György Ligeti: Etudes Books I and II (1-14a) (Naxos)
Bought from my neighbor at a yard sale
There was an elderly couple who lived next door to us for a few years. They had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and I think it was family ties that eventually brought them to Pittsburgh. The husband was also a Holocaust survivor.
They had a pleasant wine and cheese gathering for the closest neighbors. The couple were active concertgoers, and particularly fans of opera. The wife (Naomi) said they'd hold informal chamber opera readings in their former living room, just an accompanying pianist and several vocalists reading through Mozart as an example. While I'm not generally a fan of opera, I found it impressive that they were so involved.
During our little party, the husband (Gabriel) said that they'd recently gone to see Imani Winds perform, a (then) all African American woodwind quintet. (Bassoonist Monica Ellis came from Pittsburgh and I think attended CAPA High School, where I once taught as well.) He said that they had performed a work by a composer who he had known in his youth, clearly thinking that nobody would recognize the name. I asked, who was that? "Oh," he said, "György Ligeti."
"You knew Ligeti as a kid????" I asked in near disbelief. "Of course I know about Ligeti!" My wife added, "Ben doesn't get that excited about anything." Gabriel clarified, "György was good friends with my younger brother. I knew him from around, but we weren't close."
Another neighbor asked of me, "Could you sing one of his melodies?" I said, "His music isn't like that."
I view artists such as Ligeti from a distance, only familiar with his work. I really know very little about him personally. It's funny to find this connection land so close to me.
Gabriel was already in his 80s when they moved in. Within a few years, he suffered a very fast decline from dementia. Naomi said she knew something was wrong when he stopped listening and singing music around the house, which before he did all the time. She would tell us later that after moving him to a care facility, he didn't last very long.
They had a big house sale when they moved out. I basically took his collection of Ligeti CDs, probably about eight releases including his opera.
A friend (someone different) told me that Stockhausen claimed that Ligeti wrote the same piece too often. I'm certain that 100% of the comments and "facts" I've written to this blog probably aren't accurate. So I take that comment with a grain of salt and only mention it because I don't agree. There is a certain sort of piece I associate with Ligeti, specifically the more sound-mass style works such as Requiem, Atmosphères, Lontano.
These piano etudes are appropriately named, they have the dazzle of virtuosic piano music. At times they sound quite post-Romantic, almost suggesting tonality but never quite crossing that line. There's another CD I bought from that collection of "transcendental etudes" which go back and forth between Ligeti and Liszt. Some selections are clearly one composer or the other, some pieces are not so clear if you aren't paying close attention.
While Ligeti can't marshal the forces on the piano to produce those micro-polyphonies that he's known for (as in Requiem, for example), he's also clearly not trying. These etudes sound nothing like Boulez, Stockhausen, or Barraqué. There was a brief moment in the first book that could have been taken from Messiaen, whose piano music is more similar to this than those other composers. I'm sure there are pitch formulas and modes that Ligeti uses, but he doesn't seem as as intensely mode-oriented as Messiaen. Nor does he lapse into a major chord or open fifth like Olivier. These pieces seem to exist in a space that's neither Romantic nor Modernist, while drawing on the language of both. I'm okay with such ambiguities. I find the pieces engaging and not a dour slog of a listen, as some modernists can be.
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