THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

mask this invariance, and perhaps most challenging to our perception of the underlying
form is the extremely low dynamic level of Section C–the softest of the piece. This soft
section is the starting point for the third phase of accretion, the longer, more sectional
period of growth which will carry the piece to its midpoint.
Section D.
The individual sine tones which characterize Section D emerge from Section C
beginning as early as 1'46", and by 1'48" Ligeti establishes a counterpoint of two glissing
sine-tone lines as the predominant texture. These continue through 2'02"-2'04", where a
substantial increase in reverberation alters their sonic character, and the section ends
shortly thereafter at 2'05" with the introduction of the noisier sounds of Section E. Since
most of Section D will overlap with its retrograde in the second half of the piece, the
sparsity of this section is well planned, as the counterpoint will appear doubled in the
second half. See Figure 2.9, a spectrograph of Section D.
This sine tone counterpoint is made of two lines; each line is a single sine tone with
no overtones, each is a-metric but rhythmically distinct, and has a characteristic range.
The upper tone moves the most frequently, making close to 30 changes in direction in the
19 seconds of this section; the upper tone, however, moves in a more constricted range of
less than an octave, from 1482 to 2705 Hz. The lower tone, on the other hand, moves
less frequently but in large leaps. The lower tone moves only 16 times, close to half the
rate of the upper. The lower tone also occupies a much greater range, beginning and
ending in the extremely low register, at about 114 Hz and 231 Hz, respectively, and
56