Problemas a nivel procedimental:

“In composing I do not think of a specific listener or circle of listeners. I do not care about being easily understood.” “My music is an elitist art, but everyone can take part in it. It is a question of one’s education.”117

I believe one can listen to my music quite naively but also in a highly educated way. The access to it is really open.”118

It is a truism that the new in art (as well as in science) often meets with a fierce initial rejection. The history of the New Music teaches that epochal works did not always easily prevail. We need only think of the scandal that erupted at the first performance of Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps on May 13, 1913, in Paris.

Ever since the sensational premiere of Apparitions on June 19, 1960, however, Ligeti’s works have been amazingly successful. It tells us something that at the

premiere of Atmosphères in 1961 in Donaueschingen, the enthusiastic audience forced a repeat performance of the piece, and that the same thing happened at the Hamburg premiere of Aventures on April 4, 1963.

Today, Ligeti is one of the most successful composers of our time. The friends of his music steadily increase in numbers worldwide. His composi- tions meet with favorable response not only from specialists but also from the broader public. That is not a matter of course in an age in which the demand- ing New Music has largely lost contact with the larger community of the friends of music.

What accounts for the wide appeal of this music? In trying to explain Ligeti’s popularity, one needs to consider several factors: external matters, certain qualities of his music and, finally, psychological reasons. Let us consider each of these.

After his sensational successes in the early ‘sixties, Ligeti rapidly became known, as the media began to take an interest in him. A contributing factor to his growing renown was no doubt the use of three of his compositions in Stanley Kubrick’s epochal film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick had worked on his sci-fi film from 1965 to 1968. The original version of the film, which is based on a short story by Arthur C., Clarke and proclaims Clarke’s philoso- phy of space and the future, was shown already in 1966. Kubrick had be- stowed great care on the music tract of his cinematic opus and experimented a good deal. After several attempts, he finally decided to use music by four composers for his film: Johann Strauß Jr. (The Blue Danube waltz), Richard Strauss (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), Aram Khachaturian (the ballet suite Gayane) and Ligeti (Atmosphères, Aventures, Requiem and Lux aeterna), with the music of Richard Strauss and that of Ligeti being utilized for practically opposite con- notations: whereas the opening bars of Zarathustra accompany the grandiose imagery of earth – moon – sun, Ligeti’s music is made to signalize danger, menace, the unknown and inexplicable.119 _{Given the exceptional notice and}

wide distribution the movie received,120 _{one can see why it would also draw}

attention to Ligeti’s music.

One might add that the film maker used the music without informing the composer. The latter protested vehemently and also took legal measures but had to be content with a royalty of $ 3000. Kubrick used music of Ligeti’s again in subsequent films, e.g., Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

How popular Ligeti had meanwhile become also emerges from the fact that in 1969 the widely read Radio and TV magazine Hör Zu commissioned a whole-page article on the “avant-garde professor.” Its author, Gerhard Ar-

noldi, lauded him as a composer who found his own way and did not become a mere Stockhausen epigone.121 _{The same issue of the journal included a pho-}

nograph disk from the series Hör Zu Black Label (SHZW 904 BL) with record- ings of Atmosphères, Volumina, Aventures and the Cello Concerto.

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that television, too, began to take an interest in this self-willed composer. I vividly remember a mildly sur- realist film about Ligeti that appeared on Germany’s Second Program (ZDF) in the ‘seventies or ‘eighties.

Space Odyssey: Music of Ligeti adapted to film

More important than these external factors, which undoubtedly favored the dissemination of Ligeti’s oeuvre, are certain qualities of the music itself: its coherence and sonority, its imaginativeness, its associative power and, not least, the allusions to traditional music and the spatial effects it evokes. All of Ligeti’s works are distinguished by their structural logic. Regardless of the manner or technique of composition he employed, the result is always coherent music. A friend once remarked to me that even if Ligeti were to set the telephone directory to music, the coherence of the result could hardly be doubted. The listener registers this coherence without being conscious of the inherent structural laws, which disclose themselves only to an in-depth analyt- ic study of the scores. Ligeti himself called his music “very constructed”, add- ing, however, that construction for him did not have the significance it has for Boulez or Xenakis.122

Much of the fascination of his music is due to its sonority. Ligeti had an emi- nent sense of sound: Ulrich Dibelius justly called him a “Klangbildner” (sound molder),123 _{and Wolfgang Burde fittingly spoke of Ligeti’s conception}

magic spell over the listener. In his early works he frequently paid homage to his idea of a scintillating, iridescent, oscillating sound; in his later works, he sought to undermine the well-tempered system by employing, inter alia, scor- dature, microtonal deviations, “out-of-tune” instruments and natural over- tones.

The special suggestiveness of his music, again, resides essentially in its asso- ciative power. Ligeti pointed out again and again that his music was not “pu- ristic” but strongly “charged with associations” and repeatedly stated that with him the compositional process was accompanied by associations from many areas. Such music can stimulate the imagination of the listener and can awaken associations and fantasies in him or her as well. Regrettably there are to date no statistics regarding associative effects of his music. Ever since Ku- brick’s film, of course, many listeners associate Atmosphères and other pieces with outer space. Upon being asked whether he identified with that associa- tion, Ligeti replied “neither nor.” When he composed Atmosphères, he ex- plained, he had no thought of such a functional use – the piece was no film music. The title nevertheless did refer to the atmospheric, wherefore associa- tions of space or space travel were not absolutely excluded from the sphere of what could be associated.125

Ligeti’s music is original and new with every fiber, and it negates tradition. At the same time, however, as we have seen, allusions to the great tradition play a major role in it, and there is no question that such allusions build bridges toward the listener’s apperception. Ligeti remarked once that his music could also be heard without any knowledge of these associations, but that a listener who experienced it in its historical context would get more out of it, since as “Bildungsmusik” (music of erudition) its full understanding presupposed a proper connoisseurship.126

In considering Ligeti’s popularity, one must not forget certain psychological factors. Many fans of his music revere him as an original artist, who is inde- pendent and unorthodox, thinks outside the box and refuses to be confined to any single group. His music is music for individualists.

In May of 1993, several concerts were given in Hamburg in observance of Li- geti’s 70th _{birthday. Many Hanseats were delighted to celebrate their elective}

Hamburger. Both the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and the Hungarian journal

Muzsika dedicated separate issues to him. Friedrich Cerha published an article

entitled “Why I admire my friend” in the Austrian journal Bühne, and Marion Diederichs-Lafite invited me to conduct a conversation with Ligeti for the

five noted composers – Lucian Berio, Dieter Schnebel, Manfred Stahnke, Manfred Trojahn and Udo Zimmermann – all congratulated their renowned colleague on his 70th _{birthday in the Hamburger Morgenpost.}

Ligeti’s extraordinary popularity did not cease with his death in 2006. Wheth- er it has grown since then is hard to say. Several CD firms, in any case, have brought out complete recordings of his works. A good many of his composi- tions, certainly, are performed much more rarely now. But others have be- come representative of modernity. Atmosphères has attained the status of a classic of the New Music. Star pianists in many countries make it their ambi- tion to play his horrendously difficult piano pieces. And his anti-opera, Le

Grand Macabre, has been performed in a number of European and American

cities. On May 27, 2010, The New York Philharmonic Orchestra presented

2 Part Two:

Works