Essential Ligeti
Music for 100 ticking metronomes, colours for hearing – and piano writing so rhythmically demanding that to this day it seems unrealisable by human hands. Meet the Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006), who changed the course of music history in the second half of the 20th century.
Read more…The great film director Stanley Kubrick contributed greatly to Ligeti's popularity when he used part of 'Atmophères', 'Lux Aeterna' and Requiem for his brooding and visionary epic '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968). But it's no joke that Ligeti's 'Poème symphonique' for 100 metronomes (1962) is one of the most important works of the 20th century. A hundred mechanical metronomes, differently wound up, are placed on stage and left alone – until the final one falls silent. What starts off as mass sound transitions into chaotically swelling sonic waves. Finally come theatrical moments of the greatest tragicomedy (particularly beloved by the composer) as the remaining machines strive to outlive one another. Which will tick the longest?
Shortly after composing 'Poème symphonique', Ligeti was appointed professor at the Musikhochschule in Hamburg, where he began exploring similar questions in music for real people. How can a straightforward rhythmic idea provide the germ for something great, something apocalyptic? How can one create one's own exciting musical language out of the broadest and most varied musical – and scientific – knowledge without it becoming either facile or overly intellectual?
Ligeti provided the answer.