06.12.06
Ligeti Dies
Composer György Ligeti died today in Vienna. He was 83. His family has not disclosed the cause of death, saying only he had been seriously ill for several years.
Like so many others, I first experienced his music while watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I found his music, like the film, a transformative experience. It was one my earliest exposures to avant garde classical music, and in time that seed grew into an aesthetic universe that shaped who I am as an artist (or at least a one-time artist) and, indeed, as a person. While inevitably associated with the film, his music was for me something set apart from it…a great visitation first and partially glimpsed through the proverbial Kubrick lens. (Ironically, Ligeti successfully sued Kubrick for altering the piece Aventures, aka Adventures, in the soundtrack, adding heavily echoed vocal sounds intended to evoke the presence of the aliens during the film’s “hotel room” sequence.)
Though I did not actually hear much more of his music until much later in life, the few pieces I knew and what I managed to read about his theories of music had a tremendous impact on me, as well as many of the musicians and composers whose company and occasional collaboration I enjoyed throughout my 20s and 30s. In retrospect, I think I have Ligeti to thank for much of my notions of music as an environment that envelopes and carries one away to…someplace else. Music as a mystical experience. While that may read trite and glib, it is an idea that has had tremendous force and power for me — and it’s hardly surprising that words fail it. That is, after all, the very essence of the most powerful human experiences, and the true wellspring of art. For me, Ligeti was one of the very few capable of capturing echoes of that ultimate. I am sad at his passing, and so very grateful for his presence and work here among us.
Like a stream gently flowing
I wouldn’t know any sadness;
between mountains and valleys
I would quietly flow,
sadness, oh, I wouldn’t knowText for Ha folyóvíz volnék, an a capella choral work by György Ligeti, 1947
From Slovakian folk poety.
Some Music
“Lux aeterna” (”Eternal Light,” 1966) — A beautifully gentle performance by the London Sinfonietta Voices. [MP3, 7.6 mb]
Some Links
Gyorgy Ligeti, Central-European Composer of Bleakness and Humor, Dies at 83 (NY Times obit)
Official Gyorgy Ligeti web site (includes some MP3s)
BBC Radio 3: John Tusa interviews Gyorgy Ligeti (audio and full transcript)
Interviews, articles and more via Monk Mink Pink Punk, including the score for Poeme Symphonique (for 100 metronomes)
