György Ligeti on Music Theory Print

Artikulation (Ligeti)

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Background#

Ligeti had fled from Budapest to Cologne in late 1956 following the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Artikulation is the only one of three electronic pieces that he wrote in Cologne which remain listed in his catalogue. He completed only two of these works, however: Glissandi (1957) and Artikulation. A third work, originally entitled Atmosphères but later known as Pièce électronique Nr. 3, was planned, and though the technical limitations of the time prevented Ligeti from realizing it completely, it was finally realized in 1996 by Kees Tazelaar and Johan van Kreij of the Institute of Sonology in the Netherlands. In composing Artikulation, Ligeti, like many composers around him, was inspired by “the age-old question of the relationship between music and speech”, their approach greatly inspired by the work of Werner Meyer-Eppler.

Atmosphères

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History#

Atmosphères was commissioned in 1961 by the Southwest German Radio (SWF) and had its world premiere on 22 October 1961 by Hans Rosbaud conducting the SWF Symphony Orchestra at the Donaueschingen Festival. Ligeti dedicated the piece to the memory of Mátyás Seiber, a fellow Hungarian-born composer who had been killed in a car crash the previous year. The SWF recorded this performance for broadcast, and this recording has been released commercially on CD several times. Paul Griffiths writes that this performance made Ligeti a “talking point”. Ligeti says that after this and his earlier piece Apparitions, he “became famous”. Atmosphères was a major influence on the German composer Helmut Lachenmann. Leonard Bernstein conducted the New York premiere in 1964 with the New York Philharmonic and recorded it with them at the Manhattan Center in New York on 6 January 1964 for Columbia Masterworks, reissued in 1968 on Columbia Records, and in 1999 on a Sony Classical CD.

Bujdosó

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Composition#

This composition was written in 1946. At that time, Ligeti was living in Hungary and was very interested in Hungarian folk music, like other Hungarian composers such as Béla Bartók. Like most of Ligeti’s juvenilia, this piece never received a formal premiere, but it has been recorded together with other early vocal compositions. It was later published by Schott Music in 1999.

Analysis#

This work takes approximately two minutes to perform. It is scored for a mixed choir which should consist of sopranos, altos, and baritones. The text is extracted from a Hungarian traditional poem, which is as follows: Fölkelt már a csillag Lengyelország felé Magam is elmegyek, babám, arra felé Megvetették nekem a megfogó hálót Megfogtak engemet mint egy utonállót Lám, megmondtam, rózsám, ne szeress engemet mert Somogy vármegye hajszoltat engemet A tömlöc feneke az én vetett ágyam annak a teteje takaró vánkosom. The piece is marked Nyugodtan (♩ = 108), which can be translated as “calmly”. Tempo changes to Adagio towards the end of the piece, and time signature changes are present throughout the whole composition. The lyrics have been translated into German by Hilgen Schallehn and into English by Desmond Clayton.

Cello Concerto (Ligeti)

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History#

Originally, Ligeti had planned to compose a single movement work. As progress on composition developed he decided to expand the initial material of the concerto into a movement in its own right and placed the remainder of the material into a second movement. In performance, however, the second movement follows immediately from the first, without a break. The concerto was given its first performance in Berlin on 19 April 1967 with Siegfried Palm (cello) and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Henryk Czyż.

Chromatische Phantasie

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Composition and context#

Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 and further conflicts among Hungarian and Russian people led to Russia installing Imre Nagy, whose leadership led to a debilitating economy and government instability. Ligeti wrote his Chromatische Phantasie in 1956 in Budapest, shortly before going into exile in Vienna due to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Even though he started other projects, such as his Chromatische Variationen, Requiem (not the one completed in 1964) and many other unfinished works, this was one of the last works he composed in Hungarian soil. It was eventually premiered in Nissafors, Sweden, on April 17, 1974, by Eva Pataki. Since then, many other pianists have played it both in public performances and on the radio, but it is still one of Ligeti’s least-known works. It was never published, though it has been performed by several artists and transcriptions have been written by other musicians. The original manuscript is now located in Basel, as part of the Sacher Shiftung.

Continuum (Ligeti)

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Sources#

Bauer, Amy (2004). “‘Tone-Color, Movement, Changing Harmonic Planes’: Cognition, Constraints and Conceptual Blends”, The Pleasure of Modernist Music. University of Rochester Press. .
Ligeti in Conversation. Cited in Bauer.
Sass (1992). Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought. New York: Basic Books. Cited in Bauer.
Amazon.com (2007) Amazon.com: Ligeti: Mechanical Music: Music: Gyorgy Ligeti, Pierre Charial, Jürgen Hocker, Françoise Terrioux (accessed April 14, 2007)
Ligeti, György, Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, and Claude Samuel. György Ligeti in Conversation with Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, Claude Samuel, and Himself. London: Eulenburg, 1983.
“Jede zeitliche Folge von Tönen, Klängen, musikalischen Gestalten” hat Rhythmus. Über die Rhythmik in Ligetis Cembalostück Continuum von Peter Petersen, 2008, PDF on: www.saitenspiel.org

Due capricci (Ligeti)

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Composition#

The two pieces were composed when Ligeti was still studying in Sandor Veress’s class at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, this is, as a part of his academic exercises. These represent the beginning of the shedding of Béla Bartók’s and other Hungarian composer’s influence, as he was asked to write it in his own style. Strangely, the second capriccio was composed first, in the spring of 1947, and the second capriccio was composed in November 1947. Both capricci are dedicated to Márta Kurtág. The set has been published by Schott Music together with Ligeti’s Invention for piano, which is put in the middle and which the set is strongly associated with.

Éjszaka – Reggel

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Composition#

This work was composed along with a series of vocal compositions based on texts by Hungarian poet Sándor Weöres. It was composed in 1955 in Budapest but was first performed thirteen years later, on March 16, 1968, in Stockholm, with the Swedish Radio Choir under the baton of Eric Ericson. It was eventually published by Schott Music. This was the last vocal composition by Ligeti in which he used his early compositional style, for he announced that in Lux Aeterna (1966) he “broke with (his) preceding style of chromatic tone clusters”. After this composition, Ligeti retook texts by Weöres again 30 years later, with Magyar Etüdök.

Études (Ligeti)

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Scope of the work#

There are 18 études arranged in three books or Livres: six Études in Book 1 (1985), eight in Book 2 (1988–1994), four in Book 3 (1995–2001). Ligeti’s original intention had been to compose only twelve Études, in two books of six each, on the model of the Debussy Études, but the scope of the work grew because he enjoyed writing the pieces so much. Though the four Études of Book 3 form a satisfying conclusion to the cycle, Book 3 is in fact unfinished—Ligeti certainly intended to add more, but was unable to do so in his last years, when his productivity was much reduced owing to illness. The Études of Book 3 are generally calmer, simpler, and more refined in technique than those of Books 1 and 2.

Haj, ifjuság!

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Composition#

Haj, ifjuság! was finished in 1952 in Budapest, while Ligeti was still a student at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. Ligeti was, at that time, very influence by Béla Bartók’s work, and tried to follow his steps when he composed music based on Hungarian traditional songs or poems, as he also did in Lakodalmas, Bujdosó and Kállai kettős. The music used in his Ligeti’s early compositions, however, were not extracted from folksongs, but were composed in his own style. Moreover, in 1952, Hungary was occupied by Russia and Hungarian culture was mostly censored, rarely published and secretly performed. It was published much later, in 1999, by Schott Music.

Hamburg Concerto

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External links#

Study score published by Schott Musik International, Mainz, Germany
The “Hamburgisches Konzert” by György Ligeti published by Impronta-Edition UG, 2023, Mannheim, Germany

Invention (Ligeti)

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Composition#

At the time of the composition, Hungary had gone through World War II and was about to enter a Stalinist era, which would last seven years. At that time, Ligeti was 24 years old and was still a student at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. Very influenced by the style of Béla Bartók, Ligeti wrote the composition in 1948, as an academic composition for Sandor Veress’s classes. It was dedicated to György Kurtág, a fellow student of his, and was later published by Schott Music together with Ligeti’s 1947 Due capricci, even though they were composed a year apart and were conceived separately.

Kállai kettős (Ligeti)

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Composition#

Kállai kettős was written in 1950, when Ligeti was still living in Hungary. It was never given a formal premiere, though it was published by Schott Music in 1952. It was written during a repressive Stalinist era in Hungary, and Ligeti later commented on one of the early performances of the piece: Some of Ligeti’s other early vocal compositions are also based on Hungarian folksongs, such as Bujdosó and Mátraszentimrei dalok. He was very interested in adapting and arranging Hungarian traditional music in his own style, as Béla Bartók had also been.

Lakodalmas (Ligeti)

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Composition#

Ligeti finished this composition in 1950, when he was living in Hungary. At that time, he was following Béla Bartók’s steps: he produced other vocal compositions based on Hungarian traditional music and poems. This composition has been later associated with “Bujdosó” (1946) and “Kállai kettős” (1950), forming a set called Three Hungarian Folksongs, even though there is no direct relation; all those compositions were composed, conceived, and published separately. “Lakodalmas” was composed during a Stalinist era, and Hungarian folksongs were strictly restricted. It was later published by Schott Music.

Le Grand Macabre

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Premiere, productions and revision#

Le Grand Macabre was premiered in Stockholm on 12 April 1978. At least 30 productions have followed. For one in Paris in February 1997 (under the auspices of that summer’s Salzburg Festival), Ligeti the previous year prepared a revision, making cuts to Scenes 2 and 4, setting some of the originally spoken passages to music and removing others altogether. (As it turned out, the composer was annoyed by the Paris staging, by Peter Sellars, and expressed his displeasure publicly. Sellars, he said, had gone against his desire for ambiguity by explicitly depicting an Apocalypse set in the framework of the Chernobyl Disaster.) This 1996 revised score was published and has become standard. Conductors who have championed Le Grand Macabre include Elgar Howarth, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michael Boder, Alan Gilbert, Sir Simon Rattle, Thomas Guggeis, who led a new staging by Vasily Barkhatov in November 2023 at Oper Frankfurt, and Pablo Heras-Casado, who conducted a different new production a week later at the Vienna State Opera.

Lux Aeterna (Ligeti)

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Analysis#

The piece can be seen as divided into three distinct parts, as designated by text: Lux aeterna luceat eis m.1–36 : The sopranos and altos sing very similar parts in Ligeti’s characteristic style of micropolyphony. Each part has the same sequence of notes, separated by small time intervals. The tenors enter about halfway through this section, singing in the same range as the women. Domine cum sanctis tuis in aeternum… m.37–86 : The basses enter, singing in very high falsetto, showing Ligeti’s focus on timbre and texture. This is followed by a section where only the men’s voices sing, and then the women enter on the text “Quia pius es.” The sopranos sing “Requiem aeternam dona eis” in a high register and gradually fade away. Domine et lux perpetua luceat eis m.87–126 : The basses again sing the text “Domine,” this time in a very low register, briefly forming the only detectable traditional chord in the whole piece (D minor), together with the altos in a low register. Sopranos and tenors enter in a high register. All parts gradually fade, and the piece ends with seven bars of silence. It is characteristic of nearly all of Ligeti’s mature works that the subdivisions of the basic beat keep changing, which contributes to their beatless, floating feeling. In this piece, each of the sixteen voices is given a characteristic subdivision of the quarter-note beat:

Magány

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Composition#

Ligeti wrote this composition when he was still a student in the Franz Liszt Academy, in November 1946. Due to its shortness, it has never received a formal premiere, but it was rather broadcast in the Hungarian Radio and was performed together with other vocal pieces. However, it has been published by both and Schott Music and has been recorded by some relevant choirs, such as the London Sinfonietta Voices.

Magyar Etüdök

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Composition and premiere#

The composition is dedicated to Klaus Schöll. The composition was not premiered as a set, due to the fact that études 1–2 and 3 were performed separately. Movements 1 and 2 were first performed on May 18, 1983, in Stuttgart by the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart under the direction of Clytus Gottwald. Movement 3 was commissioned separately by the Rencontres internationales de musique contemporaine festival in Metz and was first performed on November 17, 1983, in Metz, again by the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart under Clytus Gottwald. The composition was later published by Schott Music.

Mátraszentimrei dalok

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Composition and premiere#

As Ligeti did with most of his early vocal compositions, this collection of pieces was composed in Budapest in 1955, but it was not premiered until June 9, 1984. The premiere took place in Saarbrücken, with conducting the Kammerchor Hausen. It was published by Schott Music.

Analysis#

The whole collection takes approximately 4 minutes to perform and consists of four folk songs. The movements are: The composition is scored for a 2-part (in movements one, two, and three) and a 3-part (in movement four) children’s choir, regardless of it being a boys’ choir or a girls’ choir. However, professional adult female singers have been used for most public performances and recordings. Ligeti stated in the original score that the last movement can be transposed one tone higher for women’s choirs. The text has also been translated into English by Desmond Clayton.

Musica ricercata

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Pitch structure#

An important global structural feature of Musica ricercata is that Ligeti confines himself to only certain pitch classes in each movement, with each subsequent movement having exactly one more pitch class than the last. In addition, the pitch-class sets of each movement are symmetrical. The pitch classes and their axes of symmetry are as follows:

Movements#

Following are brief descriptions (with some analysis) of each movement of Musica ricercata.

Piano Concerto (Ligeti)

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History#

Initial sketches of the Concerto began in 1980, but it was not until 1985 that he found a way forward and the work proceeded more quickly. In his book on Ligeti, Richard Steinitz documents the composer’s many attempts to begin the piece, noting that it was not until the twenty-first attempt, dated 1985–1986, that he gets the first page right. The following year, Ligeti added another two movements, the fourth and fifth, and the final autograph of the last movement was ready in January 1988. Ligeti wrote that “ a fter hearing the work twice in 1986 , I came to the conclusion that the third movement is not an adequate finale; my feeling of form demanded continuation, a supplement.” The five-movement concerto was premiered on February 29, 1988 with Anthony di Bonaventura and the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mario di Bonaventura in the Vienna Konzerthaus.

Pletykázó asszonyok

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Composition#

Ligeti composed Pletykázó asszonyok in 1952, when he was studying in the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and used a text by Hungarian poet Sándor Weöres. However, it was not commonly performed and was only published in 1999 by Schott Music as a collection called Két kánon, together with Ha folyóvíz volnék (1947). These two canons were conceived and written separately, as the 1947 composition was based on slovak tunes translated into Hungarian, unlike Pletykázó asszonyok.

Poème symphonique

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Sources#

Gaudeamus, Première Poème Symphonique, 1963.
György Ligeti, in Light and Shade, qobuze magazine, 21 October 2023.
György Ligeti official website, Poème Symphonique (accessed 19 May 2026).

Ramifications (Ligeti)

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Composition and premiere#

The composition is dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky and his wife, Natalia Koussevitzky and is meant to be a gift for the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress. The first version, for string orchestra, was premiered in Berlin on April 23, 1969. Michael Gielen conducted the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin on this occasion. The version for 12 soloists was premiered a few months later, on October 10, 1969, in Saarbrücken, with the Kammerorchester des Saarländischen Rundfunks under the baton of Antonio Janigro.

Requiem (Ligeti)

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Composition#

Ligeti was commissioned to write a work in 1961 for a series of new-music concerts on Swedish Radio. It was he who suggested a Requiem, and had initially intended to set the full text of the Requiem mass. However, he ultimately decided on setting the composition around half of the original text. Ligeti spent nine months working on the six-minute “Kyrie” section alone, which featured the most complex polyphony he had ever attempted, featuring twenty vocal lines, although as Harald Kaufmann notes, “it refers back… to the classical vocal polyphony of the old masters”. In particular, it drew for inspiration from the work of Ockeghem, “refracted and multiplied through the technique of micropolyphony.” He scored the work for large choral forces, featuring two mixed choirs and soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists. The orchestra consists of the following instrumentation. Woodwinds: : 3 flutes (2nd and 3rd doubling piccolos) : 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn) : : 2 bassoons : 1 contrabassoon ;Brass : 4 French horns : 3 trumpets : 1 bass trumpet : 3 trombones (tenor, bass, contrabass) : 1 tuba Percussion : glockenspiel : xylophone : snare drum : bass drum : suspended cymbal : tam-tam : slapstick : tambourine Keyboards : celesta : harpsichord Strings : harp : first violins : second violins : violas : cellos : double basses

Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedűvel

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Movements#

The work is for mezzo-soprano accompanied by four percussionists. The percussion for the seven movements is as follows: :#1st marimba, 1st slide whistle, 1st siren whistle, side drum, descant recorder :#2nd marimba, 2nd slide whistle, 2nd siren whistle, small side drum, treble recorder :#Bass marimba, 1st flexatone, 1st marimba, Burmese gong in F, tenor recorder :#Medium and low bass drums, 2nd flexatone, lion’s roar, 2nd marimba, tam-tam, cymbal with the sound of a broken pot :#2 police whistles, log drum, tom-tom, small pair of cymbals (with coughing sound), ratchet, castanets, wood drum (with muffled sound), güiro, railway whistle, vibraslap, slide whistle, sandpaper blocks, 2 cowbells, tambourine, siren whistle, 2 rototoms, tuned bongo or conga, low slit drum, 4 temple blocks (tuned), low cymbal (bowed) :#1st marimba, sopranino ocarina in F :#2nd marimba, 1st soprano ocarina in C :#Bass marimba, 2nd soprano ocarina in C :#Rin, glockenspiel :#Burmese gongs, crotales :#Tubular bells :#Vibraphone :#Xylophone :#1st marimba :#2nd marimba :#Bass marimba :#1st chromonica in C :#2nd chromonica in B :#3rd chromonica in C :#4th chromonica in B :#Claves, sopranino ocarina in F :#3 different snare drums and tom-tom, 1st soprano ocarina in C :#Vibraphone :#Bass marimba, 2nd soprano ocarina in C :#Maraca, bass drum, tambourine, Japanese wood rattle, castanets, wood block, sistrum, chimes (unpitched), metal bar, güiro, small Japanese bell, tom-tom, 2 police whistles, railway whistle, triangle, 4 temple blocks, 2 different side drums, small suspended cymbal, lion’s roar, big whip :#4 bongos (tuned ad lib) :#Xylophone :#Marimba

Sonata for Solo Cello (Ligeti)

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History#

Ligeti was nearing the end of his schooling in 1948 and had already established himself as a highly gifted student. In this year, he composed the Dialogo, which would later become the first movement of the Sonata, for a female cellist and fellow student at the Budapest Music Academy, Annuss Virány, with whom Ligeti was “secretly in love.” Virány purportedly was not aware of the reason behind Ligeti’s generosity; she merely thanked him and never played it. Several years later, in 1953, Ligeti met Vera Dénes, an older and more celebrated cellist, who asked him for a piece of music. Having written only one unperformed cello work to date, Ligeti offered to expand the Dialogo into a “two-movement short sonata,” adding a virtuosic Capriccio movement. With the country now a part of the Eastern Bloc, Ligeti was required to subject all his compositions to the scrutiny of the Communist-controlled Composers’ Union, at the risk of losing his job. He later recalled his interaction with the Union: With that decree, the piece was set aside, not to be performed again until 1979. From then, the popularity of the Sonata grew, and in 2005 became a qualifying test for the Rostropovich Cello Competition in Paris.

String Quartets (Ligeti)

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Andante and Allegretto#

These two movements were written for the graduation exam at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, with a stylistic uncertainty. The movements are about 13 minutes in total duration.

String Quartet No. 1 (Métamorphoses nocturnes)#

Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 1, titled Métamorphoses nocturnes, was composed in 1953–54. It is thus representative of what Ligeti used to call “the prehistoric Ligeti”, referring to the works he wrote before leaving Hungary in 1956. This quartet was heavily inspired by Bartók’s third and fourth quartets, so much so that it was called “Bartók’s seventh string quartet” by fellow Hungarian composer György Kurtág. The quartet is approximately 21 minutes long, and was premiered at the Vienna Musikverein on 8 May 1958 by the Ramor Quartet, an ensemble that had also fled into exile. It is in one continuous movement, which can be divided into 17 sections: # Allegro grazioso # Vivace, capriccioso # A tempo # Adagio, mesto # Presto – Prestissimo # Molto sostenuto – Andante tranquillo # Più mosso # Tempo di Valse, moderato, con eleganza, un poco capriccioso # Subito prestissimo # Subito: molto sostenuto # Allegretto, un poco gioviale # Allarg. Poco più mosso # Subito allegro con moto, string. poco a poco sin al prestissimo # Prestissimo # Allegro comodo, gioviale # Sostenuto, accelerando – Ad libitum, senza misura # Lento

Three Bagatelles (Ligeti)

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Composition#

Ligeti finished the bagatelles in 1961, as part of his collaboration with neo-dadaist group Fluxus. The original manuscript is kept in Basel, in the Sacher Stiftung, as part of the Nordwall Collection, and is indeed dedicated to David Tudor. The piece was first performed in Wiesbaden by and was published in 1965 in New York City by Schott Music.

Analysis#

The three bagatelles should take around a minute to perform and should not be performed from memory, as a copy of the score is necessary for performance. The tempo indications are as follows: # ♪ = 40–48 # L’istesso tempo # Più lento The composition consists exclusively of one long C♯1 whole note played in the first bagatelle. Following that, the breaks between the pieces are marked by the turning of each page (one page is left blank between the first bagatelle and the second bagatelle). The piece ends when the pianist stands up and bows towards the audience. It has a certain humorous purpose. The second, tacet, bagatelle, is marked “Molto espressivo”. Moreover, the score also includes a fourth bagatelle as an encore of the piece to be performed if the pianist wishes, which is marked “Tempo primo” and only includes a sixteenth rest.

Three Fantasies after Friedrich Hölderlin

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Analysis#

The composition consists of three movements and a typical performance takes approximately 11 minutes. The movement list is as follows: # (Halfway through Life). Lento # (If from a Distance). Andante con tenerezza # (Evening Reverie). Maestoso – Più mosso, agitato The piece is a polyphonic four-part work for 16 voices (that is, four each of sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses). Its compositional style is strongly influenced by Ligeti’s word-painting techniques from the 60s. Here, lyrics are almost indistinguishable, so the listener is encouraged to listen to the labyrinthic ramifications of the music instead of trying to understand the content of the original poems. Ligeti commented on this work: “My three fantasies are emotional, ‘onomatopoetic’, overwrought, 16-voiced pieces (not micropolyphonic!)”.

Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (Ligeti)

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Analysis#

The Trio is in four movements: A performance of the piece lasts about 21 minutes. The composition explores the use of major and minor harmonies as free sonorities without following established patterns of common practice tonality. In addition, it explores the natural just intonation of the upper partials available on the horn, asymmetric Bulgarian rhythms in the second movement, and the Ligeti lamento motif in the fourth movement. The first three movements are each in a ternary form – a notable look back towards traditional forms. The final movement is an example of a passacaglia using as its ground bass a similar theme as that of the opening movement. It has been pointed out that the opening theme of the first movement is reminiscent of the opening theme of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 26, “Les Adieux”.

Viola Sonata (Ligeti)

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Movements#

The work consists of six movements:

I. Hora lungă#

The first movement, Hora lungă takes influences of the Romanian folksong style of the same name. The title means “slow Hora”, but in this case hora could be understood as the Romanian word for “dance”. The entire movement is played on the C string, and uses microtonal intervals that imitate mostly the harmonic Scale of F. Other examples of passages on a single string include the Aria from Ligeti’s Violin Concerto (74 measures on the G string) and the third movement of the Viola Sonata, Facsar, which probably influenced the first movement, as Ligeti wrote the two movements in the same year. To indicate microtones, Ligeti uses the sonata three downward arrows for alterations of -49, -31 and -14 cents, respectively. The use of microtonal intervals is common in the works of Ligeti. In the Viola Sonata, their use follows the harmonic Scale on F. In this way, the harmonic construction, with -49 cents lower on B, -31 cents lower on E, and -14 cents lower on the A, the ear suggests the resonance of the imaginary “fifth” string F, which would lie a fifth below the viola’s lowest C, which makes the movement in some aspects similar to spectral music. The movement consists of the theme introduced in mm. 1–2, with six repeated transformations (mm. 2–5, 5–8, 9–14, 16–19, 19–32, 32–37) and a sort of interlude (mm. 15–16) that employs an arpeggiated figuration of harmonics that ascends on the C string. The only break of the movement lasts one-sixteenth and the end of the interlude, providing a reference point for conceptual bisection of the movement. The fifth transformation includes a large crescendo and climax, with the dynamic ffff in mm. 29. The last section consists entirely of natural harmonics, based on a second harmonic scale on C as opposed to the aforementioned harmonic scale on F.

Violin Concerto (Ligeti)

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History#

The first version of the concerto consisted of three movements. This version was performed on 3 November 1990 in Cologne. In 1992, Ligeti revised the score by replacing the first movement and adding two new movements. This new version was premiered on 8 October 1992 in Cologne. Finally, he reorchestrated the third and fourth movements, and the final version was first performed on 9 June 1993 by Gawriloff with the Ensemble InterContemporain conducted by Pierre Boulez.