LIGETI!

I agree. I remember hearing his choral works from 2001 a space oddysey. Just because it doesn't have a dissernable melody, his much, this massive wall of sound, is just fascinating. It's so unheard of original, in a way, that it does tend to shock on a first listen, but once you finally grasp it, it's unbelievably fascinating. And listenable. It's music that makes you think. It's genius. It's just so WIERD but COOL to hear such timbres coming from an orchestra, or a choir. I'm a fan.

Don't be close minded.

Now, you're probably going to laugh, but there's something about Ligeti, that transcends tradition. He opens doors in music that weren't considered before, beyond traditional melody, harmony, and rhythm. He transcends that, and explores whole new worlds of sonic possibilities. And that's what is shocking.

And in fact, there IS a melody. But it's so well hidden underneath the miriad notes, but you can most definitely sense a pulse of the melodic notes. It's like looking in an ink blot painting, and seeing what you want to see.

Listen to his Concerto Romanesque. I don't know about you. But it's gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. And tonal.

I am listening to Ligeti's Concert Romanesc, and it doesn't make any sense, I can't hear any structure, it's random, I think people have incredibly lowered they're expectations for genius. You think just cause something is different it's genius? the dictonary defines Genius as follows

Genius- Extraordinary aptitude for creative artistic work; A person of marked ability in any field

this is not genius, this is crap, it takes little to no creativity whatsoever to put random and horrid sounding notes together on a scrap of paper and call it music.

People need to raise the bar and actually learn what sounds good again

It's like Modern Art, it sucks, a four year old can draw better than the so called Modern Artists

Michealangelo and Bach rule

Hmmm.... I would half agree-half disagree with most of you modern music bashers.

A few years I ago, I too touted the superiority of Beethoven over Ligeti. I just didn't get what was so

interesting about a chaotic scribbling of notes. However, there came a point in time when I was listening to

Corigliano's "Chaconne For Violin And Orchestra" when my mind was blown. The piece is sort of a bridge between romanticism and radicalism. That piece opened my ears and I started wolfing down a lot of the

music I had once dismissed. Some of it I still think is boring but I'm being won over by new music constantly. Xenakkis is my latest adventure.

So... if you don't like it... fine. I like it enough for all of us. Just remember, keep your ears open because(Especially considering you're all musicians) you run a high risk of missing something you could fall in love with and THAT would be tragic.

Oh.. and Carulli... You and I should trade CDs some day. I bet I could blow your mind :P

Hmmm.... I would half agree-half disagree with most of you modern music bashers.

A few years I ago, I too touted the superiority of Beethoven over Ligeti. I just didn't get what was so

interesting about a chaotic scribbling of notes. However, there came a point in time when I was listening to

Corigliano's "Chaconne For Violin And Orchestra" when my mind was blown. The piece is sort of a bridge between romanticism and radicalism. That piece opened my ears and I started wolfing down a lot of the

music I had once dismissed. Some of it I still think is boring but I'm being won over by new music constantly. Xenakkis is my latest adventure.

So... if you don't like it... fine. I like it enough for all of us. Just remember, keep your ears open because(Especially considering you're all musicians) you run a high risk of missing something you could fall in love with and THAT would be tragic.

Oh.. and Carulli... You and I should trade CDs some day. I bet I could blow your mind :P

I LOVE Corigliano's "The Red Violin" Chaconne. It's FANTASTIC, and a great bridge into the world of new music.

And Carulli, Ligeti is not "chaotic scribbling." It's unbelievably structured.

too sad to believe his death!

I LOVE Corigliano's "The Red Violin" Chaconne. It's FANTASTIC, and a great bridge into the world of new music.

And Carulli, Ligeti is not "chaotic scribbling." It's unbelievably structured.

Corigliano has got to be my favorite composer... I've been tryin to find some orchestral scores for study purposes. Do you know if any of them are being published?

Something like.... The Pied Piper Fantasy for instance? Or maybe(a longshot, I know) his piano concerto?

Ligeti died last month. Rats. I wanted to meet him.

It is the intent of the composer to have music that sounds random and chaotic.

This reminded me of this paper I just read by Heinz von Foerster: http://grace.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cy...nz/disorder.pdf

We the observer create the order, stop hiding behind illusions of objectivity, etc. etc.

My favorite of Ligeti's remains his piano etudes, and the other stuff on the Mechanical Music album, especially Hungarian Rock.

. . .

WHAT WAS THAT!!!!!!

Ligeti must be stopped at all cost before he can put any more of this crap into the wonderful world we call music.

I listened to several short pieces of his work and, at best, they sounded like a high school orchestra warming up before the audience arrives.... there is no communication or actual harmony in the parts. Most of the instruments whose beauty has endured the test of time ( I listened to the string quartets (bits and pieces)) such as the violin viola, and cello, have been reduced to inhuman sounds that are actually quite disturbing.

I learned how to make these sounds on these instruments the instant that my bow was rosined and it made contact with the string between the bride and the tailpiece, and lets face it... the sound gets its composer's goal accomplished if and ONLY if that composers goal is to torment dogs, or wildebeast, I'm not picky.

What goes on inside his head when he writes, it sounds like he had an epileptic seizure with a pencil in his hand, but unfortunately in the other hand he had some manuscript paper. A talent scout named Mrs. Anita Tictac saw it and said "Wow, this sound like infants trying to drown cats, but the cats are putting up a very good fight! I have an Idea, let's pay this guy to write completely terrible music (if you have the gall to call it music), call him the best living composer in the world and sell this cacophony of live sheep being shot out of a cookie to the world!"

No thank you Mrs. Tictac, not for Jon.

This is what Sony has to say about Mr. Ligeti:

One of the world

That is the ranting of someone who is completely biased, while fun to read for a while, it gets annoying... the way I see it, Ligeti is an acquired taste who deserves some respect.

The Lord of the Onion Rings

I'm confused.... Is all that what YOU think about Ligeti or someone else?

No, that's what I would say about Ligeti if I was a completely closeminded jerk... but seeing as how this is not the case then it is the opinion below the aimless ranting that counts.

The Lord of the Onion Rings

Chuck Norris is a better composer.

Monkeyinfezzesquote

Chuck Norris is a better composer.

Tell me what you think of his Kung-Fu Ballads lol

Ligeti makes me sick and depressed, music should make you feel otherwise, either happy or sad, not depressed, there is a difference between the two.

Music and Math mix, but Music is not all Math as Ligeti and others may have thought

Set the volume to really high.

http://www.emusic.com/samples/m3u/song/10888226/13694308.m3u

Ligeti didn't use math. Xenakis used math.

And even if you don't like the stuff.... surely you must find something about it you can steal and make your own.... I mean, a lot of pieces I consider "REALLY WIERD" have so many little quibbles and textures I make mental notes to steal.

I really like contemporary music (being more in the Schnittke-Pavlova-Dutilleux-Silvestrov... path than in the more "rigorous" one), and I feel quite revolted by what I'm reading here. I'm tempted to refute many condemns that I feel atrociously unfair, but being this a quite "dead" thread I think I will center on Ligeti.

There is only one work of Ligeti that has really fascinated me: the opera Le grand macabre. I found Atmospheres a curious work, I find appealing the first volume of the piano Etudes... but his is a aesthetic that I don't find close to me. From Eastern Europe I really prefere equally modernistic composers as Ctirad Kohoutek, Aloys H

Some of the posts in this forum are ill-informed....

In Ligeti, you will find plenty of melody and even harmony - but mabye not the melodies or harmonies you are used to.

Frankly, its your own loss if you choose to hate the music versus love it...

Frankly, its your own loss if you choose to hate the music versus love it...

I've been confused by music - such as having no listening experience in Baroque or classical and hearing Bach's Brandenburg concertos for the first time - it was confusing to me, but I didn't really dislike it. Being from a rock upbringing, I simply thought there were too many instruments playing at the same time and I couldn't keep track of them.

The music itself however, wasn't revolting to me.

In music, I've never had the experience of intensely disliking something then gradually "warming" to it. Such is the case with the kind of music that Ligeti writes. Persons who like this type of noise typically laud the "intellectual" aspects of it. While I love wit in music - all I see in what I've heard of this music is math and noise.

I've been confused by music - such as having no listening experience in Baroque or classical and hearing Bach's Brandenburg concertos for the first time - it was confusing to me, but I didn't really dislike it. Being from a rock upbringing, I simply thought there were to many instruments playing at the same time and I couldn't keep track of them.

The music itself however, wasn't revolting to me.

In music, I've never had the experience of intensely disliking something then gradually "warming" to it. Such is the case with the kind of music that Ligeti writes. Persons who like this type of noise typically laud the "intellectual" aspects of it. While I love wit in music - all I see in what I've heard of this music is math and noise.

And math and and noise is pretty much all it is. I agree with what your saying Paul, and I have one thing to point out about the music of Ligeti and others like him. It's NOT GOOD FOR YOU!!! The Dictionary definition of Dissonance is "A conflicting tone, to conflict, A mental conflict" and in my anatomy and physiology studies, I have read that when a sound in music is unresolved, the listeners Heart Rate increases, and his or her stress level rises, sometimes dramatically. And one person I met said that a close friend of his who took a Modern Music course in college, was horribly depressed for the entire semester, because that's all that he listened to.

I realize that this is not alot of evidence, but I'll tell you that I listened to Ligeti's Concert de Romanesque (or however you spell it) and I even noted that with the random spurts of noise that the instruments made, I noted an irritability in myself for the next few hours, luckily, I had a CD of Bach, and that quickly cured me.

(seriously, it did)

And math and and noise is pretty much all it is. I agree with what your saying Paul, and I have one thing to point out about the music of Ligeti and others like him. It's NOT GOOD FOR YOU!!! The Dictionary definition of Dissonance is "A conflicting tone, to conflict, A mental conflict" and in my anatomy and physiology studies, I have read that when a sound in music is unresolved, the listeners Heart Rate increases, and his or her stress level rises, sometimes dramatically. And one person I met said that a close friend of his who took a Modern Music course in college, was horribly depressed for the entire semester, because that's all that he listened to.

I realize that this is not alot of evidence, but I'll tell you that I listened to Ligeti's Concert de Romanesque (or however you spell it) and I even noted that with the random spurts of noise that the instruments made, I noted an irritability in myself for the next few hours, luckily, I had a CD of Bach, and that quickly cured me.

(seriously, it did)

I have just picked up Liszt's Apr

Ligeti's music is no more intellectual than Beethoven - and is in fact less 'mathematical' than Bach.....

I find myself performing Ligeti's Lux Aeterna with the John Alexander Singers on our next concert, and I must say that it's one of the most fascinating contemporary works I've performed in a long time. It's delicate, elegant and sophisticated, and kicks the crap out of the new Phillip Glass piece I'm working on with the Pacific Chorale at the same time, which is boring and amateurish, frankly. It's also highly contrapuntal, but in a way not easily discerned by the ear; most of the piece is a sequence of rhythmically ambiguous canons.

Incidentally, on the same program we're performing:

A madrigal for six voices, 2 violins and continuo by Monteverdi;

A motet for double choir by Schütz;

Two motets – Komm, Jesu, komm! and Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied – by J.S. Bach;

Astronaut Anthem and Panda Chant II from the sci-fi opera The Games (1983) by Meredith Monk.

One of our more eclectic and virtuosic programmes, surely.

J. Lee, are you in the John Alexander Singers? I like the dynamic that group has. And Ligeti's Lux Aeterna is beautiful. I like his philosophy of micropolyphony - polyphony that is too small to be readily discerned by the ear. It creates a much more atmospheric sense.

I'd have to agree, Ligeti kicks the crap out of Glass.

Yep, I've been singing with both the John Alexander Singers and Pacific Chorale for several years now. I'm really glad to hear you enjoy our work.

Atmospheric is the perfect word for that piece. Somehow, Ligeti is able to get away with things that in a lesser piece of music would be considered poor technique, like bringing in all four soprano parts AND all four tenor parts in on high-B - pianissimo! - and having them hold it interminably, gradually melting into a canon; it's outrageously difficult, but if done right, the effect is an electrifying island in a glassy sea of gorgeous atmosphere.

Another of my favourite moments is when, at the end of the opening 8-part canon between the sopranos and altos, three of the bass-baritone parts enter on a cluster about an octave above their normal range, falsetto; I'm singing baritone on this show, so I get to sing the top part - again, a high-B - and the colour of that sound is like three contrabasses playing high harmonics.

I'm really loving working on this piece, and I'll really enjoy performing it.