THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

demonstrates a thorough understanding of serial techniques and the rigors of this type of
musical construction, but a more distanced attitude towards some of the extremes to
which the avant-garde had come to rely upon the row.
Although ostensibly under the tutelage of Stockhausen, Ligeti worked more
closely with Gottfried Michael Koenig and Cornelius Cardew, in the realization of
Artikulation, and he cites Koenig as his principal mentor in the medium. Nonetheless,
Ligeti developed a unique solution to the problem of working with this new medium, and
does not merely adopt the techniques of these more established composers. While
Stockhausen built his electronic compositions from the minutia up, seeking in his words,
“to bring all the spheres of electronic music under a unified musical time, and to find one
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general set of laws to govern every sphere of musical time itself,” Ligeti takes a
dramatically different approach to the composition of electronic music in Artikulation.
Most notably, he uses aleatory operations at the smallest levels of sonic construction,
while still retaining full control over the shape of the piece as a whole.
II. Compositional Method
In addition to its divergence from Stockhausen’s serial techniques, Ligeti’s method
of composing Artikulation involves procedures which more directly and organically
embrace the technology involved in composing with magnetic tape. Most notable is
Ligeti’s use of serially inspired methods as a rational way of generating potential sonic
3Stockhausen,
Karlheinz. “The Concept of Unity in Electronic Music” trans. Elaine Barkin, Perspectives of
New Music 1, no. 1 (1962), 48.
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