György Ligeti
Jun. 14th, 2006 05:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThe 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.
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.
