THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

composed for four channels of electronic sound–where the spatial distribution was part of
the compositional design and interacts quite clearly with these other oppositional
categories. The use of reverberation is also quite important to electronic music and was a
common technique for altering the timbre of a given sound. Particularly, reverb lengthens
the decay of a given sound and thus affects part of the attack-sustain-decay model of
envelope that is not addressed by other oppositions.
Furthermore, I have eliminated some of Cogan’s original categories that seem less
relevant to these compositions, such as those categories having to do with beating, which
would require more sustained sounds to operate. These categories could certainly be of
use to other pieces–perhaps even of primary importance in analyzing pieces such as those
by Alvin Lucier which consciously address this acoustic phenomenon (his Crossings, for
example). Moreover categories such as Randall’s “distribution of relative intensity” or
Morris’s “timbre-color (dull-bright)” and which corresponds to the relative amplitude of
certain harmonic partials, could be of great use in describing a piece where subtleties in the
vowel-like qualities of harmonic arrangements of partials are contrasted meaningfully with
each other. In Ligeti’s work, however, the main contrast is not between brighter and
duller arrangements of harmonic partials, but rather between harmonic arrangements and
non-harmonic arrangements, or even between arrangements of sine-tone partials and
arrangements of filtered noise. These more subtle matters of distribution of intensity are
most likely perceived as a matter of accent or inflection rather than a difference in
meaning.
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