorf where the listeners were supposed to move freely from one
room to the other. When the piece was first performed there, this was not realizable.
With respect and appreciation I note Cage's and Stockhausen's priority in this respect; al-
though art is often a bastard the parents of which we do not know." Paik, "Essayto the
'Symphony for 20 Rooms,' " in An Anthology,n.p.
DROTT
ease with which the critique of some particular institution can displace
a critique of the Institution of Art as a whole, and because of the ease
with which the stylistic trappings of avant-gardism can obscure the
ideological substance of individual pieces-which in turn helps explain
how a composer like Ligeti could use Fluxus as a forum for the focused
satire of certain trends in the contemporary musical scene. But at the
same time, it also helps explain how and why these satires, which from
the vantage-point of the present appear to lack the radical thrust of
other Fluxus pieces, were taken up by Maciunas into the Fluxus reper-
toire, even after the group had disengaged itself from the sort of mod-
ernism that Ligeti and other Darmstadt composers represented.
Ligeti in Fluxus
Maciunas's vision of Fluxus as a wide-ranging artistic common front
found its only realization in the first "official"Fluxus event, the Fluxus
Internationale Festspiele Neuester Musik, a series of concerts held at
the local art museum in Wiesbaden in September of 1962.24 Over the
course of 14 concerts, organized to raise funds for the publication of
the forthcoming anthologies, audiences were subjected to a panorama 213
of the "newest music" (see Fig. 2). The composers in each concert were
grouped according to style, medium, and nationality. The third con-
cert, an evening of European piano music, presented compositions by
members of the Darmstadt circle-Stockhausen, Gottfried Michael
Koenig, Dieter Schnebel, and Ligeti.25 More representative of what
Fluxus was to later become identified with was the series of concerts de-
scribed as "concrete music and happenings," which featured works by
the composers who would become the core of the Fluxus group: Ben-
jamin Patterson, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, George
Brecht, and Maciunas himself. Among the highlights of the series was
Paik's performance of Young's Compositioni960 #o1, later dubbed Zen
for Head. Paik's realization of Young's instructions-"draw a straight line
and follow it"-was recounted in a letter Maciunas later wrote to Young:
"[Paik] dipped his head in a nightpot full of ink and drew a line with
his head over a long roll of paper stretched over floor."26
24 See I962 WiesbadenFluxus 1982: Eine kleine Geschichtevon Fluxus in drei Teilen,ex-
hibition catalog (Wiesbaden and Berlin: Harlekin art in association with the Berliner
Kunstlerprogramm des DAAD, 1983).
25 Or, as Richard Steinitz
puts it, the Wiesbaden festival featured "... some perfectly
serious compositions, like Stockhausen's KlavierstiickeIV and Toru Takemitsu's Vocalism
A-I." Richard Steinitz, GyorgyLigeti: Music of the Imagination (Boston: Northeastern Univ.
Press, 2003), 122.
26
George Maciunas, letter to'La Monte Young (1962), repr. in In the Spiritof Fluxus,
154.
FIGURE 2. Poster for Fluxus Festspiele, Wiesbaden, September 1962
.1.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1
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DROTT
Following the concerts at Wiesbaden was a series of concerts across

Western Europe. Over the course of this tour, Maciunas refined his con-
ception of Fluxus, eliminating composers deemed to be ideologically
incompatible (his favorite target was Stockhausen).27 The posters for
subsequent concerts reveal how quickly the list of Darmstadt-affiliated
composers was pared down (see Fig. 3). By the time the Fluxus Festival
arrived in Amsterdam in June 1963, Ligeti was the only modernist
whose music was still on the program. Part of the reason for his contin-
uing inclusion in the group, even after Maciunas had purged other
such composers, may have been due to the piece he had contributed
for these performances-the TroisBagatellesfor David Tudor.The Trois
Bagatelleswere well suited for the changing personnel and venues of the
Fluxus tour, as they required no expertise on the part of the performer
and no equipment beyond a functioning piano. All the score asked of
the performer was to play a single note in the first movement, a very low
and soft C#; the following two movements consisted entirely of rests. (A
fourth bagatelle, consisting of an eighth-note rest, was included as an
encore piece.) The pieces by Stockhausen, Koenig, and others per-
formed in Wiesbaden were, by contrast, straightforward piano works
that betrayed no hint of a critical attitude toward the institutions of 215
concert music (which does not deny the challenging and, at times, re-
barbative aspect of the music).28 By contrast, Ligeti's Bagatelles came
closer to Maciunas's criteria for Fluxus: "Art-amusementmust be simple,
amusing, unpretentious, concerned with insignificances, require no skill
or countless rehearsals, have no commodity or institutional value."29
Beyond practical issues, the appeal of the TroisBagatellesfor Maciu-
nas may have resulted from the fact that they denied the possibility of
realizing the concert ticket's value by withholding from the audience
27 The fractures in the artistic "common front" were evident as
early as the Wies-
baden concerts. According to Dick Higgins, an argument between Maciunas and Michael
von Biel and Griffith Rose (both of whom Higgins describes derisively as "International
Stylists")led to their premature departure from the Wiesbaden concerts. See Higgins, Jef-
ferson'sBirthday/Postface,68. In addition, Maciunas had considered dropping Stockhausen
from the Wiesbaden concerts but agreed to keep him on the insistence of Paik; See Owen
Smith, Fluxus: The Historyof An Attitude (San Diego: San Diego State Univ. Press, 1998),
67. By early 1963 Maciunas had launched what he called a "Winter offensive" against
"bourgeois reactionaries, dogmatists & Stockhausen." See Stefan Fricke, "Attacken auf
Karlheinz Stockhausen," Neue ZeitschriftfiirMusik 159/4 (July/August 1998), 40.
28 Stockhausen's Klavierstiick
IV, for instance, was written in 1952-53. Other works
by more radical Darmstadt composers, such as Bussotti and Schnebel, were more likely
removed as much for practical as for ideological reasons. Bussotti's graphic scores, for in-
stance, displayed a certain pictorial virtuosity and in many cases implicitly invoked an
equally virtuosic realization: His Five Piecesfor David Tudorare antithetical to Ligeti's Baga-
telles,insofar as they called upon Tudor's renowned skills as an interpreter.
29 "Fluxus Manifesto" (1963) repr. in UbiFluxus, 219.
FIGURE 3.
a. Poster for Festum Fluxorum, Paris, December 1962
1~~~~~~~~I ll I-'-':
11II
1~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1
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Eu ,
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I 5 3'~ 0I ~ ~~~~ m l ~'

216
lula ~~~~~~1=13_=_uu
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DROTT
FIGURE 3. (continued)
b. Poster for Festum Fluxorum, Dfisseldorf, February 1963
MUSIK UNDANTIMXSIK
DAS INSTRUMENTALE
217
THEATER
Staatliche Kunstakademie
Dusseldorf, Eiskellerstrale
am 2. und 3. Februar 20 Uhr
als ein Colloquium fur die
Studenten der Akademie
George Macluna Daniel Spoerri Toshl lchlyanagl
Nmn June Palk Alison Knowles Cornelius C&rdew
Emmet Williams Bruno Madern& PErAhlbom
BenjamlinPatterson 2lfreb9. t>anfen Gheranml.ca
Tkrmnhlm Ko,sag La Monte Young Brion Gymin
Dick Higgins Henzry Flynt Stan Vanderbeek
Robert Watts Richard Maxfield Yorlakl Mataudaira
Jed Curtis John Cage Simone MorrI
Dieter Rtfilmrnns Yoko Ono Bylvhno Bussotti
tQeor~t~ephc Jozef Patkowskil Muslka Vitalls
Jackson Mac Low Joseph Byrd Jak K. Spek
Wolf Vostell 3ofeptbN"uj Frederic Rrzewali
JeanPierr Wdihelm Grifith Rose K. Pendereckl
Frank Trowbridge Philip Corner J. Stasulenas
Terry Riley Achov Mr.Kcroochcv V. Landsbergu
Tomas Schmit Kenjiro Ezaki A. Salcius
GyorziLieti jasunao Tone KunlharuAkyarma
Raoul Hausmann LuciaDlugoszewski Joji Kuri
Caspari Istvan Anhalt Tori Takemitsu
Robrt Filliou JOrgen Friisholm ArthurKlpcke
FIGURE 3. (continued)
c. Poster for Fluxus Festival, Amsterdam,June 1963
I~ r~ L~ I E3 rI P
218
r ;'A I '>E 1i S1
FI E 47
the very music that the price of admission would presumably guaran-
tee. Further, the silence here does not signal an emancipatory opening
of music to ambient sound (unlike, say, in Cage's 4'33") but is posed
simply as a lack; the presence of the lone C# acts as a reminder to the
listener of what is missing. Bearing no indication that their production
required an expenditure of artistic skill or effort, the Bagatellesappear
to be devoid of recuperable value. And yet the TroisBagatellesare excep-
DROTT
tional in the Fluxus repertoire. Whereas most Fluxus scores renounced

notation in favor of simple text instructions, thereby rendering them
accessible to a wider range of potential performers than might other-
wise be possible-that is, performers beyond the closed, institutional cir-
cuit of (classical) music training3?-Ligeti opts to retain conventional no-
tation. It would have been easy enough to instruct someone to play a
single note on the piano verbally. But by notating the piece, Ligeti calls
upon some element of musical education (albeit of the most rudimen-
tary variety), which in turn belies the suggestion of compositional and
performative egalitarianism. The inclusion of superfluous musical
directions-such as the tempo markings for the individual Bagatelles or
the lunga marking that follows the end of the third-reinforces this im-
pression, so that the piece mayjust as well seem an injoke for musicians
as a self-conscious negation of musical and cultural value.
Ligeti's second event-piece, Die Zukunft der Musik, also plays upon
the frustration of the audience's expectations, but does so through an
even more dramatic gesture of withdrawal. The piece originated as a
1o-minute lecture Ligeti was asked to give at a forum on new art at Alp-
bach, Austria, in August 1961. In the "score," published in Wolf
Vostell's magazine De-coll/age (a rival publication to Maciunas's pro- 219
posed Fluxus anthologies31), Ligeti describes how the event transpired:
30
Indeed, the impossibility of performing a number of Fluxus scores has led Liz
Kotz to argue that they shift "awayfrom realizable directions toward an activity that takes
place mostly internally, in the act of reading or observing. This conceptualambiguityderives
from the use of the textas score,inseparablybothwriting/printedobjectand performance/realization."
Kotz, "Post-CageanAesthetics," 57. The aesthetic and conceptual centrality of such read-
erly activity-which only reinforces the availabilityof such scores for nonprofessional con-
sumption (or performance)-isolates notated scores such as Ligeti's, which (however
simple) still requires the skill of reading musical notation.
31 The inclusion of Ligeti's piece in De-coll/agewas a sore point for Maciunas, who
had planned on including it in the Fluxus yearbox devoted to German and Scandinavian
art and music; see the Brochure Prospectus version A, reprinted in Fluxus Codex, 112.
What perturbed Maciunas was the copyright issue that would arise from reprinting mate-
rials that had already appeared in De-coll/age.In a letter to Tomas Schmit from late De-
cember 1962 or early January 1963, he writes: "My one condition however (like that of
any other serious publisher) is that once you agree or decide to offer your works for pub-
lication and they are accepted, they can not be offered to and published by any other
publisher. This is necessary to protect my investment in printing and distribution. I lost a
few hundred marks already, by printing Ligeti & Flynt and then eliminating the works be-
cause of Vostell's fast dealings." Maciunas, letter to Tomas Schmit, reprinted in Fluxus
Codex,107. In a letter to Robert Watts from 1963, he rails against Vostell further: "when I
started to work on Fluxus (leisurely) out he rushes with De-coll/age-which is a very sloppy
affair-because he does not consult authors-just grabs what he can (whether copy-
righted or not) and rushes to print it. He stole from me Flynt's and Ligeti's essays for
De-coll/age3." Maciunas, letter to Robert Watts, reprinted in Mr.Fluxus:A CollectivePortrait
of GeorgeMaciunas, I93I-I978: based upon personal reminiscences/ gathered by Emmett
Williamsand Ay-O,ed. Emmett Williams and Ann Noel (London: Thames and Hudson,
1997), 62.
When I was once invited to lecture before an academic audience on

"The Future of Music," I felt, at first, some hesitation; for what, if any-
thing, can one say about the future?No matterwhat is prophesied,
only one thing is certain, namely: that the future will turn out to be
completely different than predicted. So, rather than promulgate un-
truths, I decided to say nothing.32
Ligeti records the audience's negative response to his silent "lecture"

in the remainder of the text (which is cast in the form of a score). The
account divides into 2o-second increments, calling to mind the then-
popular conceit among avant-garde composers of notating duration in
terms of minutes and seconds. From o'oo" to 1'20", the audience's ini-
tial anticipation gives way to astonishment and then, according to
Ligeti, to "light hissing." From 2'oo" to 3'oo", Ligeti provokes the audi-
ence further by writing comments and messages on a blackboard:
"Please Don't Laugh and Stomp" and "Crescendo." At 4'oo", he desists
from writing on the board, which brings about a lull in the catcalls. The
relaxation of tension ends at 6'oo", when "an especially irate university
professor" storms out of the hall, slamming the door behind him. In
220 the tumult that followed, Ligeti was eventually dragged off the stage,
some two minutes shy of his allotted o1 minutes.
So goes the "score" of the event, which on its face is scarcely subject
to repetition. It would be more accurate to call it a narrative than a
score, an account of a past event rather than a template for future per-
formance. But in reading Ligeti's account, it becomes evident that his
text is less a neutral narration of the event and more of an analysis of
the audience's response to his actions. Characteristic is Ligeti's pseudo-
sociological division of the audience into four groups: one group is
"disciplined or indifferent," remaining quiet at first; the second is
"amused," quietly tittering away; the third "probably consider me a
fool," and quickly lose their composure; and the fourth at first takes
Ligeti's silence as a joke, later losing their composure as well (most
likely once they realized that the joke was on them). Equally notable is
Ligeti's "musical"reading of the audience's reactions. Ligeti interprets
the event in terms of conventional formal categories, so that the lull be-
ginning about four minutes into the event is described as the "Adagio"
section of the piece. Similarly, the uproar that follows upon the depar-
ture of the irate professor resembles, according to Ligeti, "a kind of
Opera Finale" involving "a lively alternation between soloists, ensemble
and large choir."33 Such reliance on traditional musical terms to de-
32 Quoted from "

Ligeti, 'The Future of Music': A collective Composition," in De-coll/
age 3 (December 1962), n.p.
33
Ligeti, " 'The Future of Music,' " n.p.
DROTT
scribe the event is, despite its ironic overtones, alien to Fluxus. Even
though Ligeti duly antagonizes his audience in Die Zukunft der Musik,
the continuing use of musical terminology aestheticizes the event, fold-
ing it back into the sort of art-music tradition that Maciunas and others
in the mainstream of Fluxus vilified. At the same time as certain institu-
tions and forms are mocked (academic discourse and its legitimizing
functions, the customary silence and passivityof the audience), another
is tacitly affirmed (concert music as such).
More significant is that the work's ostensible conformance with a
particular sub-genre of Fluxus events-events that alternately antago-
nize and seek to spur the audience into action-occludes its deviation
from the ideological project usually engaged by such events. In other
words, the aesthetic or generic point of slippage in this case disguises vi-
tal conceptual differences that exist between Ligeti's piece and other,
apparently similar Fluxus events. Compare Ligeti's event with Young's
CompositionI96o #6, cited above. Or compare it to a later Fluxus piece,
such as Robert Bozzi's Choice i8 (1966): "Performers show the audi-
ence to themselves by way of mirrors." In Ligeti's piece, the audience is
aggravated into acting out; in both Young's and Bozzi's, the audience
is confronted by the specter of its own passivity. In all three, the artist- 221
performer is the clear instigator, while the audience is either manipu-
lated into action or chided for its inaction. But in Ligeti's depiction of
the event, he casts himself in an elevated position vis-a-visthe audience,
as a self-controlled individual confronting and goading an angry mob
composed of de-individuated "ideal types." Although such provocation
partakes of a long and storied tradition within avant-garde perfor-
mance, its potential as a means of involving audiences in the artwork
is, as Burger notes, limited: "The reactions of the public during a dada
manifestation where it has been mobilized by provocation, and which
can range from shouting to fisticuffs, are certainly collective in nature.
True, these remain reactions, responses to a proceeding provocation.
Producer and recipient remain clearly distinct, however active the
public may become."34 Later Fluxus event-scores erode this hierarchical
separation of artist and audience, adopting a less antagonistic and coer-
cive attitude. For instance, the score for Ben Vautier's Tango (1964)
reads: "The audience is invited to dance a tango." Although the 'per-
former' is still the catalyst for the audience's involvement in this event,
the piece lacks the latent disdain for the audience that Die Zukunft
evinces.
34 Burger, Theory,53.
Poeme Symphonique
PoBmeSymphonique was Ligeti's last foray into the genre of the event-
score, and marks the end of his brief relationship with Fluxus. While
his TroisBagatellescontinued to be included in editions of the Fluxus
Yearbox #1 throughout the 1970s, they more or less ceased to be per-
formed at Fluxus festivals after July 1964.35 The immediate cause for
the end of this tenuous relationship was Maciunas's return to New York
in the fall of 1963. But at the same time, Ligeti began to distance him-
self quite explicitly from the ideals that guided Fluxus in the later
1960s. The premiere of his Requiemin 1965 was a signal event in the ar-
ticulation of Ligeti's aesthetic. Even though the work employed the
same micropolyphonic style he had developed in Apparitionsand Atmo-
spheresand the extreme, manneristic vocal style he had utilized in Aven-
tures,the turn to a genre steeped in musical and ecclesiastical tradition
surely represented a seismic shift. And as noted above, Ligeti began
criticizing the Cagean position quite vocally, arguing against the notion
that "art and quotidian life are one and the same thing"; henceforward
he would be unambiguous in asserting that "for me, art is something
222 absolutely artificial."36Finally, Ligeti's conception of music's relation to
politics became more pointed in response to the general politicization
of new music following the events of 1968. While admitting that music
might passively reflect a social situation, he denies it any efficacy as a
tool of social or political change, a position no doubt influenced by his
experiences in Hungary during the Zhdanovian clamp-down on the
arts. In "Music and Politics" he concurs with the opinion that music is
"related to life and to the social condition in many ways."But he quali-
fies this by saying "I think it's completely irrelevant to speak about the
political progressivity or reactionary position of New Music. It is not
progressive in a political sense nor is it regressive,just as mathematics is
neither progressive or regressive. It is of a region which lies elsewhere."37
As the 196os progressed, the conditions which allowed artists as ideo-
logically and aesthetically incompatible as Ligeti and Maciunas to take
part in an artistic common front gradually withered away.
35 See Fluxus Codex,109, which
reprints Fluxus catalogues through the 6os and 7os.
Although the list of artists included in the Fluxyearbox 1 varies, Ligeti's name still ap-
pears into the 70s. A price-list sent to a customer in September 1975 for instance reads:
"Fluxyearbox i, 1962-4: Book events, objects, essays, compositions by: Ayo, George
Brecht, Congo, Dick Higgins, Joe Jones, Alison Knowles, T. Kosugi, S. Kubota, G. Ligeti,
G. Maciunas, Jackson MacLow, Ben Patterson, Tomas Schmit, Chieko Shiomi, Ben Vau-
tier, Bob Watts, Emmett Williams & La Monte Young. $80."
36 "Chez
Cage, il y a cette id6e que l'art et la vie quotidienne sont une meme chose;
pour moi, l'art est quelque chose d'assolument artificiel." Ligeti in Edna Politi, "Entre-
tien avec Ligeti," Contrechamps 4 (1985): 126.
37 Ligeti, "Music and Politics," Perspectives of New Music 16 (1978): 22-23.
DROTT
The evolution of PoemeSymphoniqueand its impact on Ligeti's later

music mirror his changing attitude. Premiered as the final work on the
program of the Gaudeamus Music Week in Holland in 1962, PoemeSym-
phoniqueachieved the same sort of succes-de-scandale as his silent lecture
at Alpbach. The plan for the piece is simple. One hundred metronomes
are to be wound up, set to different speeds, and released. The work
ends when the final metronome expires. Many in the audience took
Ligeti's piece as an affront. Ligeti recalls that the controversy was great
enough to cause Dutch Television, who had originally planned on air-
ing a recording of the concert, to cancel the broadcast, showing a soc-
cer match instead.38
PobmeSymphoniqueapproximates many of the stylistic features char-
acteristic of Fluxus events. First of all, the role played by the instrumen-
tation of the piece should not be underestimated. A straightforward
and not entirely unpersuasive reading of the piece would maintain that
the simultaneous unwinding of 1oo metronomes challenges, in an alle-
gorical fashion, the regulative and disciplinary aspect of musical train-
ing. The metronome, whose ticking represents a mechanical norm to
which the performer must adjust in practice, is undermined through its
very proliferation. But at a more basic level, the metronomes foreground 223
the quotidian aspects of musical production, the hours of rehearsal and
mundane artistic labor that underlie a successful performance. In fore-
grounding such a commonplace device, a token of the musician's every-
day life, the work appears consonant-deceptively so-with the project
of bringing art and the quotidian world together. Notwithstanding this
material similarity, there is a vital distinction that should be drawn be-
tween the use of everyday,nonmusical sound as the material for a musi-
cal work and the avant-garde sublation of art into everyday life, as de-
scribed by Burger. In the former, art subsumes elements drawn from
quotidian existence without itself changing fundamentally; in the latter,
the boundary between the two domains disappears, so that art as a sepa-
rate category vanishes at the same time as the sort of playful, non-
purposive activitythat it exemplifies inflects human existence in general.
This distinction-between Poeme's subsumption of the quotidian
versus the avant-garde's sublation of it-is underlined by the form of
the work. In some ways, the form resembles other Fluxus pieces: The
work lacks a fixed structure, its performance lasting for as long as the
metronomes beat. PoemeSymphoniquethus recalls certain Fluxus pieces
that play upon the motif of exhaustion, such as Brecht's ThreeAequeous
Events, whose score reads: "Ice. Water. Steam." Although there are a
38 For Ligeti's account of this affair, see "Music-MakingMachines," lo.

number of ways of realizing this score, an obvious solution is to melt a

block of ice until the water evaporates. The literal disappearance of the
material into thin air would mark the close of the piece.39 Similarly, in
Young's CompositionI96o #2, the piece comes to an end only when the
fire has gone out. Like Brecht's and Young's events, both of which last
until the material is completely consumed, Ligeti's Poemepersists until
the energy of the metronomes dissipates.40 In short, all three of these
works possess a clear endpoint, though the time it takes to reach that
point is unpredictable, left to mechanical or natural processes.
But despite the indeterminate duration of PoemeSymphonique,there
is a consistency to its form as well as an inflexibility as regards how this
form is to be realized, factors which both point to the work's allegiance
to the aesthetic. Ligeti observes that each rendition of the piece passes
through the same set of identifiable phases: "Although the overall
rhythmic structure is indeterminate at an intermediate level-the local
result of adding individual periods of different lengths is arbitrary-it
is, however, once more determinate at a higher level, namely the level
at which the entire form unfolds. This overall form consists of three
phases: homogeneity-gradual structuration-homogeneity."4' That is,
224 the work begins with a continuous texture, as the sheer number of
metronomes produces an impenetrable, albeit uneven, sonic mass
(Ligeti's first stage). As metronomes start to drop out, the unevenness
in the musical fabric becomes even more pronounced. At first intermit-
tent silences break up the continuous surface; shortly thereafter indi-
vidual metronomes momentarily emerge out of the mass, before being
swallowed up again. Gradually, however, the regular beating of a few
metronomes persists (Ligeti's second stage). At this point the texture
becomes transparent enough to hear the overlapping of metric layers,
each going at its own pace. Finally one reaches the coda-a single
metronome, ticking away (Ligeti's final stage). And then there is silence.
Ligeti's symphony was considerably more complex than typical
Fluxus events, which made a virtue of simplicity. Fluxus works tended to
be "monomorphic," to use Maciunas's term; they were works that con-
centrated intensely on a single process or event, rather than juxtapos-
39 Another possible solution would be to present the three different substances si-
multaneously rather than successively; in this case there is no process by means of which
one could determine the close of the performance.
40 As Michael Nyman has observed, "Brecht devised a whole series of natural
'clocks' with which to 'unmeasure' passing time. CandlePiecefor Radioslasts as long as the
birthday cake candles last; CombMusic ends when the last prong has been plucked." Ny-
man, ExperimentalMusic, 78.
41 Ligeti, notes to the score of PoemeSymphonique for ioo metronomes, U.E. 8150,
(Mainz: Schott, 1982), n.p.
DROTT
ing a number of uncoordinated processes or events.42 But just as the

piece takes on certain traits identified with Fluxus (the motif of exhaus-
tion mentioned above) while abstaining from others (simple, mono-
morphic processes), just as the piece refers the listener to a mundane,
quotidian sound without being absorbed into the quotidian itself, the
score for the work-in its original form-presents a complex concep-
tual object, an object that simultaneously emulates and resists Fluxus,
both stylisticallyand ideologically.
In 1964, two years following the performance in Holland, Ligeti's
score for PoemeSymphoniqueappeared in the inaugural issue of ccVTRE,
the Fluxus newspaper published in New York by Maciunas (a transcript
of the text is given in the Appendix). At first glance, the score appears
to be of a piece with works that poked fun at the social conventions
governing modern concert music. Certain instructions in the score
make it clear that Ligeti sought to aggravate the audience. In particular,
he directs the performers to set up and wind the metronomes in the
presence of the audience, creating what would most likely be an inter-
minably long structural upbeat to the work. This long wait is com-
pounded by the pause between the end of these preparations and the
beginning of the work proper, "a motionless silence of 2-6 minutes, the 225
length of which is to be left to the discretion of the conductor."
At the same time, the score goes into painstaking detail about the
preliminaries: how the metronomes may be procured, how potential
donors of metronomes may be cajoled into lending their "instruments"
(by the lure of free advertising), how to avoid the misplacement of bor-
rowed metronomes, to whom performances of the work should be ded-
icated, and so on. Despite the resemblance of Ligeti's score to other
Fluxus text-pieces in terms of tone, visual style and attitude, its sheer
verbosity is exceptional. Compared to the concise event-scores of
Brecht and Young, Ligeti's instructions seem bloated. Even though the
instructions apparently conform to the Fluxus criteria of humor and
playfulness, the type of humor Ligeti employs is uncharacteristic of
Fluxus. It is too satirical, too broad. Instead of the dry, laconic wit of
Brecht's scores, Ligeti's score approaches slapstick. And the parody is
fairly limited in terms of its object. Namely, these long-winded prelimi-
naries are perhaps a satire of the "notes to the performer" section that
prefaced many of the high modernist scores written during the period,
outlining in the utmost detail the provisions that must be taken in
order to pull off a performance of the work at hand. While it could be
42 The "monomorphic" nature of Fluxus events contrasts with contemporaneous

avant-garde productions, such as Cage's or Allan Kaprow's happenings, and may serve as
a distinguishing characteristic of much Fluxus work.
argued that this satire has as its target the extreme specialization
and professionalization of musical performance in the period of high
modernism-a critique, in a refractory fashion, of the social and
economic forces shaping musical production-it is more likely that
Ligeti's object of scorn was nothing more than the obsessive micro-
management of the performer by contemporary composers. Here, the
disjunction between the simplicity of the work's idea and the overly de-
tailed instructions for its realization draws attention to and mocks a
specific trend rather than the changing social organization of musical
production.
Still more important discrepancies in the latter part of the text sep-
arate Ligeti's score from the Fluxus ethos. As one reads the text, it be-
comes clear that the detailed instructions are not solely for humorous
effect. The lengths to which Ligeti goes in his instructions may very well
be absurd, but they betray at the same time his desire to produce a spe-
cific sonic result. Two of his directions are especially worthy of note.
First, he tells performers that the metronomes should "be placed on suit-
able resonators," or that they be arranged around microphones and am-
plified. This interest in ensuring that the sound of the metronomes is
226 projected into the auditorium distinguishes Ligeti's work from other
Fluxus pieces, where the aural result may either be the byproduct of
some physical operation (as in La Monte Young's fire piece) or be dis-
pensed with altogether (as in a piece like Henry Flynt's WorkSuch That
No OneKnowsWhat'sGoingOn, where one is instructed to "guess whether
this work exists and if it does what it is like").43In PoemeSymphonique the
sensuous dimension of the music remains absolutely central.
Second, Ligeti specifically outlines what the conditions are for an
ideal performance of the piece. Namely, all of the metronomes should
be completely wound; or, in the alternate version, o1 of them should be
completely wound, with the remainder wound up to varying degrees.
Either way, the aim is to maximize the length of the performance. Ligeti
goes on to state that should the work need to be shortened (a "non-
ideal" situation), the performers should wind the metronomes to a pre-
determined number of turns (or, in the alternative version, o1 of them
should be wound to a set number of turns, and the rest should all be
set to a fewer number of turns). This proviso is significant insofar as it
guarantees that even in a shortened performance of the work, the same
general shape is traced. In both ideal and non-ideal performances, the
work will pass through the same three stages outlined above. While the
43
Flynt describes this piece in "LaMonte Young in New York, 1960-62," 68-69. It
should be noted that Flynt denies membership in Fluxus.
DROTT
amplification of the metronomes places the audible dimension of the

work front and center, the precise instructions for how to wind the in-
struments indicates that formal considerations-in other words, musical
considerations-are not absent from Ligeti's conception of the work.
On the contrary, such concerns, though hidden behind the facade of
experimentalism, are still present.
Is this to say that the satirical edge of the score is just for show? Not
exactly. Once it becomes apparent that the score, despite its ostensible
irony, is the vehicle for producing a consistent musical event from one
performance to another-a far cry from the manifold possibilities in-
herent in most Fluxus event-scores-the more limited nature of Ligeti's
irony comes into focus. Whereas the Fluxus event (as Maciunas con-
ceived it) would attack art in its entirety-that is, art as a specialized,
professionalized institution-Ligeti's critique is more modest in scope.
This goes for all of his Fluxus pieces. Thus his TroisBagatelleshas often
been read not simply as a breach of compositional etiquette but as a
thinly veiled polemic directed at Cage's earlier 4'33" (although Ligeti
claims that he was not aware of 4'33" at the time he composed the Trois
Bagatelles).44From this perspective, Ligeti appears to be more inter-
ested in critiquing specific tendencies within art music rather than art 227
music itself. Insofar as his criticisms are so specific, they apparently aim
at preserving the institution of art-music by purging what are seen to be
its more laughable tendencies.45
Such is the case in PoemeSymphonique.The transgressive aspect of
many Fluxus events, such as Brecht's, lies in their mock-seriousness. By
elevating absurd or everyday gestures to the level of art, Fluxus events
call into question the professionalization of art. It is not simply a matter
of writing scores anybody could perform but of executing them with
the utmost sincerity. At the same time, Fluxus artists underlined the irra-
tionality that pervades the solemn rituals of the Western concert music
tradition by taking in earnest such simple actions as lighting a fire or
watching a block of ice melt. Ligeti's score, however, invites its audience
to laugh at the patent absurdity of his event, just as much as it invites
44 See Griffiths, Ligeti,39.

45 Paul Attinello offers a more unambiguous account of Ligeti's pieces: "In several
brief excursions in the early 1960s, Ligeti made clear that he regarded the entire Cageian
project, and the occurrence of 'happenings' and graphic scores, with dismissive sarcasm:
the joky Poemesymphoniquefor ioo metronomes is outdone by the TroisBagatellesfor David
Tudor,which simultaneously recall works by Cage and Bussotti. Such a simplistic, unkind
parody could hardly been regarded as amusing, especially perhaps by David Tudor." Paul
Attinello, "The Interpretation of Chaos: a Critical Analysis of Meaning in European
Avant-Garde Vocal Music, 1958-1968" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California at Los Angeles,
1997), 110o-11.
them to laugh at the traditions of art music. In a letter to Ove Nordwall

from 1966, Ligeti claims that Poeme Symphonique's satire has a dual focus,
aimed as much against the radical arm of the avant-garde (which would
presumably include Fluxus) as against bourgeois sensibilities. Ligeti ex-
presses satisfaction in the work's critical content:
PoemeSymphonique occupies, or so I think, a special place, in that it is a

critique of the contemporary musical situation, but a special sort of
critique, since the critique itself results from musical means.... The
'verbal score' is only one aspect of this critique, and it is admittedly
rather ironic. The other aspect is, however, the work itself. .46
Ligeti goes on to clarify what motivates his attack on both "the entire
'radical' compositional situation" as well as "official concert life":
What bothers me nowadays are above all ideologies (all ideologies, in

that they are stubborn and intolerant towards others), and PoemeSym-
phoniqueis directed above all against them. So I am in some measure
proud that I could express criticism without any text, with music
alone. It is no accident that PoemeSymphonique was rejected as much by
228 the petit-bourgeois (see the cancellation of the TV broadcast in Hol-
land) as by the seeming radicals.... Radicalism and petit-bourgeois
attitudes are not so far from one another; both wear the blinkers of
the narrow-minded.47
It is the frivolity of Poeme Symphoniquethat provokes the petit-bourgeoisie

who cling to a sanctified vision of art, as well as the radicals who desire
to undermine art as an institution. The self-deprecating humor of Poeme
Symphonique is thus problematic within the neo-avant-garde project out-
lined by Maciunas, as it mocks the pretensions of the avant-garde in ad-
dition to traditional concert rituals. And such self-deprecating humor
could very well extend to the Fluxus genre of event-score as a whole,
46 "Poeme
Symphonique hat, so glaube ich, die Besonderheit, daB es eine Kritik
gegen die heutige musikalische Situation ist, doch insoweit eine spezielle Art von Kritik,
als die Kritik selbst mit Mittlen der Musik erfolgt.... Die ,verbale Partitur< ist nur ein
Aspekt dieser Kritik, und zwar der eher ironische. Der andere Aspekt ist aber das Stick
selbst." Ligeti, cited in Ove Nordwall, GyorgyLigeti: Eine Monographie(Mainz: Schott,
1971), 7-
47 "Was mich heutzutage so st6rt, sind vor allem die Ideologien (simtliche Ideolo-
gien, indem sie stur und intolerant gegen alles uibrige sind), und Poeme Symphonique
richtet sich vor allem gegen diese. So bin ich einigermaBen stolz, daB ich ohne jeden
Text, allein mit Musik, Kritik ausiiben konnte. Es ist durchwegs kein Zufall, daB Poeme
Symphonique sowohl von den Kleinbiirgers abgelehnt wird (siehe Verbot der TV-
Sendung in Holland), als ebenso von den scheinbaren >Radikalen? .... Radikalismus
und Kleinburgertum befinden sich nicht einmal so entfernt voneinander: beide tragen
die Scheuklappen des Banausentums." Ligeti, cited in Nordwall, Ligeti,8.
DROTT
making all too explicit their implicit absurdity.48By deflating itself as an

event, PoBmeSymphonique risks deflating all such events by extension.
Recuperation, Part 1: Stockhausen's Originale

Ligeti's experience with Fluxus clearly solidified his belief in art's
autonomy from everyday life. In the letter to Nordwall cited above,
Ligeti's disillusionment with the radical wing of the contemporary mu-
sical scene is apparent. It is easy to understand why Ligeti's sympathies
toward such radicalism waned as the humor that permeated the earlier
Fluxus performances gave way to more militant stances vis-a-vis art's
social functions. (Recall, in this respect, Ligeti's comment cited above
that Fluxus artists "take their job too seriously.") One event in particu-
lar revealed the ideological fault lines that existed in Fluxus itself, at
the same time that it underscored the points of both divergence and
overlap between avant-garde and modernist impulses.
In September 1964, Maciunas, along with Henry Flynt and some
others, picketed the American premiere of Stockhausen's theater-piece
Originale.49What prompted this protest was a series of pamphlets pub-
lished by Flynt in the months preceding the performance, which alleged 229
that Stockhausen's music was ethnocentric, elitist, and served the inter-
ests of the ruling classes. It was, as one of Flynt's broadsides put it, the
"musical decoration of fascism." It may seem somewhat odd that Stock-
hausen's work was singled out for critique. Originalewas a loosely orga-
nized theater work, seemingly in accord with Cage's theater pieces of
the period (another point of reference is the chaotic atmosphere of the
happenings pioneered by Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, and Jim Dine,
among others). Originale,as it was initially conceived, presents the ac-
tions of 12 "originals," artist-friends of Stockhausen's as well as local
eccentrics from Cologne. The cast members were to perform everyday
48 OwenSmithhas observedthat the role of humorin Fluxuspublicationsand per-

formanceswas a source of tension. Although Maciunasemphasizedthe gag-likeand
vaudevillianaspectsof Fluxuspieces as a wayof attackingthe aestheticsphereand its pre-
tensions,othersviewedhumor as impedingthe politicalaimsof Fluxus:"Manyof the Eu-
ropeanssawthe increasingemphasison humoras a depoliticizationof Fluxusobjectives.
... The influence of the less politicallymotivatedFluxusartistson Maciunaswas taken
as evidence that Fluxus was losing its confrontational edge and becoming non-
political.... Maciunas,though,sawthe incorporationof humorinto Fluxusnot only as a
means to attack higher art but also as a way to create a 'non-art reality' that would attract
an increased audience." Smith, Fuxus, 141. Smith also notes that the publication of the
first number of ccVTREbrought this issue to a head.
49 For firsthand accounts of the
protest and its consequences for Fluxus, see Henry
Flynt, "Mutations of the Vanguard: Pre-Fluxus, During Fluxus, Late Fluxus," in UbiFluxus,
114-15; and Higgins, in 1962 WiesbadenFluxus 1982, 114-15; See also Fricke, 38-41; and
Jerome Kohl, "Die Rezeption der Musik und Gedanken Stockhausens in Amerika," in In-
ternationalesStockhausen-Symposium i998 (Saarbrucken: PFAU Verlag, 1999), 76-77.
actions (the painter paints, the actor acts, the child plays, and so on),
with little apparent structure relating the various activities-although
Stockhausen "composed" the order and timing of the activities in a
quasi-mobile score. In its first incarnation (in Cologne in 1961), the
cast of Originalefeatured artists who would later figure prominently in
Fluxus, such as Paik (indeed, it was in these performances that Paik did
his first renditions of Zenfor Head). Similarly, much of the audience
(and even some of the cast) of the New York performances were them-
selves "official" members of Fluxus (Paik again) or fellow-travelers in
the downtown avant-garde (such as Jackson MacLow and Allan
Kaprow).
The division of Fluxus into picketers and participants not only re-
vealed but further widened fissures within the group, leading some to
see this event as marking the end of Fluxus in its "heroic" phase.50
Specifically, the event underscored the uncomfortable co-existence of
"liberationist" and "collectivist" tendencies in and around Fluxus.
Whereas exponents of the former (Higgins, Paik) championed the in-
dividual's freedom to make art from anything in any situation, the lat-
ter emphasized the need to redirect the social energies that are pre-
230 sumably held in check by art. Both represent radical attitudes, but the
former retains a covert sympathy with the aesthetic while the latter does
not. Such differences were not, however, apparent to all. The free-form
nature of Stockhausen's theater piece was such that at least one re-
viewer mistook the protest taking place outside the concert hall to be
part of the performance.51 The aim of Maciunas and Flynt may have
been to criticize Stockhausen's allegiance to the principles of "serious
culture," but to the outsider it seemed as though they themselves were
accomplices to the work, unwittingly sublated back into the aesthetic
sphere that they wished to escape. But it is perhaps this ironic situation
-that Stockhausen's work could threaten to incorporate anti-art pos-
50 The
phrase "heroic period" is taken from Stewart Home, The Assault on Culture:
UtopianCurrentsfrom Lettrismeto Class War (London: Aporia Press and Unpopular Books,
1988), 50. Home argues that following the Originaleprotest "Maciunas gave way to the
demands of the scabs and removed political issues from the fluxus agenda. Flynt dis-
tanced and disassociated himself from the movement ... The heroicperiod was over,
fluxus could do no more than slowly degenerate." Home, Assault on Culture,55. Compare
Home's evaluation to that of Dick Higgins, who takes a dim view of the Originaleprotest
in contrast: "[Maciunas] kept trying to be boss. He got very angry when a group of Fluxus
people decided to join some artists who weren't Fluxus people in a big performance that
was kind of a circus, called Originale("Or-ee-ghee-noll-eh").... Some people say Fluxus
died that day...." Higgins, "AChild's History," 174.
51 See Kohl, "Rezeption," 77. Kohl notes that reviews of the New York premiere of
Originalein MusicalAmericaand the New YorkTimesmistook the protestors for performers;
only the reporter from the VillageVoiceseems to have recognized that the protest was to
be taken at face value.
DROTT
turing into its voracious maw-that explains what disturbed Flynt and
Maciunas about Originalein particular and the modernist attitude in
general. Stockhausen's theater-piece, by aping the experimental perfor-
mance practices pioneered by Cage, Fluxus artists, and others, threat-
ened to eviscerate the critical content of those practices. Instead of
serving as a parody of the fetishistic rituals of concert life, the extreme
-and at times even threatening-actions of someone like Paik became,
in the context of Originale,just another part of that same concert-life,
just one spectacle among others. Originalewas therefore antithetical to
Maciunas's desire to render art into a "nonprofessional" and "nonelite"
pursuit. Insofar as it celebrates "originals," the work appears to set up
an unbridgeable gulf between the performers and the audience.52
Originalecan in fact be understood as part of an expansion of serial
techniques in the late 195os and 196os, an expansion that increasingly
encroached upon the avant-garde's territory. Beginning in the mid
1950s, Stockhausen and others started to move away from the straight-
forward organization of pitch, duration, dynamics, and timbre in order
to incorporate evermore abstract categories: density of texture, spatial
location of performers, degrees of indeterminacy, among others.53 By
the early 6os, with works like Originale,serial technique seems to have 231
reached such a degree of abstraction that any content could, in princi-
ple, be subject to serial manipulation. This is evident enough in Stock-
hausen's program notes for the piece:
Self-sufficientmoments linked accordingto their degrees of intensity,

duration, density,renewal quotient, sphere of influence, activity,si-
multaneitysequence.... One turns into another:contrastsare medi-
ated. Blackis a degree of white:scale of valuesof grey.
Things separated in different times and spaces-people, activities,

events from daily life (nothing pretends to be 'as if', nothing is
'meant';everythingis composed, everythingmeans itself)-are com-
pressed into one space, into one time: theatre.54
The reference to "daily life" in the second paragraph sits uneasily with
the formalizing tendency exhibited by the first, in that the ostensible
immediacy of the work's content is subject to the numerous mediations
52 Attinello offers a
slightly different interpretation of Stockhausen's work, arguing
that by celebrating local "eccentrics," Stockhausen "shows that he literally missed the
point (or possibly the different points) of absurdism, and reduces the entire Cageian ex-
periment to mere eccentricity."Attinello, "Interpretation of Chaos," 167.
53 For a discussion of the "centrifugal"expansion of serial techniques and its ramifi-
cations during this period, see Gianmario Borio, MusikalischeAvantgarde,23.
54 Stockhausen,
Originale:musikalischeTheater,no. 12, 2/3 (1961) (Vienna: Univer-
sal Edition 1966).
that Stockhausen describes. Hence, extra-aesthetic actions are reduced

to events bearing a purely formal value, incorporated into the work as
long as they are measured along one or another of Stockhausen's para-
metric scales. Any impulse that might burst through the bounds of the
aesthetic sphere is presumably contained by the logic of his system. In-
stead of desublimating art, joining it to everyday experience, Stock-
hausen's work resublimates extra-aesthetic activities, reducing them, in
Peter Burger's terms, to the level of"artistic means."55
Recuperation, Part 2: Ligeti's Revision of Poeme Symphonique

Ligeti's adamant rejection of the avant-garde program in the years
following the premiere of PoemeSymphoniquedoes not mean that the
avant-garde moment exerted no influence on his music or aesthetic. In
a sense, Ligeti's relationship with Fluxus is typical of the generally sym-
biotic relationship that existed between the high modernist camp and
the avant-garde in the 195os and 196os. While avant-garde composers
used the high modernist style as a sort of negative pole, a handy repre-
sentative of the aesthetic attitude they hoped to transcend (indeed, the
232 existence of art is a precondition of any anti-art movement), the high
modernists just as often appropriated the techniques of avant-garde
composers, depoliticizing them and putting them to work toward aes-
thetic ends. Stockhausen's Originaleis a straightforward example of this
tendency.
In Ligeti's case, the appropriation of the experimental is a circular
affair. Unlike Stockhausen, who was seen by many as willing to claim
the ideas of others for himself, the musical fruit of Ligeti's interaction
with Fluxus was to be found in PoemeSymphonique.56 The impact that
the ticking, uncoordinated metronomes of PoemeSymphoniquehad on
Ligeti's later music is well known. Many commentators have noted that
55
Burger argues that this reduction of avant-gardiste practices is present as well in
neo-avant-garde movements, a category which would include Fluxus: The "post-avant-
garde" phase is characterized "by saying that it revived the category of work and that the
procedures invented by the avant-garde with anti-artistic intent are being used for artistic
ends." Burger, Theory,57.
56 The musical element was hardly banished from his Fluxus pieces: Recall the "op-
eratic" interpretation of the audience's reaction in Die ZukunftderMusik. By seeking out
the musical features inherent in a nonmusical event, Ligeti can be understood as moving
in the opposite direction of core Fluxus artists. Indeed, it is tempting to view Ligeti's "sce-
nario" to Die ZukunftderMusik as one possible stimulus-among others, of course-for a
number of contemporaneous and later pieces. His division of the audience into broad
types in the text is echoed in the idealized social interaction presented in Aventuresand
NouvellesAventures(1962-65), while the aestheticization of the mob resonates with later
pieces, like the Kyrie from the Requiem(1965), with its swarms of voices and thick micro-
polyphonic texture. Instead of using the event genre as a means of transcending music as
an aesthetic practice, Ligeti treats it as a source for subsequent works.
DROTT
the "meccanico" style he developed in the later 196os was a direct out-
growth of the work. As Ligeti himself put it in an interview from 1968:
"If you listen now to the work for metronomes, after hearing the pizzi-
cato movement from the String Quartet [i.e. the third movement] or
the work for harpsichord, Continuum, you realise that the piece for
metronomes was a preparatory stage for this pizzicato-movement."57In
these works the unsynchronized metric layers recall the point in Poeme
Symphoniquewhen the texture has been pared down to a small enough
number of metronomes that the conflicting tempi may emerge. The
"meccanico" works thus represent a final stage of aesthetic recupera-
tion, wherein the musical qualities of PoemeSymphoniqueare incorpo-
rated into a more conventionally musical milieu.
Just as interesting as the textures that Poemelater inspired is what
became of the work itself. The revised version of Poeme Symphonique
that has since been published by Schott presents a striking contrast in
format and content to the earlier version published by Maciunas.58At
a material level, the two versions occupy disparate spheres. In Maciu-
nas's ccVTRE,the text of the piece is collaged on to the bottom of a
jumbled sheet of newspaper. By contrast, the high-end production val-
ues of Schott's edition (glossy cover, photographs of Ligeti and metro- 233
nomes, translations of the German instructions into English and
French) not only render the item much more desirable as a commodity
but also lend what is still but a set of instructions all of the airs and
graces of a conventional score. Moreover, the instructions themselves
have been pared down considerably, so that the reader is presented
with a straightforward, no-nonsense text. Attention is focused on the
piece's seriousness-that is, on its stature as a proper work of art.
What remains in place from the earlier version is as significant as
what has changed. For instance, Ligeti still instructs performers to
place the metronomes on resonators so as to augment their volume.
In addition, he insists, as before, upon the careful winding of the
metronomes to preserve the overall form of the work.59Shorn of its hu-
mor, of the extraneous directions that weigh down the earlier version,
Ligeti's concern for projecting a clear formal trajectory onto the sound
of the ticking metronomes comes to the fore. The revision not only dis-
cards the overtly ironic dimension of Poemebut at the same time retains
its stress on the work's musicality, a quality that was certainly present in
57
Ligeti, in Ligetiin Conversation,1o8.
58
Although the copyright date on the score is 1982, it was not released by Schott
until the 1990s.
59 "The metronomes are wound up four half-turns (180 degrees) to guarantee an
adequate performance length of 15 to 20 minutes. It is very important that no ...
metronome is wound up twice." Ligeti, directions, n.p.
the earlier version but hidden beneath the veneer of experimentalism.

The metronome's potential to act as an embodiment of the musical
quotidian is thus undercut by the ascendancy of this emphasis on form.
Like the daily activities portrayed in Stockhausen's Originale,the imme-
diacy of the metronomes is blunted by treating them as a neutral
source material.
Among the positive revisions that Ligeti made to the score, a few
stand out. First, the directions call for the performers to set up the
metronomes prior to the arrival of the audience. Ligeti justifies this in
the notes to the score by reasoning that it casts into relief the purely
mechanical aspect of the work: "The experience of a number of perfor-
mances led me to alter the piece such that it would seem to 'interpret'
itself without visible human participation. Thus the metronomes are set
in motion before the public enters the hall, and being confronted
solely by the ticking instruments, the public is unmistakably made
aware of the mechanical, automatic nature of the music"6? The deci-
sion to remove the preparations from the sight of the audience re-
moves at the same time one of the more obviously antagonistic features
of the earlier version, the protracted delay caused by the performers'
234 careful winding of the metronomes.
The gulf separating the revised version of PoemeSymphoniquefrom
the original is most fully disclosed by another change that Ligeti makes
to the instructions. The new version of the score concludes: "All
metronomes are set in motion as simultaneously as possible. As soon as
all metronomes are ticking, the performers leave the stage. While they
are [taking] their seats in the concert hall, the audience, which has
been waiting outside, is let in and should sit down as quickly and qui-
etly as possible. The audience should remain absolutely silent until the
last metronome has stopped ticking." What is intriguing is his insistence
that the audience remain silent throughout the performance, suggest-
ing that in Ligeti's mind the mode of reception fitting for the piece is
one of concentrated contemplation. This hypothesis is confirmed at
the end of the notes to the revised score, where he comments on what
the appropriate comportment of the audience should be in listening to
the work: "PoemeSymphoniquefor loo Metronomes demands patient,
unhurried listening and a willingness to let oneself become accustomed
to the process of gradual transformation of rhythmic patterns." Musical
considerations that were tucked away in the earlier version of the score
60
Ligeti, notes, n.p. Maria Kostakeva'spersuasive reading of the work underlines its
mechanical aspect. She contends that the work plays on the ironic juxtaposition of "hu-
manized" metronomes and the objectified passivity of the audience. See Kostakeva, Die
imagindreGattung:iiberdas musiktheatralische
WerkG. Ligetis(Frankfurt:Lang, 1996), 59.
DROTT
now rise to the surface. Although one may find amusing Ligeti's
straight-faced pronouncement that the audience is to remain silent
throughout, the intentionally gag-like aspect of PoemeSymphoniqueis all
but washed away in the new version of the score. The piece has become
an object of individual aesthetic contemplation.
Conclusion
As I noted at the opening of this article, Ligeti's Fluxus pieces have
long been viewed as simple jests-which is hardly an inappropriate way
to consider them, so long as one realizes that they are, like other Fluxus
pieces, jests that demand to be taken seriously. At present a retrospec-
tive elevation of Ligeti's Fluxus pieces is under way. The signs that these
works are gaining visibility within Ligeti's oeuvre have multiplied in re-
cent years, as witnessed in the recording of PoemeSymphoniquethat Sony
released in 1996, the recording of Ligeti's TroisBagatellesby Frederik
Ullen in 1996,61 and the publication in 2ooo of the score of the Trois
Bagatelles.62As Ligeti's music has secured its position in the modernist
canon, pieces that once seemed marginal are now subject to reevaluation.
The recuperation of Ligeti's works is not surprising, given their 235
covert sympathies with the modernist project. But even the most unre-
constructed experimentalists have found it difficult to escape from the
aesthetic sphere altogether. Many of the activities and objects produced
by artists who opposed this sphere have, with time, been reclaimed by
it. As Allan Kaprow has observed, "all gestures, thoughts and deeds may
become art at the whim of the arts world."63 By the last third of the
20th century, art had reached the stage where anything could become
art by fiat. This is, in part, a legacy of the avant-gardemovements. Rather
than dismantling museums and concert halls, their extra-aesthetic ob-
jects and events have been incorporated into the ever-widening field
of the art world and its supporting institutions. Viewed negatively, this
development spells the containment or co-opting of the avant-garde's
critical capacities; viewed positively, it spells a democratization and
opening of what has traditionally been the closed shop of the art world.
Butjust as the past few decades have witnessed capital's subsumption of
domains once felt to stand outside its limits, thereby removing any priv-
ileged "safe"position from which opposition can be staged, so too has
the steady enclosure of the open spaces outside the artistic sphere pro-
ceeded apace, robbing the avant-garde of the ground upon which it has
61 Frederik Ullen, Ligeti:The CompletePiano Music, vol. i, BIS CD-783 BIS.

62
Ligeti, Trois bagatellesfur Klavier:i96i (Mainz: Schott, 2000).
63 Allan
Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press, 1993), loo.
traditionally taken its stand. For this latter reason, Kaprow's outlook on
anti-art is not terribly sanguine:
Antiart... is embracedin every case as proart,and therefore, from

the standpointof one of its chief functions,it is nullified.You cannot
be againstart when art invites its own 'destruction'as a Punch-and-
Judyact among the repertoryof poses art maytake.64
This explains the fate of many Fluxus artists, who (with the possible ex-
ception of Henry Flynt) never did quite get around to giving up art.
Such is the fate of Fluxus: Although many of its original members are
active to this day, this has not prevented its objects from being en-
shrined in museums (such as the Fluxus room at the Tate Modern in
London) or its events from being revived in commemorative concerts.
One should not be tempted, however, to read this failure as neces-
sary or inevitable. Even if the critic Paul Mann is correct when he ar-
gues that the binaristic logic of the avant-garde makes it "not the victim
of recuperation but its agent, its proper technology,"65 this may be
understood as a local, tactical mistake more than a fatal flaw in the
236 avant-garde project as such. Indeed, the fate of Fluxus may have been
determined as much by the shifting position of "high culture" within
European and American society as by its tactical or logical missteps.
This is particularly apparent in the United States. Although Fluxus's
attack on institutional culture came at a point when such culture still
held a relatively high level of prestige in American society at large-the
early 196os witnessed a great deal of investment in the arts, in part to
overcome the perceived culture gap with America's Soviet adversary-
this moment proved transient. Since then institutional music in Amer-
ica, and to a lesser extent Europe, has been steadily displaced by popu-
lar culture, rendering the attack on high culture largely moot. More
than the historical avant-garde of futurism and surrealism, Fluxus ap-
pears to have been shadowboxing, fighting against an entity that-as
powerful and influential as it might have appeared at the time-was
about to see the value of its cultural capital plummet. In the case of
music, this devaluation has been precipitous. Its prestige eroded, ab-
sorbed into a broader cultural economy, classical music maintains a
spectral existence in the form of a niche market. Given art's lack of cen-
trality among the ideological supports of late capitalism, attacks on art
64
Kaprow,Essays, oo.
65 Paul Mann, The Theory-Death of theAvant-Garde(Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press,
1991 ), 91. Mann's position-that the avant-garde's opposition to social institutions repre-
sented a form of dependence, and as such led inexorably to its recuperation-takes a risk
inherent in any oppositional stance and turns it into a virtual ontological given.
DROTT
have lost much of the force they once possessed. They are met with be-
musement or they are ignored.66 In this respect, Ligeti's Die Zukunft der
Musik was only half correct in its assessment of music's future. As much
as Ligeti's pointed silence concerning the future of music might have
an unintended connotation now that "new music" as a category has all
but fallen off the cultural map, the outrage that this silence once pro-
voked seems less a glimpse of music's future than a souvenir of its mod-
ernist past.
University of Texas at Austin
Appendix: Gy6rgy Ligeti, Poeme Symphonique (1962) for 100

metronomes
[Transcription of text printed in ccVTREno. 1; translated by Eugene Hartzell]
"Poeme Symphonique" (for 1oo metronomes) requires, as its primary condi-

tion for performance, 1oo metronomes. 237
Their acquisition may be accomplished in several ways. For example, they may
be borrowed from one or more music instrument firms. (When the pertinent
special shops are not to be found on the spot, it is recommended that inquiry
be made to this end at so-called music dealers). For the purpose of attaining
the desired result (i.e., the permission to borrow), some comments may be use-
ful with regard to the value of the advertising to the firm, gained through its
readiness to loan. In this connection one may offer to print the name(s) of the
firm(s) on the concert poster, in the programme book or on a placard to be
placed on the stage, or one or another combination of the listed possibilities. If
necessary, the announcement may take the form of a verbal communication,
either by itself or as a means of following up the printed announcement.
Another way to bring about the acquisition of the metronomes is to insert ad-
vertisements in the newspapers. In this case all private persons will be invited to
be so generous as to make temporarily available the metronomes in their pos-
session for use in the performance. In cities which have their own music
66
Although my position is close to Peter Biirger's notion of the false sublation of art
into everyday life-which is to say, the erosion of art's autonomy in the face of the de-
mands made upon it by the market-I differ from Burger insofar as I do not see this
subsumption as marking the end of the ideological function of art. This subsumption
may mark the end of art's autonomy in terms of its production (although it is unclear to
what extent this production under capitalism was ever free from economic concerns), but
this does not spell the end of the art consumer's experience of aesthetic autonomy, that
is, the tangible experience that art is something apart from life. (For this reason I believe,
contra Bfirger, that the possibility still exists for an effectively critical avant-garde, albeit
one that would have to take account of the changed relation between art and the market.)
schools*, this request can be made directly to the teaching staff or the student
body, with the assistance of the customary media of communication. In the two
last-named instances it is recommended that the owners of the required instru-
ments be asked to put some means of identification on them, to prevent their
being misplaced or mixed up. This can be achieved, for example, through the
obligatory affixing of the owner's name by means of a suitable strip of paper**.
Should it happen that a Maecenas makes it possible to borrow the metronomes
for the purpose of performance, his name-after consultation with the person
in question-shall be made public.*** The composition is provided with a
passe-partout dedication: on each occasion the work is dedicated to the person
(or persons) who have helped to bring about the performance through the
contribution of the instruments, by any means whatsoever, whether it be the ex-
ecutive council of a city, one or more music schools****, one or more busi-
nesses, one or more private persons. If a patron can be found who will remove
once for all the financial hindrances to the performability of the work by buy-
ing the necessary metronomes and guaranteeing the transportation costs which
arise from time to time, "Poeme Symphonique" will be dedicated from then on
to him alone.
In particular, the following instructions for performance are to be carried out:
1) It is preferred that pyramid-shaped metronomes be employed.
2) The work is performed by io players under the leadership of a conductor.
238 Each player operates lo metronomes.
3) The metronomes must be brought onto the stage with completely run-down
clockwork (that is, in an unwound condition). It is expedient that they be
placed on suitable resonators. Loudspeakers, distributed throughout the con-
cert hall, can serve to raise the dynamic level. It is recommended that each of
the o groups of lo metronomes be arranged about a microphone which is
connected to an appropriated loudspeaker*****. The distance between the
metronome-group and the microphone, as well as the regulation of the dy-
namic level of the allocated loudspeaker******, are to be differently set in
order to achieve the proper effects of closeness and distance.
4) At a sign from the conductor the players wind up the metronomes. Follow-
ing this, the speeds of the pendulums are set: within each group they must be
different for each instrument.
"Poeme Symphonique" may be performed in two versions:
1) All metronomes are wound equally tightly. In this version the chosen
metronome numbers (oscillation speeds) wholly determine the time it will take
for the several metronomes to run down: those which swing faster will run
down faster, the others more slowly.
2) The several metronomes of a group are wound unequally: the first of the o
metronomes the tightest, the second a little less, the tenth the least tightly. Care
must be taken, however, that the winding and the regulation of the speeds of
the several metronomes are carried out completely independently of each
other. Thus the metronome in each group which has been most tightly wound
must not be the fastest or the slowest in its oscillation.
DROTT
The conductor arranges with the players beforehand the method and the de-
gree of winding.
The performance may be considered ideal, if
a) in the first version all the metronomes
b) in the second version the first metronome of each group
is (are) completely wound.
The ideal manner of performance is the obligatory one. Non-ideal perfor-
mances are only permitted if weighty reasons are present which force the oc-
currence of a deviation from the ideal performance, such as the playing of a
shortened version of the work. In this unwelcome case the conductor must set,
with the performers, the number of turns for (1) all the metronomes or (2) the
first of each group, according to whether the first or second version is being
played. The winding-up and the regulation of the oscillation speeds (the setting
of the metronome numbers) must be done ceremoniously and formally. At the
conclusion of the preparatory activity comes a motionless silence of 2-6 min-
utes, the length of which is to be left to the discretion of the conductor. At a
sign from the conductor*******, all the metronomes are set in motion by the
players. To carry out this action as quickly as possible, it is recommended that
several fingers of each hand be used at the same time. With a sufficient amount
of practice, the performers will find that they can set 4 to 6 instruments in mo-
tion simultaneously. As soon as the metronomes have been started in this fash-
ion, the players absent themselves as quietly as possible******** from the stage, 239
led by the conductor, leaving the metronomes to their own devices.
"Poeme Symphonique" is considered as ended when the last metronome has
run down. It is up to the conductor to decide the duration of the pause, before
he leads the players back on to the stage to receive the thanks due from the
public.
*resp., colleges of music

**It is recommended that the use of fountain pen or ball-point pen be
prescribed.
***See in this connection the paragraph on the music instrument firms.
****resp., colleges of music
*****or group of loudspeakers
******resp., groups of loudspeakers
*******downbeat
********Suitable footwear is requested.
ABSTRACT
During a brief period in the early 1960s, Fluxus, a neo-avant-garde

group active in the United States, Europe, and Japan, engaged the
unlikely participation of Gyorgy Ligeti. Ligeti's three contributions to
Fluxus publications-the Trois Bagatellesfor David Tudor (1961), Die
Zukunft der Musik-eine kollektiveKomposition(1961), and Poeme Sym-
phonique for 100 metronomes (1962)-proved both compatible with
and divergent from the general ideology and aesthetic of Fluxus. Cen-
tral to the consideration of Ligeti's Fluxus pieces is the contentious re-
lationship that existed between experimental and modernist branches
of new music at the time. Ligeti's flirtation with more experimental
forms of composition not only reflects the general dynamic of this rela-
tionship but also illuminates how Ligeti positioned himself within the
field of European contemporary music ca. 1960 and in subsequent years.
240

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Ligeti in Fluxus

Author(s): Eric Drott

O ne of the more curious episodes in Gy6rgy

I wish to thank Robert Morgan, Patrick McCreless, Kristina

Given such posterior disclaimers, perhaps Richard Toop is right when

6 Evidence of Maciunas's inclusive

7 Owen Smith has succinctly described such pieces as "concrete, simply-structured

Before Maciunas could assemble and publish An Anthology,he was

Modern and Avant-garde

FIGURE 1. George Brecht, Drip Music (DripEvent)

edly comprehensive map of artistic activity.Along one axis he charts the

11 Maciunas, "Neo-Dada in Music, Theater,

Hence Maciunas's early conception of anti-art is indebted to the

13 Maciunas, "Fluxus Manifesto," (1963), repr. in UbiFluxus, 217.

plicitly recognized the ideological function of art under capitalism. Art,

representing the technical or scientific cutting-edge.)19 Like the histori-

19 Furthermore, the scientific concept of the avant-garde prevalent in musicological

Television).23 By the 197os, with the flourishing of sound installation as

FIGURE 2. Poster for Fluxus Festspiele, Wiesbaden, September 1962

Following the concerts at Wiesbaden was a series of concerts across

I 5 3'~ 0I ~ ~~~~ m l ~'

tional in the Fluxus repertoire. Whereas most Fluxus scores renounced

When I was once invited to lecture before an academic audience on

Ligeti records the audience's negative response to his silent "lecture"

32 Quoted from "

The evolution of PoemeSymphoniqueand its impact on Ligeti's later

38 For Ligeti's account of this affair, see "Music-MakingMachines," lo.

number of ways of realizing this score, an obvious solution is to melt a

ing a number of uncoordinated processes or events.42 But just as the

42 The "monomorphic" nature of Fluxus events contrasts with contemporaneous

amplification of the metronomes places the audible dimension of the

44 See Griffiths, Ligeti,39.

them to laugh at the traditions of art music. In a letter to Ove Nordwall

PoemeSymphonique occupies, or so I think, a special place, in that it is a

What bothers me nowadays are above all ideologies (all ideologies, in

It is the frivolity of Poeme Symphoniquethat provokes the petit-bourgeoisie

making all too explicit their implicit absurdity.48By deflating itself as an

Recuperation, Part 1: Stockhausen's Originale

48 OwenSmithhas observedthat the role of humorin Fluxuspublicationsand per-

Self-sufficientmoments linked accordingto their degrees of intensity,

Things separated in different times and spaces-people, activities,

that Stockhausen describes. Hence, extra-aesthetic actions are reduced

Recuperation, Part 2: Ligeti's Revision of Poeme Symphonique

the earlier version but hidden beneath the veneer of experimentalism.

61 Frederik Ullen, Ligeti:The CompletePiano Music, vol. i, BIS CD-783 BIS.

Antiart... is embracedin every case as proart,and therefore, from

Appendix: Gy6rgy Ligeti, Poeme Symphonique (1962) for 100

[Transcription of text printed in ccVTREno. 1; translated by Eugene Hartzell]

"Poeme Symphonique" (for 1oo metronomes) requires, as its primary condi-

*resp., colleges of music

During a brief period in the early 1960s, Fluxus, a neo-avant-garde

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