I V. Administración Local
TOTAL INGRESOS 32.358,39 € Contra el presente Acuerdo, en virtud de lo dispuesto en el artículo 171 del Real Decreto
ments in the Horn Trio
“This is not a personal crisis, but, I believe, a crisis of my en- tire generation: the generation that in Darmstadt and in Co- logne in the second half of the ‘fifties developed something new, something original. Gradually we are becoming endan- gered by academicism. And since I am an anti-academic, I want personally to fight against this danger within myself – that is, not to continue to compose in the old avant-garde cli- chés, but also not to lapse into a back-to-earlier-styles. Espe- cially in the last few years, I have been trying to find an an- swer for myself personally – a music that is not a rumination of the past, not even of the avant-garde past.”231
“I have in mind a strongly affective, contrapuntally and met- rically very complex music, labyrinthine in its ramifications, with melodic figures audible through it, but without any ‘back-to’ gesture, not tonal, but not atonal, either. I don’t have a name yet to designate this compositional direction, and I am not looking for one, either. What I have in mind is a spiritualized, strongly condensed art form. I am trying, be- yond every kind of modernity, to recreate in music something of today’s sense of life.”232
No matter from what direction one approaches the Horn Trio of 1982, the unvarying impression is that one has to do with a key work. If one looks at it from the vantage point of the sensational “experimental” works of the ‘sixties or else from that of the Second String Quartet, it each time exhibits a different physiognomy: Ligeti seems to be using an entirely different musical language. It is therefore no wonder that many listeners at the premiere in Bergedorf on August 7, 1982, were wholly taken by surprise. To Sabine Tomzig, the critic of the Hamburger Abendblatt, the composition appeared “more melodic, more perspicuous than earlier works, and with all its formally impressive construc- tivity, surprisingly inspired by feeling”;233 and Ute Schalz-Laurenze, of the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, referred to diverse links to tradition, “both in
forms and in the contrasting expressive characters.”234
The truth is that, along with numerous retrospective traits, the Horn Trio ex- hibits an astonishing amount of originality. It is among the works that point to the future and represents a turning-point in Ligeti’s compositional work. Let us first try to pinpoint the “retrospective” aspect of the piece. The qua- ternary of the movements is only seemingly a symptom of tradition. The work was originally conceived in five movements: the slow fourth movement was to be followed by a virtuoso finale. More important than the four- movement design are the characters of the movements, which give rise to as- sociations with past music: an introductory movement of a tender character (Andantino con tenerezza), a dance-like second one (Vivacissimo molto ritmico), a march-like third (Alla Marcia) and a lament finale. One feels reminded, on the one hand, of Beethoven’s chamber music and, on the other, of the symphon- ic tradition of Late Romanticism, of Mahler and Tchaikovsky. “Retrospec- tive” is, secondly, the formal design of the movements. The first and third movements, to one’s surprise, are constructed according to the all-too- familiar A-B-A’ schema (with a varied recapitulation); the second movements has the markings of an ostinato, and the finale suggests the scaffolding of a passacaglia.
About the musical language of his Horn Trio, Ligeti, in an interview with Monika Lichtenfeld, thought that it was “different” from that of his earlier works: the melodic lines were “developed far more strongly as independent shapes.”235 And to Ulrich Dibelius he said on July 15, 1983: “My music should
become much more melodic, in a kind of non-diatonic diatonicism.”236
The subterraneous strands that connect the Horn Trio with the tradition light up in a flash when one looks more closely at some facets of the musical sub- stance, that is, some of the idiomatic turns, from which a part of the melody in the two outer movements springs. Of special significance in this respect are, on the one hand, the horn fifth model and, on the other, the lamenting chromaticism. The most distinguished historical example of the horn fifth model occurs, of course, in Beethoven’s E-flat major sonata Les Adieux op 81a (Ex. 22).
Ligeti unequivocally refers to that work, but uses the model in a significant transformation, which he calls a “skewed variant” (schiefe Variante). “A melod- ic-harmonic germ”, he wrote in a commentary for the premiere – “major third (g-b), tritone (eb-a), minor sixth (c-ab) in descending succession, a
‘skewed’ variant of the ‘horn fifth’ – is developed in all four movements into transparent, metrically complex polyphonic structures”237 (Ex. 23).
Ex. 23 “Horn Trio”: Skewed variant of he horn fifths
It is symptomatic for Ligeti’s delight in variation that the model appears in a further transformation at the beginning of the Lament finale (Ex. 24).
Ex. 24 Lament finale – additional transformation of the horn fifth
In speaking of retrospective traits in the Horn Trio, one must not forget the lamenting chromaticism of the concluding passacaglia. Ligeti treats it in a new, very imaginative way so as to create a very moving “dirge.” When he spoke with Ulrich Dibelius about the movement in 1983,238 he referred to his-
torical models: the Lament Bass and madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi, and the concluding lament of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Several years later, he remarked to Denys Bouliane that, for all his love of the lament bass, he had been impressed rather by the Romanian dirges, the so-called Bocet. They were, he said, structured somewhat differently than the [Romanian improvisa- tional folksong type] Hora lunga, though often similar in both style and ex- pression.239
One last retrospective element in the Trio is its marked cyclical conception. There are conspicuous links between the four movements. The skewed vari- ant of the horn fifth model that sets the character of the opening movement recurs reminiscence-like in the second (mm. 273-276) and third (mm. 49-52, 65/66 and 66/67, here always on the piano), as well as repeatedly, in charac- teristic variants, in the Finale, including several times toward the end. In the recapitulation of the Alla Marcia movement, moreover, the horn picks up the
How are we to interpret these symptoms? In an interview Ligeti gave eleven years after the completion of the Horn Trio, he called the work a “provocative- ly ‘conservative’ piece”, even as “a piece in opposition to the established norms of the avant-garde.” The mainspring in creating the work, he said, was the “Épater l’avant-garde”, as he had dared to write A-B-A forms and melo- dies – which was chalked up against him as treason.240
To understand these statements fully, one has to remember that, in their striv- ing for a total renewal of musical language, the serialists also were anxious to create new forms and concerned about the “open work of art.” They criti- cized the fact that Schönberg had based his dodecaphonic works on such tra- ditional forms as the sonata and the rondo. Thus one can understand that Li- geti’s turning to melody and to elementary musical forms was bound to stun adherents of the erstwhile Avant-Garde.
We must not, however, interpret Ligeti’s stylistic reorientation in the early ‘eighties as being regressive. What he had in mind, he protested in the conver- sation with Monika Lichtenfeld, was by no means a retrospective glance at the late 19th century.241 If one studies the Horn Trio in detail, one can observe em-
bryonic compositional innovations that Ligeti was to develop fully in subse- quent works. To these innovations we will now give our special attention. Most conspicuous in the Andantino con tenerezza is the regularity of the overall formal structure. The symmetry of the A-B-A’ design (the recapitulation is strongly varied, above all rhythmically) extends also to the pronounced period formation – something new in Ligeti. While the outer parts are each com- posed of four clearly delimited periods, the shorter B part consists of three periods. A mark of the movement is the echo technique, the old question- and-answer game, which is realized in a completely new, poetic manner. Each of the four periods in the outer parts bears the imprint of four signal-like horn calls, with the third call being answered by an echo-like passage of the now stopped horn. The part of the violin, though quite independent in sub- stance, is similar in structure: the echoic passages are to be bowed sul tasto [over the fingerboard], flautando.
A matter apart is the threefold change in tempo in the B part: three times a
Piú mosso ( = 112) alternates with a section a tempo ( = 110). Decidedly echo-
ic passages are absent from this part. However, there is something echo-like about the interjections of the leading horn in the a tempo passages. The man- ner in which the end of the B part coincides with the beginning of the reca- pitulation is extraordinarily artful, and it is precisely at this point that we en-
counter rudiments of a poly-temporality – an idea that would fascinate Ligeti later on: the violin and the horn here play in a different tempo ( = 100) than the piano ( = 112). Incidentally, as the sketches make unmistakably clear, Li- geti originally planned to base the finale of the trio on both a polymetric and a “polytemporal” structure. The following meters and metronomic notations were provisionally assigned to the three instruments: violin 5/4 = 75; horn 3/2 = 40; piano 4/4 = 60 – a plan, to be sure, that was to undergo major modifications.
The second movement (Vivacissimo molto ritmico) can, to begin with, be called a study in polymetrics. Ligeti’s commentary for the premiere states:
The second movement is a very fast, polymetric dance, inspired by di- verse kinds of folk music of non-existent ethnicities, as though Hun- gary, Romania and the entire Balkans were situated somewhere be- tween Africa and the Caribbean. The movement exhibits a complex hemiolic formation, similar to the hemiolas in Schumann and Chopin, due to the distribution of the basic pulse of eight beats into 3 + 2 + 3, 3 + 3 + 2, etc. Since different distributions always sound simultane- ously in the three instruments, the result is a very rich polymetric structure.
The movement is, moreover, an invention on the ostinato, whose character of a perpetuum mobile is a predominantly diatonic, ascending figures of eighths, played, in diverse variants, almost without interruption. If one focus- es on the treatment of this rhythmic ostinato, the following division of the movement becomes visible and audible:
Mm. 1-10 : Introduction
11-144 : A part (the ostinato figure beginning on c sounds unchanged initially 92 times and then 39 times)
145-225 : B part (mm. 169-79 the figure with d, mm. 191-224 with a#) 226-269 : A’ part (mm. 226-248 the figure with c, mm. 249-262 with g) 270-272 : General pause
273-294 : Coda (with the horn fifth model of the first movement) For the melodic structure of the Vivacissimo, two twelve-tone rows are deci- sive. The notes of which they consist are constantly given different rhythms and accents, and at times are also combined in dyads and chords or clusters, so that in listening one will most likely not perceive the individual executions
of the rows as “variants.” The first row (f c d e f# a# c# d# g a b g#), played by
the right hand of the pianist, is heard in mm. 15 ff. and later in mm. 226 ff. at the beginning of the recapitulation. The other row (e d f# f db eb bb c g b a
g#), intoned initially in mm. 27 ff. by the violin, is taken over by the left hand
of the pianist in mm. 75 ff.
The first two movements of the Horn Trio form the greatest contrast imagina- ble to each other. If in conceiving the Andantino con tenerezza Ligeti had the idea “of a far distant, tender and melancholy music” in mind, the Vivacissimo
molto ritmico, bearing as it does, the expression marks “dashing, sparkling, light,
dance-like, floating”, strikes one as quasi impish. The earliest sketches for the
Horn Trio (dated December 1981) tellingly include the catch words Jekel
(Hungarian for symbol) Puck - Oberon – evidently an allusion to Shakespeare’s
Midsummer-Night’s Dream. Would it be too much to say that the Andantino re-
fers to the King of the Elves (whose instrument is the magic horn), the Vi-
vacissimo to the fabulous goblin of the comedy?
The third movement of the Horn Trio, Alla Marcia, invariably makes the same impression on the listener: its outer parts, very energetically intoned, sharply rhythmic, and sounding both hard and dissonant (cross-grained), make for a strong contrast to the evenly flowing, homophonic, mellow and consonant- seeming middle part (Piú mosso).The march-like parts are also more interesting in terms of compositional technique, inasmuch as in them Ligeti tries out two procedures that will become virulent in his later music: the procedures of iso- rhythmy and of metric displacement.
It may sound paradoxical, but one can comprehend the construction of the march-like parts more easily if one calls to mind the technical principles of the isorhythmical motets of the 14th and 15th century, the Talea and the Color.
The parts are each 30 measures in length and are divided into ten isorhythmic periods (taleae), all of which have the same rhythmic structure (Ex. 25).
Ex. 25 3rd movement, “Alla Marcia”: isorhythmic period
This rhythmic model recurs ten times unchanged in the piano part, though each time implemented with different sounds. How complex the construction is, to be sure, one begins to realize once one takes the violin part into ac-
count. Piano and violin initially “march” in lockstep, but from m. 11 on, the violin begins to “limp.” Its part is dislocated at first by one sixteenth, then (at m. 17) by two, and at m. 23 by three sixteenths. The result is an ingenious canon, greatly confusing to the listener – that, too, may explain the impres- sion of contrariness the music evokes.
The emotional climax of the work is the Lament-Adagio – a movement of which Josef Häusler rightly remarked that nowhere else in Ligeti has grief, pain and resignation been sung out so undisguisedly.242 Here is Ligeti’s own
commentary on the finale:
Whereas the first three movements are mainly diatonic, the conclud- ing movement is a chromatic variant of the previous ones, in the form of a passacaglia. A five-bar harmonic model – a variant of the horn fifth germ – provides the scaffolding, while descending chromatic me- lodic formations are the lianas that increasingly grow through the scaf- folding, until the sequence of five chords is completely dissolved. A very gradually occurring dramatic intensification in the growth of the “weeping and lamenting” melodic lianas provides the basis of this formal process. This intensification leads to the transformation of the piano into a percussion instrument. The echo of this imaginary, gigan- tic drum lingers in the pedal tones of the horn; the horn-fifth germ al- so echoes as a reminiscence in the piano and the violin, but is oddly defamiliarized - the photo of a landscape that has meanwhile gone up in nothingness.
The movement commences pianissimo and closes moriendo a niente. The “dra- matic intensification” referred to by the composer takes the form of a tre- mendous crescendo poco a poco (mm. 52-76), with the piano here and there be- ing treated as a percussion instrument. The expression marks are telling: mit
äußerster Wildheit, schwarz (with extreme wildness, black) (mm. 71-73) and quasi tamburo (drum) (m. 72). The conclusion (from m. 77 on) evokes a sense of
vacuum: while long-held, lowest pedal tones are played by the horn, the canti- lenas of the violin are located in the highest registers.
The more closely one studies the Horn Trio, the more distinctly emerge the traits that point to the future. The techniques of polymetrics, polytemporality, of the ostinato, of isorhythm and metric displacement developed here occur repeatedly again in later works. And Ligeti will have recourse to the type of the lamento movement in both his sixth Etude and in the Piano as well as the
Violin Concerto.
In the previously cited commentary, Ligeti wrote:
I dedicated by Horn Trio as an homage to Johannes Brahms, whose Horn Trio floats in the musical heaven as the incomparable instance of this genre of chamber music. There are, however, neither quota- tions from nor influences by Brahmsian music in my piece – my trio was written in the late twentieth century and is, in construction and expression, music of our time.