Shades of the Studio: Electronic Influences on Ligeti's "Apparitions"

Shades of the Studio: Electronic Influences on Ligeti's Apparitions Benjamin K Levy Brief comments that Gyorgy Ligeti made in interviews, lectures, and articles such as his "Metamorphoses ofMusical Form"1 suggest that his early experiences in the Cologne electronic music studio in the 1950s, immediately following his flightfromHungary and his introduc tion to the techniques of the avant-garde, helped shape his later style of composition, and that both general principles and specific techniques for sound manipulation that he discovered through these experiences led to the creation of his firstmature orchestral pieces, Apparitions (1958-59) and Atmospheres (1961). Indeed, one product of that period, Piece elec tronique no. 3 (1957-58) was originally conceived under the title Atmospheres, but was leftunfinished, and was renamed when the orches tralwork took over that title, suggesting (despite Ligeti's denial of any explicit relationship2) a shared aesthetic concern and more than a mere chronological connection. Yet Ligeti's comments often lack concrete examples of how his work in the studio informed his later compositions. And while the orchestral compositions have attracted considerable fame 60 PerspectivesofNew Music and scholarly attention,3 there are very few significant studies on Piece electronique no. 3 or on his other two electronic compositions, Glissandi (1957), and Artikulation (1958), that clarify the connection. Perhaps on account of the unfamiliarity of the electronic medium, secondary sources tend to skirtover the details of the construction of these works in favor of general descriptions of their character?for example the "humor" of Glissandi or the interest in a synthetic language demon strated inArtikulation.* To understand these details, a close study of Ligeti's compositional sketches is essential. By comparing sketches and passages from the electronic pieces with both the score and the sonic impression of Apparitions, this study focuses on the specific composi tional techniques and the resulting gestures and textures which Ligeti discovered while working in electronic music and then carried over into the orchestral medium, thereby illuminating a previously neglected side of this important stylistic transformation. This investigation will proceed from rhythmic practice, where Ligeti firstbegan to experiment with and expand upon the serial methods of his contemporaries, to the more original compositional devices he developed involving the coordination of rhythm,pitch, and other parameters. The change inLigeti's approach to rhythmic organization was perhaps the most profound shift in his stylisticmetamorphosis during the late 1950s, as it encompassed both large-scale formal design and more surface level patterning. Moreover, itwas in the domain of rhythm where Ligeti began to reconcile serial practices with what he had taken from Bartok, through theHungarian theorist Erno Lendvai, and where ultimately, Ligeti found his own voice, developing the characteristically "static" and "textural" style forwhich he became famous. When Ligeti escaped Hungary during the revolution of 1956, he described himself as largely ignorant of the practices of theWestern European avant-garde: Invited by Dr. Herbert Eimert, I came to Cologne in 1957 as a "virgo intacta," so to speak, having no idea, then, not only about electronic music, but also even more generally about what had hap pened compositionally in the post-war years in Western Europe.5 He went on to say that he was inspired to compose a type of "static" music while still inHungary, but was without the technical means to realize this vision because until he arrived inCologne, he "had not got beyond the concept of notation based on metre." Even two of his more adventurous Hungarian-period compositions, Metamorphosis nocturnes and Musica ricercata, were "conceived within the framework of Shades of the Studio 61 conventional time measurement and periodic structure."6 Many of Ligeti's new colleagues at theWest Deutsche Rundfunk (WDR) Studio in Cologne considered the pairing of serial and electronic music to be the union of the most advanced compositional techniques of the day with the most advanced technology.7 It is not surprising, then, that Ligeti looked to serial electronic music when searching for themeans to overcome this compositional problem, and that he confronted this difficulty in the electronic medium before applying his solution to orchestral writing. Some traces ofmetrical thinking are still evident in the sketches forhis first tape piece, Glissandi. They show that...