THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

C’s first event, which remains distinct from the rest of the region. This is followed by a
pair noise glissandi in Region E which serve a similar function. When this pair recurs at
the onset of Region K, it is again only significant as one event in a diverse heterogeneous
mixture. In each case the distinctive gestures are presented clearly at first, often at the
beginning of a region in the exposition, and in a way is significant to regional subdivisions,
and suggests that they may have importance beyond even this. In actuality, these gestures
are much more slippery and diminish in the scope of their influence from helping define
regions to defining only events, yet they are a convenient point of entrance for
understanding certain oppositions and arrangements of material, which leads to a greater
appreciation of the immense richness of the chaotic tapestry which follows.
In many ways, the workings of this piece resemble the ideas of T. W. Adorno, one
of Ligeti's contemporaries, whom he had met at Darmstadt during the previous year, and
whose influential writings Ligeti had read while still in Hungary. Adorno’s idea of
negative dialectics has deep resonances with the structure of this piece; in explaining his
grounding in Hegel, Adorno states that,
As early as the Introduction to Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel comes close to a
sense of the negativity of the dialectical logic he is expounding. That Introduction
bids us purely observe each concept until it starts moving, until it becomes
unidentical with itself by virtue of its own meaning—in other words, of its identity.
This is a commandment to analyze, not to synthesize. 32
Similarly, Artikulation presents a process where there are numerous of oppositions, that is
to say theses and antitheses, and sides of various dialogues, but while these are initially
32 T.W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton, (New York: Seabury Press, 1971), 156.
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