THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

8 minutes.” Steinitz points to only two technical features of these works as relevant to
Ligeti’s later composition–freedom from traditional meter and the abandonment of
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“motivic and tonal organisation.” I do not wish to unjustly criticize what is an excellent
biography, for failing to be more analytical–that is not its goal–but merely to point out that
both of these comments focus on what traditional elements are now significantly removed
from Ligeti’s compositional language, rather than what elements Ligeti has employed to
replace these.
8Ibid,
81.
9Ibid,
82
10Richard
Toop, György Ligeti (London: Phaidon Press, 1999), 56.
11
Similarly, Richard Toop points to Glissandi’s “liveliness, and its good humour” 10
as the most striking features. Toop does greater justice to Artikulation, recounting its
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construction (largely according to Rainer Wehinger, whose study is one of the
exceptions to the general lack of analytical scholarship and will be discussed below) and
moreover, the significance of Ligeti’s working method in the context of the Cologne
circle. Both of these studies, while excellent biographies, tend towards one vein of
interpretation of these pieces, and while the identification of moments in the piece that
resemble spoken language, or scatological sounds helps characterize the sound world of
the piece for an audience that may not have reference to a recording, more attention to the
details of musical coherence is needed to lay claim to any significant influence on Ligeti’s
later work.
Rainer Wehinger, Ligeti – Artikulation: Elektronische Musik, eine Hörpartitur (Mainz: Schott, 1970);
Ulrich Dibelius also recounts this information in his Moderne Musik (Munich: Piper, 1966), and with
brief commentary on all three electronic pieces in his “Die zweite Sprachfindung” in György Ligeti: eine
Monographie in Essays (Mainz: Schott, 1994), 9-30, esp. 12, 15-17.
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