“After the completion of this piece [Apparitions], I was far more interested in the possibilities of a differentiated inter- twining and interweaving of sound than in the formation of musical ‘objects’: I therefore concentrated on tonal processes similar to those that form the ‘background’ in Apparitions. I resolved that in my next work I would eliminate the duality of clear individual figures and dense intertwining and let the mu- sical form emerge solely from the tonal ‘background,’ though this ‘background’ can no longer be called that, since a ‘fore- ground’ no longer exists. What is at issue now is a subtle fi- brous web evenly filling the entire musical space, whose in- ternal movements and alterations determine the articulation of the form.”
The compositional idea I tried to realize in Atmosphères sig- nified, on the one hand, the overcoming of ‘structural’ think- ing in composition – a mode of thinking that characterized the entire musical development of the last ten years – and on the other, represented a disowning of every kind of dialectic within musical form. There are, in the form thus come into being, no longer any oppositional elements or reciprocal ac- tions; the diverse states of the musical material take over from each other, or one turns almost imperceptibly into the other, without the emergence of any causal connections with- in the formal progress.148
Ligeti worked intensively on Atmosphères between February and July of 1961. The initial idea for it, however, goes back to a much earlier time. As he dis- closed to the Swedish publicist Göran Fant, the piece was conceived already in the early ’fifties, while one night, desperate and hungry he was roaming around in Budapest.149
After its sensational world premiere on October 22, 1961, Atmosphères soon became one of the most famous works of the Hungarian composer, the one- time fame of Apparitions paling as that of the new work rose and overshad- owed the earlier one. It says something that today there are only three record- ings of Apparitions, whereas Atmosphères is available on no fewer than eleven different CDs.
In terms of tonal type, Atmosphères and Apparitions are related to the extent that both pieces belong, according to Ligeti, to the structural type of the “nebular-indistinct.”150 Even so, there are major differences between the two,
which constitute their specific particularity. Whereas in Apparitions tonal states are time and again disrupted and changed by unexpected sound events, com- parable incidents hardly occur in Atmosphères. The music proceeds continu- ously, changing constantly but only slowly and somehow inconspicuously – a peculiarity that betrayed a critic into the following obtuseness: “Everything is standing still; during the nine minutes stretched to an eternity that the piece lasts, nothing, but nothing, happens.”151
In actuality, a great deal happens in the course of the piece, though it takes an attentive listener to realize that. The composition is divided into 22 sections of different duration (the last section consists of silence), all of which are in- dividually structured. While most of them are based on dense chromatic clus- ters – iridescent twelve-tone sounds are the norm – the individual sections differ greatly in their structure.
We can obtain major insights into the conception and the structure of the work from a study of the composer’s notes, which Salmenhaara has pub- lished.152 They include specifications about both the durations and the texture
of the various sections – specifications that indicate that the final form of the work largely coincides with the original conception. Thus the durations planned for the sections in seconds were taken over without change into the autograph score:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 48” 29” 55” 37” 6” 23” 33” 14” 21” 18” 5” 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 8” 10” 26” 43” 16” 9” 12” 4” 7” 71” 19” The sum total is thus 8 minutes and 34 seconds. In the printed score, Ligeti dispensed with these detailed specifications, noting the performance length in a lump sum as “ca. 9 minutes.”
Before beginning with the elaboration of the score, Ligeti gave intensive con- sideration to the constitution of the individual tonal fields, distinguishing be- tween three basic types of such expanses: stationary planes or expanses (“liegende Flächen”), vibrating expanses and mosaic-like textures.153 The term
“liegende Flächen” means primarily unchanging clusters, stationary sounds – the first section presents a prototypical example of these – although, as the second section (letter A) shows, such expanses can be shaded in both timbre and dynamics. “Vibrating expanses” are shaped by trills, tremolos and swing- like figurations or by internal motions within a broadly differentiated texture (fourth and ninth section, at letter C and H respectively). The mosaic-like tex- tures, finally, are characterized by the dissolution of lines into individual com- ponents (Ligeti spoke of “Stückchen”, bits). In sections 12, 18 and 19 (letter K, Q and R), the score resembles a mosaic even visually.
As already intimated, the sections differ considerably in terms of frequency band, register, timbre combination, dynamics and also manner of playing. The diagram provided by Erkki Salmenhaara154 (see DG 6) can convey a graphic
impression of the modifications of the frequency band, its narrowing in the 8th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 20th section (letters G, J, K, L, S) being particularly
striking.
DG 6 Atmosphères: 22 sections in time and texture
There has been significant progress in sound analysis in the last twenty or so years, as new methods were developed and digital procedures made it possible to depict the sound shape of compositions with considerable precision. An- dreas E. Beurmann and Albrecht Schneider produced an amplitude diagram of Atmosphères, which impressively illustrates the total form of the work. Ligeti himself had said of it that it was to be realized “like a single, wide-flung arc”, with the individual sections fusing together. Beurmann and Schneider de- scribe its course as follows: “a delicate swaying in, an arrival out of nothing- ness, five areas of an extremely slow dynamic swelling and ebbing and then vanishing into nothingness, symbol of the title of this music, atmospheres, shrouds of air”155 (see Diagram 7156).
DG 7 “Atmosphères”: amplitude diagram
At a first listening, Atmosphères perplexes by its novelty. It can be called a “classic” work of the New Music insofar as several specifics of the Ligetian music language appear here for the first time in full-blown form. The discov- eries in compositional technique that Ligeti made here proved to be promis- ing for the future. He had recourse to them repeatedly in his later works, all the while developing them further. A few examples may serve to illustrate the point.
The “cystoscopic” sound image, for which Ligeti had a penchant, occurs for the first time in the seventh section of Atmosphères (mm. 33-39). This cluster field, constituted by four piccolo flutes, four oboes, four clarinets and four trumpets in extremely high register, sounds sharp and shrill. From this ex- treme height, the music plunges into extreme depth, as eight double basses in- tone an eight-tone cluster in fourfold forte tutta la forza (mm. 40 ff. 8th section,
letter G). The effect is indescribable. Similar plunges are frequent in the “Dies Irae” of the Requiem.
A favorite technique in Atmosphères is the overlapping of sound fields and sec- tions. While the double basses are still holding the extremely low eight-note cluster, the remaining strings (14 first violins, 14 second violins, 10 violas and 10 cellos) suddenly enter in fourfold piano (mm. 44-53, letters H and I). The highly complex 28-voice canon and the 20-voice mirror canon they perform provide an archetypal example of Ligeti’s celebrated micropolyphonic tech- nique 157.
The brass field of the 14th section (mm. 58-65, letter M) deserves to be high-
lighted because in its compactness it forms the summit of the work in terms of volume. The twelve-note cluster field constituted by the six horns, four trumpets, four trombones and the tuba commences in four-fold piano and swells in quick crescendo to fourfold forte. The use of the trumpets in ex- treme low register at this point is especially impressive – an ingenious timbre combination, which Ligeti will use again in the “Dies Irae” to dramatize the word (Tuba mirum spargens) sonum. As peculiar as it is original, again, is the “wind episode” (17th section, mm. 76-79, letters P and Q). According to a di-
rection in the score, the brass players here are to “blow very softly” into their instruments “without producing a tone.” The noise effect here is thus com- posed in.
We already noted that the 18th and 19th section (mm. 79-84) represent the
type of mosaic-like texture. To be emphasized is the enormous differentiation in the playing techniques prescribed for the various string groups: at once with mute and without, on the fingerboard and at the bridge, sul tasto and col
legno, gettato and legato. As a result, and because of the many tremolos, the lis-
tener seems to hear a trembling on the surface of the sound. A special sound effect is reserved for the penultimate (more properly the last) section (mm. 88-102, letter T). Supported initially by flute, and toward the end by trom- bone and tuba, clusters, the 56 strings play exclusively flageolet glissandi. An immaterial quality clings to the flageolet clusters produced in this way, the unu- sual sound image evoking associations with music of the spheres – a type Li- geti had a soft spot for in later years as well.158
Atmosphères is dedicated to the memory of Mátyás Seibers. Seibers (b. 1905), a
Hungarian composer and writer about music, who had emigrated to England in 1935, was killed in an accident on September 25, 1960 in Johannesburg, South Africa. His teacher Zoltán Kodály dedicated his Media vita in morte sumus for mixed chorus to him. Ligetyi felt obliged to Seibers, in part because he had championed him and helped him at a time of indigence after the emigra- tion. The dedication prompted Harald Kaufmann, who in 1962 broadcast a
speculations. Supported by conversations with Ligeti, he proposed the thesis that Atmosphères should be regarded as a secret requiem: “While composing the work, Ligeti in fact thought of the representation of a funeral mass within the material sphere. He wanted it to be imagined that a requiem is in progress quasi in the cellar, in a far distance, in the realm of the subliminal. Since there is no room for traditional musical form phenomena, the material texture must admit of associations that have points of contact with the associations accord- ing to the old requiem sequence.”
Starting from this premise, Kaufmann thought he could identify passages in the structure of the piece that refer to parts of the Latin mass for the dead. The stationary cluster sound at the beginning reminded him of a distant murmuring of the Requiem aeternam. The narrowing of the frequency band in mm. 53/54 made him think of the beginning of the Dies irae. The bunching of all the brasses seemed to him a sound image of the Tuba mirum, the wonder- sounding trumpet. The place at which the chromatic cluster thins out into a diatonic one (69-74) he associated with the Agnus dei, dona eis requiem. And the “portal” of the narrowed frequency band, “after which fear reigns no more”, he thought he could read as a conciliatory Lacrimosa.159
Kaufmann’s views attracted widespread attention among critics. Erkki Sal- menhaara adopted them,160 and Ove Nordwall spoke of “an instrumental par-
aphrase of the requiem mass.161
I asked Ligeti what he thought about these surmises. He replied that he did not think of any part of the funeral mass while conceiving the piece: Kauf- mann’s correlations and associations were wholly subjective. However, the peculiar restraint characterizing Atmosphères, he thought, did legitimate it as a commemorative composition.