THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

change is unclear–perhaps Ligeti had to reconcile a predetermined total duration with his
system of subdividing, or perhaps he had more specific ideas for these longer durations,
that could not otherwise be accommodated. It is, after all, these longer durations that are
labeled as “objects” in the sketch. Either way this example shows both Ligeti’s meticulous
planning and attention to detail, as well has his willingness to make modifications to the
details of his plan to keep it in line with more global considerations.
Ligeti then grouped the tape recordings these short sounds together according to
similarities of sonic quality and character including, “combination of materials, pitch
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distribution, duration relationships, and intensity relationships,” and he placed the similar
sounds into bins. After this he began the aleatory process of blindly selecting strips of tape
containing individual sounds from these bins and splicing them together into longer
segments, which, in his sketches, he calls “texts.” These ten texts were differentiated by
virtue of contrasting material as follows:
1. ‘coughing’;
2. coughing and types of noise with explosion-like envelope;
3. sine tones and 20 Hz noise bands–linear and glissing;
4. dry impulses;
5. wet impulses;
6. ‘sandpaper’
7. mixture of ‘sandpaper’, filtered and unfiltered impulses, and other materials
8. ‘completely heterogeneous materials.’
9. ‘sandpaper’ reverberated noise, and ‘glissando explosions’
10. harmonic and subharmonic spectra, linear and glissing. 14
The duration of each text runs between 11 and 43 seconds. Some of these were then
subjected to further treatment, being combined, transposed, or retrograded.
13Wehinger,
Ligeti – Artikulation, 17.
14Wehinger,
Ligeti – Artikulation, 18.
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