“I really always had a double-bottomed relation to tradition. For one thing, I underwent a very strict, traditional training at the Budapest Music Academy. For another, the musical tradi- tion has ever played an important role in my music […], not as a quotation dimension, and neither as a craft discipline, but more like an aura and allusion.”96
Ligeti’s treatise on form in the New Music includes not only discussions of form-theoretical questions and reflections but also observations on the phi- losophy of history. In a fascinating simile, he here compares the history of art to a gigantic net, which individual artists continue to weave. He admits that within that gigantic weft there are places “where the knitting does not contin- ue but the net is rent.”97 But even the tears, he thinks, are imperceptibly spun
over by hanks of thread. Seen in historical perspective, even the seemingly tradition-less has secret links to the past. Ultimately, these reflections imply a belief in the force of tradition even in avant-garde art. Ligeti has spoken about his own peculiar relation to tradition, which he called not only “double- bottomed” but “cryptic” or “sly.” By way of illustration, he spoke of hidden allusions to traditional music, specifically to Bach (Volumina), and especially to Claude Debussy (Apparitions, Atmosphères), Gustav Mahler (Lontano), Béla Bar- tók and Alban Berg (String Quartet No. 2).98
In contrast to many of his colleagues, who have a penchant for quoting both themselves and others and for the musical collage generally (e.g., Bernd Alois Zimmermann),99 Ligeti very rarely quotes the works of other composers in his
music.100 One exception is the opera Le Grand macabre, where quotations occur
in two places (Bourrée perpetuelle and Galimathias), a literal one from Schu- bert’s “Grätzer Galopp” and a free one from Rameau’s “La Poule.” Even then, both of them are so totally integrated into their extremely complex con- text that in listening they will not be recognized as quotations. The same goes for the rhythm of the theme from the Finale of the Eroica, a rhythm that is in- toned ostinato-like during Nekrotzar’s processional entrance. Far more im-
portant than quotations, for Ligeti, are allusions to traditional music. The aura of past music surrounds many passages in his works. Klaus Kropfinger has rightly pointed out101 that the way in which Ligeti speaks of aura reminds of
Walter Benjamin, for whom this term meant the integration of the work of art into the context of the past.102 How significant allusions to traditional mu-
sic are for Ligeti can also be gathered from the fact that the sketches to the “Dies Irae” contain a reference to Mahler’s First Symphony103 - a work that
Ligeti prized particularly for its spatial effects.104
Ligeti’s relation to tradition changed after 1978, became closer, more direct and transparent. This is manifest most overtly in pieces like the Ciaconna and the Passacaglia ungherese for harpsichord; works like the Horn Trio, the Piano
Etudes and the Violin Concerto would have been unthinkable fifty years earlier.
Several compositions evoke allusions to the music of the 19th and early 20th
century; the aura of that music surrounds several of the Piano Etudes. Never- theless, Ligeti’s music has not for a moment ceased to be new and original. Terms like “neotonal” or “postmodern” do not apply to it in any way. He sometimes connects to Romantic expressions (e.g., the horn fifths that every- body knows from Beethoven’s piano sonata Les Adieux op. 81a), but he does so in a completely new way. He defamiliarizes and transforms them and evolves figures from them that are miles distant from their point of origin. In terms of complexity, many of his more recent works seem to surpass eve- rything that had gone before. At the same time, however, there is a tendency in the later works to linger over certain expressive characters. Sudden, abrupt changes of expression are much rarer than they were earlier. The later works generally appear to accentuate the expressive. The Horn Trio, for example, be- gins with an Andantino con tenerezza and concludes with a Lamento, in the course of which the expression of lament and mourning intensifies enor- mously.
A symptom of Ligeti’s redefined relation to tradition after the ‘seventies is the turn toward baroque compositional forms and techniques, which he, of course, treats quite originally. His predilection for passacaglias, ostinati and retrograde canons is especially striking in this connection. The idea of the passacaglia, in particular, the constraint of continuous variation of a given theme, must have fascinated him as a challenge to his inventiveness and his constructivist mind. To be sure, the passacaglias that conclude his opera Le
Grand Macabre (1974-1977) and the Horn Trio (1982) have only the basic idea
in common with the baroque form. Conception and execution are quite dif- ferent. Listening to the passacaglia that forms the finale of the opera, one
consisting exclusively of consonant sixths, develops step by step into an edi- fice of extraordinary complexity. It is similar with the finale of the Horn Trio, whose five-bar passacaglia theme is treated so intricately that in merely listen- ing one cannot really perceive it as such. Much simpler in structure are Hun-
garian Rock (a chaconne) and Passacaglia ungherese – both intended as ironic
contributions to the debate about postmodernism.
Of extreme complexity, finally, are the three crab canons that Ligeti wrote in the last of his Three Pieces for Two Pianos (1976), in Le Grand Macabre and in the first of his Magyar Etüdök (1983). These testify less to his link to tradition than to his penchant for the artful and artificial, the thought-out and mannered. In discussing Ligeti’s relation to tradition, one should not forget that he commanded a marvelous knowledge of the so-called occidental music. He did much listening to music and never grew tired of studying scores. He was keen about getting to know ever more compositions from the area of the Ars subtil-
ior, greatly prized Gesualdo, analyzed string quartets of Haydn and Mozart –
not to mention his stupendous knowledge of the music of the 19th and 20th
century. In this respect, he differed radically from a composer like Iannis Xe- nakis, who had no interest whatever in traditional music.
Ligeti’s astonishingly original music, it has to be emphasized in conclusion, grew from the tradition of Hungarian music. According to the composer’s own avowal, it is situated, with some exceptions, beyond the tradition of German music. It is more closely related to the music of French Impressionism (Debussy, Ravel) and to Russian music (Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich).
1.11 Diversity of Inspirational Sources.