THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

in the whole extent of the movement, whose entire architecture is illuminated by
this sudden flare. 31
Thus the movement’s “architecture” must be understood as consisting of shapes
determined by two main strands, one relating to register and the other relating to this
distinction of states versus events (a distinction which involves oppositions such as attack
strength, and sustained-clipped), and it is the point at which both these strands move at
once that Ligeti identifies as the climactic and illuminating moment of the piece.
While Ligeti has denied any explicit connection between Pièce électronique no. 3
and the orchestral work Atmosphères (which took over the working title of the unfinished
electronic piece), nevertheless, a significant connection exists between the first movement
of Apparitions and the third electronic piece–namely that they have the same approach to
form based on the combination of registral shift and the interaction of internal states and
external events. The sketches for this piece include a “Structure 7” occurring 6,000 cm
(approximately 79 seconds) into the piece. Ligeti’s sketches identify the material simply
as impulses, and without further indication, this structure was left out of the Sonology
Institute’s realization. Significantly, however, this is also at this point in the piece where
one finds both a shift from lower to highest register, and also a shift from sine tones to
filtered noise as the main type of material–this much is shown in a spectrograph of the
version of this piece completed at the Sonology Institute (Figure 4.12). Thus, the event-
like impulses can be viewed as external to the cluster like states which precede it, and can
also be heard as having the same type of imaginary syntax, breaking the sine-tone clusters
31
Ligeti, “States, Events, Transformations,” 167.
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