ligeti is dead

to me he is in the same league as bach, schubert and webern for the sheer beauty and emotive charge of his music. even more esteem considering the tragedies he lived through! he always forged ahead undaunted, with humour. rest in peace.

an innovator and a huge inspiration. RIP.

bruno said:

to me he is in the same league as bach, schubert and webern for the sheer beauty and emotive charge of his music. even more esteem considering the tragedies he lived through! he always forged ahead undaunted, with humour. rest in peace.

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A good epitaph

Nothing on newsnight (uk) - usually they have a little tribute even to mediocrities, Ligeti is about as canonical as a living composer can be......

Possibly they will do one on newsnight review on Friday (though that struggles to get to middlebrow at the best of times).

Not sure I give a fuck about Newsnight (alright then I do, a tiny bit) - just that it's symptomatic of wider stupidity / death of civilization etc

I'm sure he'll get lengthy obituaries in the broadsheets, but this seems like a rare high-culture death worthy of a little wider notice;

The unusual popularity for an avantgardist (thanks to Kubrick)

Arguably the most eloquent (that is, beyond the highly representational shostakoich) composer essaying abjection, violence and hope in the later 20th century,

and a good chance that he will endure for many years

The canonical figure Ligeti most reminds me of is Debussy (I'm being geeky here) - for the piano studies, for an unusual success with forms outside the classical tradition, and anachronism, for the Requiem; a masterpiece of choral writing to sit next to The Martyrdom of St Sebastian, for the sublime surface textures which hit you so quickly, for the playfulness

I'm quite sad about this, my favourite living person dead, doesn't often happen........

rest in peace...i only started to appreciate his work in the past two years, and maybe listened to 20% of what he did.

post or pm any good pieces/obits you come across please

adruu said:

rest in peace...i only started to appreciate his work in the past two years, and maybe listened to 20% of what he did.

post or pm any good pieces/obits you come across please

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To be fair, 20% of any composer (other than eg Webern or Varese) is a fair amount

There's plenty by Ligeti I wouldn't bother with (the Soviet era stuff, some of the silly vocal things)

Thinking about this again - maybe he was just a sixties artifact in the middlebrow imagination, the BBC news obituary seems to misrepresent him quite badly as a sort of sub-cagean mediaevalist fool, not even 'controversial' - "....continually withstood the derision heaped upon them by generations of critics....." seems very lazy

Criticising obituaries like that is too easy, it's not awful in other respects

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/292812.stm

A lot of the obits have been a bit lazy, particularly in suggesting that Ligeti 'composed the score' for 2001, when the truth is that Kubrick nicked recordings of his music without requesting permission or paying royalties...

Anyway, very sad news. He had been ill for several years now, and it didn't look as though we were going to see any new music from him, but he was a titan nevertheless. Academic opinion of him is undergoing a certain amount of revision at the moment with critical eyes being cast over his chimerical self-promotion. He was one of the most interviewed composers ever, and his own accounts of his music were often flexible and occasionally contradictory. But that's something for musicologists to worry about; I think his reputation is absolutely secured, and will likely grow much bigger in times to come. All the pieces are there - many substantial biographies in several languages, a complete recorded edition, all those interviews, an enthralling life story (the escape from Budapest in 1956), popular acclaim, the film tie-ins - for future generations to hold him alongside perhaps only Stravinsky as the greatest of the 20th century.

A big list of obituaries is on the blog .

Rambler said:

A lot of the obits have been a bit lazy, particularly in suggesting that Ligeti 'composed the score' for 2001, when the truth is that Kubrick nicked recordings of his music without requesting permission or paying royalties...

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i was listening to requiem last night, it reminds me very much of the soundtrack to the shining in that its a very intense listening experience, almost harrowing at times. proper heaviness. did he also do the soundtrack to that?

i'm ashamed to say i wasn't really aware of him before his death, but of course i've heard lots of his music in films. could you recommend some good starting points to dip into?

Yeah, some of his music is in the Shining (with permission this time), also Eyes Wide Shut.

The music Kubrick used in 2001 is the Kyrie from the Requiem, Atmospheres, and Lux aeterna - the first of these is probably the most memorable, and is available on the Ligeti Project IV (Teldec), along with the Hamburg Concerto, Double Concerto and Ramifications. This is a bit of a tricky CD to get into though as a starting point; I would recommend instead the Ligeti Project II (also on Teldec). This has Atmospheres, Lontano (used in the Shining), Apparitions (his first big work after escaping Hungary in 1956), San Francisco Polyphony (nothing like Steve Reich's New York Counterpoint!) and Concert Romanesc, an early, but brilliantly odd work.

For the weirder corners of Ligeti's 60s output, Wergo's CD reissue with Continuum, Artikulation, Glissandi, Etuden fur Orgel and Volumina is worth a look. Also, various Wergo Ligeti LPs crop up regularly on eBay and are worth buying.

Of his later works, the Piano Etudes are masterpieces; find a Pierre-Laurent Aimard recording for preference, but Idil Beret has recorded the first two books (of three) for Naxos and these are perfectly fine for a fiver.

Aaah Gyorgy RIP
A survivor and an inspiration , they don't make 'em like him anymore .
Those piano etudes sound good Rambler,
thanks for the tip

This is one of my favourite Etudes, from book 1

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=7D1A92C1235D7878

some of the others are insanely complex and tumultuous

Not to be overbearingly pedantic here [says he, meaning the exact opposite], but 2001 features four Ligeti pieces, from his Requiem (for Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra ), Atmospheres ((Beyond the Infinite)), Lux Aeterna ( (The Lunar Landscape) and (in then-unauthorised electronically altered form) Aventures.

According to Robert C. Cumbow's article accompanying this 2001 soundtrack album, György Ligeti "took successful legal action for the unauthorized modification of his music", a reference to the electronically "treated" recording of Aventures in the time-collapsed, "interstellar hotel" scene, the film's anti-humanistic denouement, at the end of the film.





Michel Ciment: The oratorio by György Ligeti which acts as a musical leitmotif for the presence of the monolith coincides with Arthur C. Clarke's idea that all technology, if sufficiently advanced, is touched with magic and a certain irrationality. Its choral accompaniment leads us onto the threshold of the unknown ... Finally, both films [2001 and The Shining] make use of contemporary and consciously "modern" music (Ligeti in 2001; Ligeti again, Penderecki and Bartok in The Shining) mingled with extracts from Romantic works (in this case a Dies Irae inspired by the final "Witches Sabbath" movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique) which act as a prelude to some violent and total mental breakdown.

Unflinchingly, the Ligeti pieces in Kubrick's films have a mocking tone as if laughing at all past music and at people with notions of unified or fixed values. In The Shining the unnerving atmospheric use of Ligeti’s Lontano 11 (1967) accompanies Danny’s first visit by the spectral Grady sisters at the Overlook. In Eyes Wide Shut, Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, II (Mesto, Rigido E Cerimoni Ale, 1951-53), is a simple but intense solo piano piece, but there is rivetting "symmetry" to the asymmetric narrative provided by the collapse of the film's soundtrack into this grating, grinding, overbearing, monotonic 3-note piano solo (which alienated many viewers), an anxiety-generating Ligeti minimalism that is the opposite of what we would have expected: no counterpointing, no ironic playfulness, no melancholy - just knife-edged precision aural bombing (a "snake-bite", as Kubrick described it; bite indeed, as coincidentally, Kubrick died on the very same night that he had earlier been on the phone to brother-in-law Jan Harlan - whose pianist nephew Dominic performed the piece for the soundtrack - to ensure that the track would have the necessary "bite"), an overpowering irruption of literalness that, at one level at least serves as the "objective correlative" of the character Dr Bill's psychic (re)splitting ...

Modern composers were never called assholes.

hundredmillionlifetimes said:

Not to be overbearingly pedantic here [says he, meaning the exact opposite], but 2001 features four Ligeti pieces, from his Requiem (for Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra ), Atmospheres ((Beyond the Infinite)), Lux Aeterna ( (The Lunar Landscape) and (in then-unauthorised electronically altered form) Aventures.

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That's true (and Aventures isn't even credited at the end of the film). But it's not actually clear - depends who you read - whether Ligeti attempted to sue over the unauthorised alterations to Aventures, or the unauthorised use of his music overall. I suspect it's probably the latter (seems more likely in any case, and he is on record as saying he approved aesthetically of Kubrick's use of his music in the film overall). Also, to be pedantic right back it's difficult to describe an out-of-court settlement for a paltry sum as 'successful legal action' (a misinterpretation which I think began spreading with Jerome Agel's book on the making of 2001).

What is kind of interesting is that the recording Kubrick used - and which appears on most of the soundtrack albums - wasn't ever commercially released, but is taken from a Westdeutsche Rundfunk radio broadcast of a concert given in Munich in 1967. Kubrick was presumably trying create as few licensing waves as possible, but how the hell did he come across this performance?

Further on Ligeti Soundtracks

Moving far away from the trivia of long-since resolved adversarial legal disputes, the composer himself later appeared as an interviewee in Jan Harlan's documentary tribute Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001, 2hrs 21mins):

Ligeti on 2001 [interview from doc "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures"]: "It was for me, especially the visual fantasy, with the speed, with the colour and light changes when the spaceship goes down on a moon of the Jupiter, yeah? And that the speed is more and more and more, and it was very clear that Dr Einstein pretended that light, velocity is the highest, you cannot go beyond. But in this film it was suggested, as it would be, beyond the speed of light and then we enter in another world."

Until the 1960s, Ligeti's compositions reflected the prevailing language of serialism. Then in 1961, Ligeti's Atmosphéres for orchestra received a very controversial reception with its large washes of huge tone clusters and timbres creating an expressive, even neo-romantic kind of sound painting, the very antithesis of the serialists' obsession with specific intervals. In Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), this piece accompanies the spectacular visuals of the trip to the outermost dimensions that give birth to the Star Child with shimmering clusters, high glissandi, and waves of string harmonics at varying speeds, as if on a celestial highway.

Ligeti's Requiem (1963--1965) employs deeply resonant rhythmic dronings, clusters, expressions of devastation, and the shocking Dies Irae with its frenzied turmoil, Tibetan horn-like sounds, and wild, shrieking vocal and instrumental mellisma. This piece is quoted throughout 2001, and often segues with Lux Aeterna (1966) for 16 solo voices that is the sound signature for the black monolith first encountered in the age of Homo Erectus as the film opens. This mysterious religious work varies between a surface of multi-timbral clusters made from polyphonically accumulations, and short, whispering consonances. The second texture segues seamlessly with Ligeti's Aventures (1962) at various points in this same film. This work employs an artificial language extended by vocal-like instrumental inflections. Ligeti's Lontano (Distance) for orchestra (1967), also quoted in 2001, re-creates the "dream-worlds of childhood," and utilizes horizontal and vertical distancing effects.

Excerpts from various Ligeti works - principally Lontano - are quoted in Kubrick's version of Stephen King's horror classic The Shining (1980), employed in moments of high tension.

Narrative placement of Ligeti's music, which always occurs in those scenes that portray the Monolith - in 2001:

Requiem — dies irae

(Key Images: Monolith’s first appearance — one clan of hominids gather around and touch it — sun, earth and moon in orbital conjunction)

Lux Aeterna

(Key Images: Lunar Shuttle and Lunar landscape)

Requiem, dies irae (signal to Jupiter at end)

(Key Images: Monolith — astronauts enter excavation by foot — astronauts touch monolith —

astronauts group around monolith for photo — signal: astronauts deafened - orbital conjunction)

Requiem, dies irae — Atmospheres fades in at end

(Key Images: Bowman exiting ‘Discovery’, Monolith in space, Jupiter moons in orbital conjunction, Bowman in pod)

Atmospheres (explosions - fade out half way)

(Key Images: Bowman in pod, Bowman’s face intercut with ‘Star Gate’: alien landscapes and formations, Bowman’s eyes and colours intercut with ‘Star Gate’: alien abstractions)

Lux Aeterna - fade out to - (sounds of preternatural voices)

(Key Images: Bowman’s eyes - colours fading, Bowman emerging from pod)

Aventures (sounds of preternatural voices) — fade out to silence before deathbed

(Key Images: Louis XVI rooms, Bowman’s successively aging doubles — in space suite — at the table — in deathbed, monolith, glowing foetus merging with monolith)


Ligeti on EWS [interview from doc "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures"]: "I was in Stalinistic, terroristic Hungary where this kind of music was not allowed, and I just wrote it for myself. Stanley Kubrick understood the dramatism of this moment, and this is what he did in the film, and for me, when I composed it in the year 1950 it was the best, it was desperate. It was a knife in Stalin's heart."

(Note1: Already at this early stage in his career, Ligeti was affected by the communist regime in Hungary at that time. The tenth piece of Musica Ricercata was banned by the authorities on account of it being "decadent". It seems that it was thus branded owing to its liberal use of minor second intervals; Note2: The Hungarian character of Sándor Szavost in EWS might be an oblique reference to Ligeti, given his full name: György Sándor Ligeti, a Romanian/Hungarian composer of Hungarian Jewish descent - and given Kubrick's own Austro-Hungarian Jewish ancestry).

Because of the political situation in Hungary, Ligeti could not promote his more advanced works, like the Musica ricercata I--XI for piano (1951--1953) in which each piece is generated from progressively more notes; in other words, the most minimal to the most maximal of means. Piece No. II, Mesto, rigido e cerimoniale (melancholic, rigid, and ceremonial), was chosen by Stanley Kubrick for Eyes Wide Shut . Like this composition, the movie contrasts outward formality and habitual behavior with an inner, secret world of tortured emotions. The obsessive alternation of the two notes a half-step apart (with register displacement) creates an almost unbearable tension, the revisited trauma of the formation of subjectivity, of splitting/spaltung.

Dariusz Roberte: "The film begins with a long silence where only the noises of two clans of hominids, some tapirs and a leopard are heard. The first appearance of the monolith introduces the dies irae of György Ligeti’s Requiem, a very challenging and hypnotic piece replete with microtonal clusters, soaring overwhelmingly powerful wordless voices and orchestral sonorities conjuring supernatural states of mind — a sonic wormhole into the infinite. The music is almost too profound for the clumsy and trepid kinaesthetic response of the hominids to the irresistible black surfaces of the monolith. But of course the music is an expression of the inexpressible — the alien intelligence that dwarfs prehistoric man.

"Historically, dissonance — harsh, controversial, disconcerting sounds — has been treated in films as negative factor implying neurosis, evil" [etc.] (Bazelon, 1975: 88). However, in Space Odyssey this music — Ligeti’s — is used to evoke feelings of awe, almost reverence for the unknown, the terror experienced is part of the fabric of wonderment not abhorrence. In this I am certain the music succeeds admirably; this is more a compliment to the composer than to Kubrick, yet it took the director’s visionary powers to fuse it with the image."


Apart from 2001, The Shining, and EWS, these are the other films and documentaries featuring the music of Ligeti [if per chance you know of any others, please post details here]:

Feature Films

Merci La Vie [Thank You, Life] (1991, 1hr 57mins; Director: Bertrand Blier, with additional music by Philip Glass, David Byrne, Jacques Brel, Vivaldi, Arno, Chopin, Puccini, Beethoven).

--------------------(In this frequently surrealistic romp, a satire on sex, politics, and the business of filmmaking, two young women get together after discovering sufficient provocations in their lives to deliberately set out to wreak havoc in the world around them ... Eventually, they set their sights on a "higher" goal and decide to do in an entire town. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide).

Winterspelt (1978, 1hr 48mins; Director: Eberhard Fechner)

Heat (1995, 2hrs 52mins; Director: Michael Mann, featuring Ligeti's Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (1966)).

Reflections of Evil (2002, 2hrs, 18mins; Director: Damon Packard)
---------------(Cult filmmaker Damon Packard wrote, directed, and stars in this bizarre independent feature about a sugar addict obese watch seller. Packard plays Bob, a man whose penchant for sweets is threatening to send him to an early grave. His dead sister's ghost attempts to help him while he seeks out a mysterious woman he saw in a vision. The legendary Tony Curtis narrates. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide).

Compartment [aka CARMA] (2005, 81mins, award-winning chilling US thriller; Director: Ray Arthur Wang; Tagline: Four is the number for death. Taking place around 04/04/04 over the course of four days ...).

Másnap (2004, 2hrs, Hungarian experimental non-linear narrative crime drama; Director: Attila Janisch)
... aka After the Day Before (International: English title)

Ira, La (1989, 75mins, Spanish drama; Director: Carlos Atanes).)

2010 (1984, directed by Peter Hyams) (from "Lux Aeterna") (as Gyorgy Ligeti)
... aka 2010: The Year We Make Contact

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005; Tim Burton's remake of Willy Wonka and etc) (features Ligeti's "Requiem")



Short Films

Morrer no mar (1984, 12mins, Spanish short; Director: Alfredo García Pinal)

Bruno n'a pas d'agent (1999, 27mins, French short; Director: Chrintine Dory).


Documentaries

Früchte der Arbeit, Die (1977, 2hrs 25mins, German-Swiss doc; Director: Alexander J. Seiler)

Tulevaisuus ei ole entisensä (2002, 52mins, Finnish doc; Director: Mika Taanila)
... aka The Future Is Not What It Used to Be (International: English title)

Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures (2001, 142mins, biographical doc; Director: Jan Harlan).