In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Notes 60.3 (2004) 674-676



[Access article in PDF]
György Ligeti: Music of the Imagination. By Richard Steinitz. London: Faber and Faber; Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003. [xvii, 429 p. ISBN 1-55553-551-8. $35.] Music examples, illustrations, glossary, discography, bibliography, index. [End Page 674]

Prior to this book by Richard Steinitz, the main sources of biographical detail about the events in prominent twentieth-century composer György Ligeti's life were anecdotes he related in response to questions by interviewers. As most of the published interviews (pp. 395-97) were commissioned in connection with the publication or performance of a specific work or works, their presentation of Ligeti's biography is at best fragmentary, and sometimes also contradictory, because he related information about an event in different ways depending on the wording of the interviewer's question, the context in which it was posed, and the point he wanted to make for that audience, rather than in a broader historical context. Yet from those detached anecdotes, it is clear that there are specific connections to be drawn between the dramatic events of Ligeti's life and his compositional choices, and that knowing the circumstances in which his compositions were written contributes to a fuller understanding of his creative imagination and compositional genius.

Steinitz's account of events in Ligeti's life reads at times like a novel, yet captures the amazing true story of a composer who was at the epicenter of compositional development in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, and whose compositions of the last forty years have captured the imagination of several generations of listeners, performers, and analysts. This book is notable for its sweep and breadth—spanning events from Ligeti's birth on 28 May 1923 through his receipt of the Kyoto Prize in 2002—and for the wealth of new information, especially about Ligeti's life prior to 1956 and regarding his activities out of the spotlight. Ligeti's review of Steinitz's first chapter drafts—which Ligeti responded "were full of errors" (p. xv)—led to a collaboration between the composer and biographer to set the record straight. Many details are included that do not appear in other sources, including information about Ligeti's personal life and ongoing health problems, both of which have bearing on his compositional output. In addition, Steinitz draws on materials in the Ligeti archives at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basle, Switzerland, that include sketches and manuscript scores; many of these only became available for scholarly study in 2000. Steinitz positions Ligeti's compositional output in its biographical context, filling in the many lacunae and correcting errors made by previous writers who were piecing events together from biographical fragments and anecdotes.

Steinitz divides Ligeti's compositions into three style periods: from his early years to his late thirties, ending with Ligeti's international debut with performances of Apparitions (1957-59) and Atmosphères (1961); works composed in the West, spanning from Volumina (1961-62) to Monument-Selbstportrait-Bewegung (1976); and late works, beginning with his opera Le grand macabre (1978) and continuing through his current works-in-progress.

Much of the biographical information in the first section of the book appears in print for the first time here, relating Ligeti's childhood in a Hungarian Jewish enclave in what had become Romanian Transylvania, his struggles to pursue his education because of his Jewish heritage, his survival of the Holocaust through a series of lucky coincidences (though all of his family except his mother were killed in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Mauthausen), his life in Budapest under the communist regime, and his escape from Hungary to the West in 1956. Because Ligeti, after 1960, tended to talk about his most recent compositions in interviews rather than answer questions about his life prior to 1956, little had been available about the events surrounding his childhood, his compositional training and earliest pieces, and his works written in a popular, folk-like style during his career as a teacher and composer in a country under communist control. The early compositions themselves were inaccessible for many years...

pdf

Share