György Ligeti – Musica

Ricercata No. 2-11 with sheet

music

György Ligeti – Musica Ricercata

2-11 with sheet music

György Ligeti
György Ligeti, in full György Sándor Ligeti, (born May 28,
1923, Diciosânmartin [now Tîrnăveni], Transylvania,
Romania—died June 12, 2006, Vienna, Austria), a leading
composer of the branch of avant-garde music concerned
principally with shifting masses of sound and tone colours.
Ligeti, the great-nephew of violinist Leopold Auer, studied
and taught music in Hungary until the Hungarian Revolution in
1956, when he fled to Vienna; he later became an Austrian
citizen. He subsequently met avant-garde composers such as
Karlheinz Stockhausen and became associated with centres of
new music in Cologne and Darmstadt, Germany, and in Stockholm
and Vienna, where he composed electronic music (e.g.,
Artikulation, 1958) as well as music for instrumentalists and
vocalists. In the early 1960s he caused a sensation with his
Future of Music—A Collective Composition (1961) and his Poème
symphonique (1962). The former consists of the composer
regarding the audience from the stage and the audience’s
reactions to this; the latter is written for 100 metronomes
operated by 10 performers.

Most of Ligeti’s music after the late 1950s involved radically

new approaches to music composition. Specific musical
intervals, rhythms, and harmonies are often not
distinguishable but act together in a multiplicity of sound
events to create music that communicates both serenity and
dynamic anguished motion. Examples of these effects occur in
Atmosphères (1961) for orchestra; Requiem (1963–65) for
soprano, mezzo-soprano, two choruses, and orchestra; and Lux
Aeterna (1966) for chorus. These three works were later
featured in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968), which brought Ligeti a wider audience; his music
appeared in later movies, including several others by Kubrick.
In Aventures (1962) and Nouvelles Aventures (1962–65), Ligeti
attempts to obliterate the differences between vocal and
instrumental sounds. In these works the singers hardly do any
“singing” in the traditional sense.

In Ligeti’s Cello Concerto (1966), the usual concerto contrast

between soloist and orchestra is minimized in music of mainly
very long lines and slowly changing, very nontraditional
textures. Other works include Clocks and Clouds (1972–73) for
female chorus and orchestra, San Francisco Polyphony (1973–74)
for orchestra, Piano Concerto (1985–88), and Hamburg Concerto
(1999) for horn. Ligeti also wrote 18 piano études (1985–2001)
and the opera Le Grande Macabre (1978, revised 1997). Ligeti
was the recipient of many honours, including the Grand
Austrian State Prize for music (1990), the Japan Art
Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for music (1991), and
the Theodor W. Adorno Prize from the city of Frankfurt for
outstanding achievement in music (2003).

Musica Ricercata
Musica ricercata is a set of eleven pieces for piano by György
Ligeti. The work was composed from 1951 to 1953, shortly after
the composer began lecturing at the Budapest Academy of Music.
The work premiered on 18 November 1969 in Sundsvall, Sweden.
Although the ricercata (or ricercar) is an established
contrapuntal style (and the final movement of the work is in
that form), Ligeti’s title should probably be interpreted
literally as “researched music” or “sought music”. This work
captures the essence of Ligeti’s search to construct his own
compositional style ex nihilo, and as such presages many of
the more radical directions Ligeti would take in the future.

In response to a request by the Jeney Quintet, six of the

movements were arranged for wind quintet as Six Bagatelles for
Wind Quintet (1953). They are, in order: III, V, VII, VIII,
IX, X.

Eight movements (I, III, IV, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI) were
transcribed for bayan by Parisian accordionist Max Bonnay.

No. 2

II. Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale

Both the material and mood of this movement differ markedly
from the first. The principal theme is a plaintive alternation
between E♯ and F♯ (a mere semi-tone). This theme is heard both
solo (i.e., in a single octave), and in quiet (una corda)
octaves on both ends of the piano. The entrance of G near the
middle of the piece is particularly stark, being vigorously
attacked in an accelerando similar to that in the first
movement. The G continues to sound in an unmetered tremolo as
the main theme returns in a more “menacing” context. The
movement gradually dissolves, with both the main theme and
repeated G’s fading into silence.

Portions of this movement were featured on the soundtrack to

Stanley Kubrick‘s Eyes Wide Shut.