THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

employment as part of the musical discourse. Consequently, while Doati’s descriptions of
the sounds of the piece are vivid, and his division of the piece into three main parts seems
quite plausible (although in Chapter 2, I will argue for a different conception of the piece’s
structure), these two elements are disconnected from one another; the relationship of the
former in determining the latter is unclear, as the criteria for determining divisions, let
alone the relative strengths of these divisions are often unstated.
Moreover Doati is relying solely on audition and his lack of reference to a score,
or other visual representation of the piece (only a crude diagram is given) leaves the
analysis unrefined, as shown by his statement that in his Part III, “the formal elements built
in the two previous parts, and sometimes real fragments of these parts, are composed in a
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kind of bas-relief by means of jagged amplitude envelopes.” In fact, as the composer
himself has stated, and as a more precise representation of the piece would bear out, not
just some of the elements of this section of the piece, but all of the sounds of the second
half of the piece are derived quite strictly from the first. 16
One major study of Artikulation addresses both the issue of visual representation
and that of reliance on the composer’s writings in a much different manner. Rainer
Wehinger’s graphic “listening score” for Artikulation was published in 1970 as an
introduction to the piece and its method of construction, and as a transcription of the piece
itself. Wehinger’s goal is to provide a listening guide, and thus the analysis he undertakes
is primarily devoted to explaining the development and layout of his score and the
15Ibid,
85.
16In
a discussion reprinted in Gottfried Michael Koenig, “Ligeti und die elektronische Musik” in György
Ligeti: Personalstil, Avantgardismus, Popularität (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1987), 19.
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