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Video
Explore the Score: György Ligeti Piano Works with Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Reading in English
Historical Background
Excerpts from ch. 2 of Rachel Beckles Willson, Ligeti, Kurtág, and Hungarian Music during the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 26-41, 52-59, 64-73. on reserve LL)
Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010):
Rational and Irrational. Western Europe, 1945-50
Total Organization. Western Europe 1949-54
Extension and Development. Western Europe 1953-57
Mobile Form 1956-61
Reappraisal and Disintegration: 1959-1964
Music Theatre
Virtuosity and Improvisation
Orchestras or Computers
Minimalism and Melody
Referencings
Towards Mode/Meme
Richard Toop, "Expanding horizons: the international avant-garde, 1962–75," in The Cambridge history of twentieth-century music, Nicholas Cook and Anthony Pople (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Biographical
Amy Bauer, "György Sándor Ligeti," Musicians and Composers of the Twentieth Century, Chris Moose, editor. (Pasadena: Salem Press, 2009), 855-60.
Constantin Floros, György Ligeti: Beyond Avant-garde and Postmodernism, trans. Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2014)
Paul Griffiths, György Ligeti. 2nd ed. (London: Robson Books, Ltd., 1983). LL (Two updated versions exist, but Langson has only the first ed.)
Marina Lobanova, György Ligeti: style, ideas, poetics (Berlin: Kuhn, 2002). (Not in our library)
Robert Richart, György Ligeti: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990) LL
Sean Rourke, "Ligeti’s Early Years in the West," The Musical Times 130/1759 (1989), 532-35.
Steinitz, Richard, György Ligeti: music of the imagination.(London: Faber & Faber, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003). LR
Richard Toop, György Ligeti. (London: Phaidon Press, 1999). (Missing from Langson)
Louise Duschesneau, "… Music is a bit like live – you do it, but you don’t talk about it,” György Ligeti's Cultural Identities Amy Bauer and Márton Kerékfy, eds., (London, NY: Routledge, 2017), 39–50. On reserve LL
Michael McNabb, "Ligeti at Stanford and Berkeley," Computer Music Journal 17/4 (1993), 73–5.
Ove Nordwall, "György Ligeti," Tempo 88 (Spring 1969), 22-25.
Ligeti's Writings and Interviews
György Ligeti, "Pierre Boulez. Decision and Automaticism in Structure 1," in A Die Reihe: Young Composers 4 (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co., 1958), 33–64.
György Ligeti, "Some Remarks on Boulez’ 3rd Piano Sonata," Die Reihe 5 (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co., 1959), 56–8.
György Ligeti with Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, "Music in the Technological Era," (1963), translated and annotated by Louise Duchesneau, in György Ligeti's Cultural Identities, AmyBauer and Márton Kerékfy, eds. (London, NY: Routledge, 2017), 21–38.
György Ligeti, “Metamorphoses of Musical Form,” Tr. Cornelius Cardew, Die Reihe 7: Form-Space (Bryn Mawr: Theodore Presser Co., 1965), 5-19.
György Ligeti and Josef Hausler, "Ligeti — Josef Hausler (1969)," in Ligeti in Conversation with Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, Claude Samuel and Himself, trans. Sarah E. Soulsby (London: Eulenburg, 1983) 83–110.
György Ligeti, "Ligeti–Ligeti" (1971), in Ligeti in Conversation with Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, Claude Samuel and Himself, trans. Geoffrey Skelton (London: Eulenburg, 1983) 124–37.
Louis Christensen, "Conversation with Ligeti at Stanford," Numus-West 2 (1972), 17–20.
Adrian Jack, "Ligeti Talks to Adrian Jack," Music and Musicians 22/11 (1974), 24–30.
György Ligeti, “On Music and Politics,” Perspectives of New Music 16/2 (1978), 19-24.
György Ligeti and Peter Varna, "Liget–Peter Varnai" (1979), in Ligeti in Conversation with Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, Claude Samuel and Himself, trans. Gabor J. Schabert (London: Eulenburg, 1983), 13–82
.György Ligeti and Claude Samuel, "Ligeti– Claude Samuel" (1981), in Ligeti in Conversation with Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, Claude Samuel and Himself, trans. Terence Kilmartin (London: Eulenburg, 1983), 111–23.
István Szigeti, "A Budapest Interview with György Ligeti," The New Hungarian Quarterly 25 (1984), 205–10.
György Ligeti, Preface, Simha Arom, African Polyphony and Polyrhythm, trans. Martin Thom, Barbara Tuckett, and Raymond Boyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), xvii-xviii.
György Ligeti and John Rockwell, "Laurels at Auspicious Time for György Ligeti," The New York Times (Nov. 11 1986)
György Ligeti and Dorle J. Soria, "György Ligeti: Distinguished and Unpredictable," Musical America 107:4 (1987), 12-25, 27.
György Ligeti, "On My Piano Concerto," trans. Robert Cogan, Sonus 9/1 (1988), 8–13.
György Ligeti and Michael John White, "Fears of a clown," The Independent (October 18 1989)
György Ligeti and Stephen Sartory, "An Interview with György Ligeti in Hamburg," Canadian University Music Review/Revue de musiquedes universités canadiennes 10:1 (1990), 101-117.
György Ligeti, "Form," in Contemplating Music: Source Readings in the Aesthetics of Music, vol. III, Ruth Katz and Carl Dahlhaus (eds.) (Stuyvesant: Pendragon. 1992), 781–96.
György Ligeti, program notes, Violin Concerto premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (18 February 1993)
György Ligeti, "States, events, transformations," trans. Jonathan W. Bernard, Perspectives of New Music, 31/1 (1993), 164–71.
György Ligeti and Stefan Niculescu, "Ligeti Face to Face: Gyorgy Ligeti and Stefan Niculescu in a Dialogue Coordinated by Karsten Witt, Vienna, 1992," Muzica 4/2 (1993), 70–81.
György Ligeti and Dermot Clinch, "From kitchen utensils to music as the love of food," New Statesman 125:4314 (1996), 41.
György Ligeti and Michael Meschke, English Libretto, Le Grand Macabre (1996)
Pierre Gervasoni, "Interview with György Ligeti," Le Monde (27 Sept, 1997)
György Ligeti, Liner notes to CD SK 62308, Ligeti edition 3: Piano works (trans. A. McVoy and D. Feurzeig) (1997)
György Ligeti and Benoît Delbecq, "György Ligeti interviewed by Benoît Delbecq," Jazz Magazine 484 (1998)
Jean Christensen and György Ligeti, "An art without ideology," trans. Jean Christensen and Anders Beyer, in The Voice of Music: Conversations with Composers of Our Time, Anders Beyer, (ed.) (Aldershot: Ashgate 2000), 1–14.
Paul Griffiths and György Ligeti, Interview in The Substance of Things Heard: writings about music (Rochester: University of Rochester Press 2005), 188–19.
Critical studies
Amy Bauer, “Canon as agent of revelation in the music of Ligeti,” Contemporary Music and Spirituality, Sander van Maas and Robert Sholl, eds. (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2016)
Amy Bauer, Ligeti’s Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism and the Absolute (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate), 2011 (on reserve LL)
Early Laments (Chapter 2)
Moths, Machines and the Melancholy of Time Passed (Chapter 2)
Lament as Ur-Narrative (Chapter 2)
Lament as Universal Exception (Chapter 3)
Transparent Tangle of History (Lontano, Chapter 4)
Transparent Tangle of History (Le Grand Macabre, Chapter 4)
The Singular Exotic (Chapter 5)
Lament and the Absolute (Horn Trio, Chapter 6)
Lament as Genre (Chapter 7)
Amy Bauer and Márton Kerékfy, Introduction, in György Ligeti's Cultural Identities, AmyBauer and Márton Kerékfy, eds. (London, NY: Routledge, 2017), 1–17.
Stefan Beyst, Aventures: Ode to the discrepancy between word and deed (January 2003)
John M. Chowning, “Music from Machines: Perceptual Fusion & Auditory Perspective,” in Constantin Floros, Hans Joachim Marx, Peter Petersen (eds.), Für György Ligeti: Die Referate des Ligeti-Kongresses Hamburg 1988 (Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1991), 231–43.
Edward T. Cone, "One Hundred Metronomes," Journal of Aesthetic Education, 13:1 (1979), 53–68.
Eric Drott, "Ligeti in Fluxus," Journal of Musicology 21:2 (2004), 201–40.
Louise Duchesneau and Wolfgang Marx, eds., Edwards, Nicole N., "Ligeti's Etudes pour piano, (premier livre): A Fusion of Tradition and Experimentation," Musicology Australia 24 (2001), 62–84. Iverson, Jennifer, "The Emergence of Timbre: Ligeti’s Synthesis of Electronic and Acoustic Music in Atmosphères," twentieth-century music 7/1 (2011), 61–89. Hans Keller, "The Contemporary Problem," Tempo 89 (Summer, 1969), 25, 27-28. Frederick Knop, "Making it home? The natural sciences as a site of belonging in György Ligeti’s music," in György Ligeti's Cultural Identities, Amy Bauer and Márton Kerékfy, eds. (London, NY: Routledge, 2017), 92–100. Wolfgang Marx, "How I wonder what you're at!’—Sketch Studies of Ligeti's Nonsense Madrigals," Contemporary Music Review 31:2-3 (2012), 135-148. David Metzer, Chapter 4, Lament, in Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009), 144–74. Ove Nordwall, "Ligeti's harpsichord," Contemporary Music Review, 20:1 (2001), 71-8. Ian Pace, Maintaining Disorder: Some Technical and Aesthetic Issues Involved in the Performance of Ligeti’s Études for Piano," Contemporary Music Review 31:2-3 (2012), 177–201. Jean-Claude Risset, "Computer-Synthesis-Perception-Paradoxes," Constantin Floros, Für György Ligeti: Die Referate des Ligeti-Kongresses Hamburg 1988, Hans Joachim Marx, Peter Petersen (eds.) (Laaber: Laaber, 1991), 245–58. Alex Ross, "Ligeti Split," The New Yorker (May 28, 2001) Roger W.H. Savage, Structure and Sorcery: The Aesthetics of Post-War Serial Composition and Indeterminacy (New York: Garland, 1989) (not in our library) Florian Scheding, "Where Is the Holocaust in All This? György Ligeti and the Dialectics of Life and Work," in Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture, ed. Tina Frühauf and Lily E.Hirsch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 205–21. Martin Scherzinger, "György Ligeti and the Aka Pygmies Project," Contemporary Music Review 25/3 (2006), 227–62. Michael D. Searby, "Ligeti the Postmodernist?," Tempo 199 (1997), 9–14. Michael D. Searby, "To the Future or the Past? Ligeti’s Stylistic Eclecticism in His Hamburg Concerto," Contemporary Music Review 31/2-3 (2012), 239–46. Richard Steinitz, "Music, Maths and Chaos," The Musical Times 137/1837 (1996), 14–20. Richard Steinitz, "The Dynamics of Disorder," The Musical Times 137/1839 (1996), 7–14. Richard Steinitz, "Weeping and Wailing," The Musical Times 137/1842 (1996), 17–22. Janet Owen Thomas, "Ligeti's Organ Music," The Musical Times 124:1683 (1983), 319–21. Bianca Tiplea Temes, "Ligeti’s String Quartet Music: From the Published Works to the New Discoveries at the Paul Sacher Foundation," in Latest Advances in Acoustics and Music: Proceedings of the 13th WSEAS International Conference on Acoustics & Music: Theory &Applications (AMTA '12) (WSEAS Press, 2012), 183–88. Bianca Tiplea Temes, "Ligeti’s Romanian Concerto: From Wax Cylinders to Symphony Orchestra," Studia UBB Musica LVIII:1 (2013), 51–76. Alastair Williams, New Music and the Claims of Modernity (Aldershot: Ashgate 1997). Charles Wilson, "György Ligeti and the Rhetoric of Autonomy," twentieth.century music 1/1 (2004), 5–28.
Aluas, Luminata, "Visible and Audible Structures: Spatio-Temporal Compromise in Ligeti's Magyar Etüdök," Tempo 183 (1992), 7–17. Anhalt, Istvan "Ligeti's Nouvelles Aventures: A small group as a model for composition," in Alternative voices: Essays on contemporary vocal and choral composition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 41–92. Ignacio Baca-Lobera, "György Ligeti's Melodien, a Work of Transition," Interface 20 1991 65–78. Amy Bauer, The ‘Other’ of the Exotic: Balinese Music as ‘Grammatical Paradigm’ in the Music of Ligeti," Music Analysis 27/2–3 (2009), 1–36. Amy Bauer, "Contemporary Opera and the Failure of Language," (partial), The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music, ed. Björn Heile and Charles Wilson 2018 427–35. Amy Bauer, "Genre as émigré: the return of the repressed in Ligeti’s Second Quartet," György Ligeti's Cultural Identities, Amy Bauer and Márton Kerékfy, eds. London, NY: Routledge 2017 181–202. Amy Bauer, "Singing Wolves and Dreaming Apples: The Cosmopolitan Imagination in Ligeti’s Weöres Songs," Ars Lyrica 21 2012 1–39. Amy Bauer, "The Cosmopolitan Absurdity of Ligeti’s Late Works," Contemporary Music Review 31/2-3 (2012), 163–76. Amy Bauer, "From Pulsation to Sensation: Virtuosity and Modernism in Ligeti’s First and Ninth Piano Études," Contemporary Music Review 38/3 (2019). Jonathan Bernard, "Voice-Leading as a Spatial Function in the Music of Ligeti," Music Analysis 13:2-3 (1994), 227–53. Jonathan Bernard, "Ligeti’s Restoration of Interval and Its Significance for His Later Works,"" Music Theory Spectrum 21/1 (1999), 1-31. Jonathan Bernard, "Inaudible Structures, Audible Music: Ligeti’s Problem, and His Solution,” Music Analysis 6/3 (1987), 207-36. Denys Bouliane, "Ligeti's Six Études Pour Piano: The Fine Art of Composing Using Cultural Referents," trans. Anouk Lang, Theory & Practice 31 (2006), 159–208. Clifton Callendar, “Interactions of the Lamento Motif and Jazz Harmonies in György Ligeti’s Arc-en-ciel,” Integral (2007), 1-25. Jane Piper Clendinning, “The Pattern-Meccanico Compositions of György Ligeti,” Perspectives of New Music 31/1 (1993), 192-234. Jane Piper Clendinning, “Structural Factors in the Microcanonic Compositions of György Ligeti,” in Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz Since 1945, edit. Elizabeth West Marvin and Richard Hermann (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 229-56. Cuciurean, John D., "Aspects of Harmonic Structure, Voice Leading, and Aesthetic Function in György Ligeti's in Zart Fliessender Bewegung," Contemporary Music Review 31/2-3 (2012), 221–38. Roberto Doati,“György Ligeti’s Glissandi: An Analysis,” Interface 20 (1991), 79-87. Eric Drott, “The Role of Triadic Harmony in Ligeti’s Recent Music,” Music Analysis 22/iii (2003), 283-32. Edwards, Peter, Resisting Closure: The Passacaglia Finale from György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre," Music Analysis 35:2 2016 258–78. Yayoi Uno Everett, "Signification of Parody and the Grotesque in György Ligeti’s Le Grande Macabre," Music Theory Spectrum 31/1 (2009), 26–56. Francesco Giomi and Marco Ligabue,”Understanding electroacoustic music: analysis of narrative strategies in six early compositions,” Organised Sound 3/1 (1998), 45-49. Helbing, Volker, "Tragedy and irony: the Passacaglia of the Violin Concerto," György Ligeti's Cultural Identities, Amy Bauer and Márton Kerékfy, eds. London, NY: Routledge (2017)), 230–45. Michael Hicks, “Interval and Form in Ligeti’s Continuum and Coulée,” Perspectives of New Music 31/1 (1993), 172-90. Márton Kerékfy, "A “new music” from nothing’: György Ligeti’s Musica ricercata," Studia Musicologica 49 (2008), 203–30. Hartmuth Kinzler, "Decision and Automatism in ‘Désordre,’ 1re Étude, Premier Livre," Interface 20 (Journal of New Music Research 20:2) (1991), 89–124.
Chapter 3, Construction and Indeterminacy
Chapter 4, Modernism Inside OutAnalytical studies
Benjamin R. Levy, Metamorphosis in Music: The Compositions of György Ligeti in the 1950s and 1960s, Charles D. Morrison, “Stepwise Continuity as a Structural Determinant in György Ligeti’s 10 Pieces for Wind Quintet,” Perspectives of New Music 24/1 (1985), 158-82. Bruce Reiprich, “Transformation of Coloration and Density in György Ligeti’s Lontano,” Perspectives of New Music 16/2 (1978), 167-80. Miguel A. Roig-Francoli, “Harmonic and Formal Processes in Ligeti’s Net-Structure Compositions,” Music Theory Spectrum 17/2 (Fall, 1995), 242-67. Friedemann Sallis, An introduction to the early works of György Ligeti (Köln: Studio-Schewe, 1996). (Sadly out-of-print, but worth requesting through ILL) Michael D. Searby, “Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto – Summation or Turning Point?,” Tempo 168 (Mar 1989), 30-34. MichaelD. Searby, Ligeti’s Stylistic Crisis: Transformation in His Musical Style 1974-1985 (Lanham: Scarecrow Press 2010) (not in our library) Michael Searby, “Ligeti’s ‘Third Way’: ‘Non-Atonal’ Elements in the Horn Trio,” Tempo 216(Apr 2001), 17-22. Stephen A. Taylor, “Chopin, Pygmies, and Tempo Fugue: Ligeti's "Automne a Varsovie,” Music Theory Online 3/3 (1997) Stephen A. Taylor, “Ligeti, Africa and Polyrhythm,” the world of music 45/2 (2003), 83-94. Stephen Taylor, “Passacaglia and Lament in Ligeti’s Recent Music,” Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie 9/1 (2004), 1-11. Taylor, Stephen Andrew, "Hemiola, Maximal Evenness, and Metric Ambiguity in Late Ligeti," Contemporary Music Review 31/2-3 (2012), 203–20. Rainer Wehinger, Excerpts from Ligeti: Artikulation, an aural score by Rainer Wehinger (Mainz: Schott, 1970) (full score in library)