György Ligeti and Gérard Grisey are undoubtedly among the most important composers of the second half of the twentieth century, for they elevated sound and perception to central categories of their compositional work. The play with thresholds of perception and ambiguities is a common ground of their musical thinking. Grisey and other »spectral« composers emphasized psychoacoustic threshold areas in their aesthetic concepts. Similarly, Ligeti’s love of intermediate ranges (Zwischenbereiche) has led to the shimmering complexity of his music.
In Ligeti’s Violin Concerto (1990/92), many passages and compositional techniques illuminate how Ligeti works with the ambiguity and complexity of sound and perception. Different types of chordal mixture constitute an important technique found throughout the concerto, among others as spectral mixtures based on just intonation. Examples from the first and the fourth movement demonstrate the flexible handling of mixtures by Ligeti, which can be understood as an extension and permanent modification of the sound of the solo violin. Varying the number of voices, the spectral or harmonic structure, the position of the solo violin within the mixture, register and dynamics creates diverse sonorities. Progressions of mixtures in the fourth movement can be interpreted dramaturgically, while in the fifth movement a superposition of several mixtures and layers results in highly complex structures. The relation between solo violin and orchestra, between »theme« and »accompaniment« in the beginning of the first movement demonstrates how Ligeti reinterprets traditional structures in order to amalgamate soloistic and orchestral layers. The »splitting of the spatial entity of the instrument« here might be compared to techniques in cubist painting. Finally, tuning systems are combined in the second movement according to the principles of ambiguity and heterogeneity; different tunings are confronted while groups of sonorities connect the quasi-folkloristic with the eminently artificial, the serious with the parodistic, etc. Through a permanently modified contextualization of traditional sounds and gestures, the solo instrument in Ligeti’s Violin Concerto seems to acquire a new kind of instrumental identity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:87418 |
| Date | 12 October 2023 |
| Creators | Vlitakis, Emmanouil |
| Publisher | PFAU-Verlag, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | German |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:bookPart, info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 10, urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa2-854215, qucosa:85421 |
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