György Ligeti

[calimac]

The famous Hungarian composer (resident in Austria and Germany since the 1956 coup) died on Monday. His surname is pronounced LIG-ih-tee, the obits say. I knew that, but when I first heard of him I thought it was li-JET-ee.

Like many other people, I first heard his music in connection with the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Edited excerpts from two choral works, Requiem and Lux Aeterna, accompany the appearances of the monolith, and an orchestral work, Atmosphères, shows up during the "light show" sequence.

When I first saw 2001, I was eleven. I hadn't started listening to classical music yet, and everything in the film, even the Blue Danube Waltz, was entirely new to me.

The funny part is that until I got the soundtrack album, I had had no idea that the works by Ligeti were supposed to be music. I'd thought they were just sound effects.

In the nearly forty years since then, I've learned a great deal about listening to and appreciating a lot of music that did not, or would not have, appealed to my innocent eleven-year-old ear. But there are limits, and my judgment of Ligeti's work today is much the same as it was when I was eleven: it makes better sound effects than it does music. And that's all I have to say about that.

Comments

[rozk.livejournal.com]

I used to feel the same way about him, but then I listened to his Horn Trio which is the only one that comes close to equalling Brahms, and to the Piano Etudes, one of which got used by Kubrick in Eyes Wide Shut.

I cannot say I exactly like his music, even when I admire it, even to the extent that some of Boulez, say, gives me visceral pleasure.

I suspect though that one day it may break through and I will always have loved it. There has never been a point at which I didn't think of him as a real composer, and not as a charlatan like Stockhausen.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I've ever heard anything of his outside the movie. I always referred to the choral buzz they used in 2001 as "flies stuck in amber."

A horn trio sounds as if it might be accessible. I tend to prefer chamber music, with notable exceptions.

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

I think that may be a fair description of all his choral work. We sang something of his in college. It wasn't from 2001, but it was definitely more along the lines of sound effects than pure music.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"flies stuck in amber"

You may be lucky if you've never heard anything by the composer who most resembles Ligeti, the eccentric Italian, Giacinto Scelsi. He wrote a string quartet which really literally sounds like bees buzzing around in a jar, to an extent that makes that description of Ligeti seem a distant echo.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Brave of you to admit your limitations in public like this ;)

Actually, the Lygeti pieces are my favorite bits of the 2001 S/T. I've never actually heard anything else of his, though.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If I liked everything, I'd have no taste.