THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

Ligeti has described the difference between composed structure and received
structure as, “the difference between music as such and musical form: ‘music’ would thus
be the purely temporal process, ‘musical form,’ conversely, the abstraction of the same
temporal process, in which the relations within the process are no longer temporal but
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present themselves as spatial.” While it is evident from the discussion above that Ligeti
was deeply concerned with crafting connections perceived, in the temporal process, as
internal or external changes, he was equally concerned with the conception of form as
spatial, and indeed with the interaction between the spatial conception of form and the
temporal process. With Glissandi and Artikulation we have seen two types of global
shape to which Ligeti returns often in his later music. The large-scale form of Glissandi is
an example of a skewed symmetry, achieved by the reversal of the tape with the addition
of filtering; the form of Artikulation is a trajectory towards increased density and ending
with the impenetrable mass of sound. These types of form are related in that they are
often intuitive, readily perceptible, and easily described as processes (the global trends in
both these examples are actually described by Ligeti in a matter of a few sentences). The
main difference between the two is a matter of either ending where it began, or ending at a
different point, usually at the other end of a sonic continuum from where the piece began.
Glissandi represents a type form that is easily conceptualized as symmetrical,
although with this piece, and others of the same type, Ligeti goes to great lengths to
disrupt or obfuscate this symmetry. In Glissandi the symmetry was emphasized by the
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Ligeti, “Form,” 783.
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