THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

compact and diffuse material and spatial location established contrasts at first, these are
eventually undercut to help achieve this goal of complete mixture.
Other compositions by Ligeti define trajectories in other parameters as a global
direction for their forms. Pièce électronique no. 3 and the first movement of Apparitions
share a common trajectory in terms of register; both pieces begin in the lower part of their
range, and end in the extremely high register. Moreover, both pieces play with the
distinction of external and internal as part of their schematic forms. In Ligeti’s description
of Apparitions he maintains that the impulsive events, such as the sharp staccato notes and
the “wild” passages, mentioned above have an effect on the more sustained clusters (what
Ligeti terms “states”), “because the degree of state alteration is approximately
proportional to the attack strength of events, the impression is created of a causal
relationship between event and state alteration. This causal relationship is of course only
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apparent: it is an element of a merely imaginary musical syntax.” Thus the internal
agitation of the sustained clusters is effected by their bombardment with external impulses.
At the climax of the movement, this relationship, significantly, coincides with the registral
plan for the movement. As Ligeti describes it,
a particularly penetrating pizzicato [m. 73]... is the strongest attack that has
occurred in the movement and thus must have (in conformance to the
compositional principles in use) the furthest-reaching consequences. Actually the
entire form is tipped over at this point. This is accomplished through a sudden
alteration of register: up to now the deepest registers have dominated... from now
on the high registers are in command, the lower remaining only here and there as
traces. This register reversal (inversion) represents the most striking development
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György Ligeti, “States, Events, Transformations” (trans. Jonathan Bernard) in Perspectives of New
Music, vol. 31, no. 1 (Winter 1993), 170.
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