LIGETI!

What do you all think of Ligeti?

Haha, Nico :P .(jk) But seriously, I agree with Nico; he's terrible.

Why? What do you think makes him terrible? This is a discussion, not an idea-gathering. If I wanted that I'd have put a poll.

Well, it could just be me-I don't think much of contemporary besides a bunch of dissonant sounds that sound even worse combined. People who are left-brain dominated tend to appreciate music that makes more sense and sounds better. I like anything from barouqe to romantic because it actually sounds like music and has a strong structure(well maybe barouqe music doesn't have such a strong structure, but it sounds brilliant). But Ligeti's music is crap; I listened to his light ensemble for 13 instruments but after 5 seconds I felt like I wanted to kill Ligeti(wait, is he dead yet?)

OK, maybe I was wrong about the structure part. Ligeti's music may have a structure; I don't know. But who could tell if any music has a structure if they only listen to it for five seconds?

Why? What do you think makes him terrible? This is a discussion, not an idea-gathering. If I wanted that I'd have put a poll.

Like Schoenberg post Op 6, he never understood that to communicate, the sender and receiver need at least some semiotics in common. It used to be fashionable to nod one's head sagaciously and pretend to like Ligetti - not the greatest fashion figure and but for Kubrik he'd probably have remained an unknown. "Oh I know Ligetti, he's on Space Odyssey".

M

What I would like to know is how can a modern or contemporary composer of the newer atonal stuff be considered creative and unique and stuff like that. I mean the pieces do not have any melody or harmony or any kind of structural pattern whatsoever. It is the intent of the composer to have music that sounds random and chaotic. So, if you cannot have any feature of the piece that is memorable than what is the point. All of their music just lumps together as one big collection of "nasty" sounds. You cannot dicipher the difference between the 1st ligeti piece from the 4th Ives piece. There is nothing to be interested in because it is only a sound and not a composition of melody and structure etc. There are no redeeming qualities to the music. SO, in other words, in my opinion, once the first random atonal modern piece is composed then everyone should stop because it has now been done. Nothing new or different fromt he first piece could be produced that would give any interest to the listener.

Shoot me dead, but let me say what I think first.

Wow, RRR basically sums it all up. I was going to say that a melody that is easy and fun to hum is a good melody. Take Mozart's Ein Klein Nachtmusik for example. It it easy and fun to hum and I know that lots of people who know nothing about music have hummed this melody at least once in their lifetime. However, I am 100% sure that no one, and I mean no one, ever hummed, can ever hum, or even tried to hum any of Ligeti's music.

SO, in other words, in my opinion, once the first random atonal modern piece is composed then everyone should stop because it has now been done. Nothing new or different fromt he first piece could be produced that would give any interest to the listener.

Not so sure. Apologies to disagree.

Schoenberg's exploration of serialism arose because there was no place for music to go after Wagner and Liszt (+ a few others, no doubt) without reverting. But we have reverted and there's nothing wrong with neo-tonality and diatonicism. I don't know about "random atonal" but atonal music cannot be encapsulated in a single piece, surely?! Aside from serialism, truly atonal music is unusual - most music has a tonal centre even if it shifts around. I'm happy to be able to distinguish between Ruggles' Sun Treader and Sculthorpe's Sun Musics.

M

What I would like to know is how can a modern or contemporary composer of the newer atonal stuff be considered creative and unique and stuff like that. I mean the pieces do not have any melody or harmony or any kind of structural pattern whatsoever. It is the intent of the composer to have music that sounds random and chaotic. So, if you cannot have any feature of the piece that is memorable than what is the point. All of their music just lumps together as one big collection of "nasty" sounds. You cannot dicipher the difference between the 1st ligeti piece from the 4th Ives piece. There is nothing to be interested in because it is only a sound and not a composition of melody and structure etc. There are no redeeming qualities to the music. SO, in other words, in my opinion, once the first random atonal modern piece is composed then everyone should stop because it has now been done. Nothing new or different fromt he first piece could be produced that would give any interest to the listener.

Shoot me dead, but let me say what I think first.

Have you actually listened to Charles Ives' music? Because if you have, you know that he's primarily a polytonal composer, not an atonal one. He deals largely in folk-song melodies strung together and intertwined. He IS a melodic composer.

Ligeti, on the other hand, chooses to work in sound alone. His pieces are designed to create "sound-mass," a single shifting sonority that contains meaning in the way it moves without having to have a set melody. This is why it's impossible to hum. That doesn't mean it doesn't have structure. His pieces are not random. I'd venture that most atonal composers' pieces are not random. They have very clear structures that become apparent when one actually listens to the piece more than once. I doubt anyone on the first hearing of a Mozart sonata could say, "Oh, there's the second development section." Just because something takes more work to figure out than something else it doesn't mean the answer doesn't exist.

As Jeremiah said, right brain and left brain differ. I'm a very right-brain dominant individual (left-handed, me), though, so it could be that my brain is more set for things like this.

I don't think that the majority of Ligeti's sound-mass is "nasty" sounding. I think it's very beautiful, though not in a tonal/harmonic sense. It's the next layer beneath harmony - the sonority the sound creates.

I have heard the one thing that is supposed to be loosely based on the Beethoven's Fifth Symphoiny melody and also the one that has a title dealing with New England or something like that. I felt that the compositions went nowhere and they were boring with no direction. I hated them especially since I was at a concert when I heard them and the actual Beethoven's Fifth was comming up and I was really wanting to hear that and then this awful modern rendition of it came on in front of it.

Open up your minds people! Jeez, tons of music that sounds the same and you can't even listen to anything else without complaining!

Oh well.

By the way, Jeremiah, why are you so certain that noone can hum any Ligeti? Oh, you mean no one with your musical ear can? Oh ok. Then I forgive you, because I love to hum my favorite Ligeti passage, and it's quite easy to do so. So knock your 100% down a bit, please.

Some people's black and white opinions are really dumb, because you're not even trying to like the music, or even listen to it. If you hear that a piece by Beethoven is coming up, your ear goes into listen mode, because you're sure you like Beethoven's music. Rather, with Ligeti, when you hear a piece of his come up, you say 'Oh no, here we go again.', and don't really listen to it the same way you did the Beethoven. And to me, that's not how music works. You need to give every piece equal amount of interest to really see what it's like, and if you ultimately care for it. Not that I'm saying just giving Ligeti a chance will make you like it, but if you set out to hate it from the start, you won't give yourself a chance to hear it how it was intended. (composers don't usually write pieces intenting on their listeners to hate it, after all.)

Anyway, I find Ligeti's music to be both inspiring and very interesting. His 1st string quartet is amazing; my favorite section is VI., especially the tempo di valse and the craziness that ensues after it. Check it out!

I love his "Atmospheres." It's so thick.

I listened to Ligeti

So, what I am saying is that the aphorism: Ligeti=Atmospheres and 2nd String Quartet (which by the way I find one of the most exciting pieces of late modernism) is quite misleading. My opinion is that Ligeti is one of those who struggled in a period of crisis for the composer

By the way, Jeremiah, why are you so certain that noone can hum any Ligeti? Oh, you mean no one with your musical ear can? Oh ok. Then I forgive you, because I love to hum my favorite Ligeti passage, and it's quite easy to do so. So knock your 100% down a bit, please.

Fine :wacko: , 99%.

Some people's black and white opinions are really dumb, because you're not even trying to like the music, or even listen to it. If you hear that a piece by Beethoven is coming up, your ear goes into listen mode, because you're sure you like Beethoven's music. Rather, with Ligeti, when you hear a piece of his come up, you say 'Oh no, here we go again.', and don't really listen to it the same way you did the Beethoven.

Actually, I first heard about Ligeti from a friend. He said that his pieces were amazing. So I decided to check him myself on the internet. I expected to hear something great. At that moment, I had an equal amount of respect for Ligeti as I had for any other great composer. Maybe even more. But as soon as my Quicktime began to play, I heard the worst, disharmonic, piece of s#!t I've ever heard. Music is consisted of three things. Notes, rythym, and harmony. Yet Ligeti has no harmony in any of his pieces whatsoever.

Again...stop that. Have you studied every single piece of Ligeti's music? NO! Are you the most advanced musician in the world? No! So please don't state things like fact when you are clearly misguided.

Check out his string quartets!!! Don't just listen to the craziness of his chamber works, especially the Chamber Concerto, listen to his other stuff! His 1st string quartet has pleeeenty of harmonies, my friend. That excerpt that I said I hum all the time? Yeah, that's extremely harmonic. There are chord progressions! I to iii. :wacko: Happy? And the part that ensues, the loud part? ALL based on harmonies that were apparent before in the piece.

Please try to listen to more than one piece by a composer before judging his skill, if possible.

Shocked.

By the way, Jeremiah, why are you so certain that noone can hum any Ligeti?

Dead easy to hum Ligeti - anything will do.

My opinion is that Ligeti is one of those who struggled in a period of crisis for the composer

I've been watching this, and here's what's on my mind.

What little I've heard of Ligeti I thought was absolutely fascinating (Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna and Requiem), but I too found it physically unsettling. My interest failed to overcome my revulsion. I am going to stop far short of calling his music crap. It's obviously very well organised, and crafted skilfully to have a visceral effect on the listener.

While I suppose I agree with Nico and Jeremiah about finding Ligeti more distasteful than pleasurable, I agree with Nick in that some are too quick to write something off as crap and state their opinion as fact. That said, I don't really think I need to listen to Ligeti's entire oeuvre to develop an opinion of whether his music appeals to me or not. There may be exceptions, and if there are, I may discover them in due course; but I'm not going to go out of my way to find them.

Looking back, I did get sort of carried away. I even see posts that I ignored. I was too busy trying to tell everyone my feelings, that I wasn't paying attention to the way I was stating my opinions.

So? On the same basis tonality came to a dead end with Liszt (via Wagner). But we still use it...I've heard that some composers even on this forum still use key signatures and forgotten arts like 4 part harmony?!

:(

That's exactly what I'm saying, I guess you didn't get me! When I say "dead end" referring to organised atonality, I mean that it didn't prevail and it didn't manage to be seen today as the dominating western musical current, neither did it mangage to be seen as the only "legal" continuation of Wagner and Liszt, who pushed tonality to its limits, thus leading to the historical development of musical material (the way Adorno saw Schoenberg's "emancipation of dissonance"). This "crisis" that I was referring to happened in the 1970's leading to the collapse of the notion of the musical material's historical development. That's why it's "OK" today for you and me or anyone as a composer to write in whatever style he wants, from medieval to modern, or even mix all of these styles in the same piece. (I agree that some of the reasons that this happened had to do with the malfunction of the communication semiotics, but I'm already off the subject). That wasn't the case 40-30 years ago, when writing a symphony in pure classical style was "bad" and could result to the composer even being lynched! I enjoy today's stylistic freedom and the composer's right to write in what he/she believes to be his/her own style, but for the same reason I think it's not so easy to draw the lines between genres, purposes, "quality" and so on of music.

I'm committed 100% to music of our time but as I said earlier, Ligeti overlooked the basics of communication. I was not prepared to learn his language merely to hear a few minutes of how bad his struggles were. It's okay for music students but most audiences don't want to have to WORK to be able to listen to the single instance of a piece they've paid to attend.

;)

If you're accusing Ligeti of writing "musica reservata", I think you're right. But can you name some contemporary (not necessarily "modern") composers that sell so many CDs as Madonna? I can name two:Glass, Gorecki (at least he used to). That means that their music is "better"? And yes, I would prefer an audience that would want to WORK to be able to listen to the single instance of a piece they paid to attend, because I would prefer a society which produces well-educated and musically "open" audiences (utopia, but that's how I like it :w00t: ), so yes, I guess I am talking to [potential] music students, even if they're studying on their own.

As regards Ligeti's "un-hummable" sound, and whether it should be called music or not, I think that one has every right to like it or hate it, but to say that it's not music, I fully disagree. I'm personally most satisfied with the ethomusicologists' general and global definition that "music is sound organised in a human way", and not with the definition: "I don't like it, so it's not music to me"

Today is a sad day in the history of music. Ligeti died.

http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/4725.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/292812.stm

great Composer with big C , great music and one of the most beautiful orchestra pieces is his" Lontano"...

He might indeed be a great composer. I've heard a few works and they discourage me to explore further. There are only so many hours in a day!

I'm happy enough with Tadeusz Baird; I appreciate his music (that I've heard - sorry to say mostly on CD & radio). Baird did not attain the fashion status of Ligeti, however, and I guarantee that no more than about 3 members of this forum (if that), have heard of him, let alone have a familiarity with his music.

regards,

M.