LIGETI, GYRGY

born May 28, 1923, Diciosnmartin [now Trnaveni], Transylvania, Rom. a leading composer of the branch of avant-garde music concerned principally with shifting masses of sound and tone colours. Ligeti, of Hungarian ancestry, studied and taught music in Hungary until 1956. Later he was associated with centres of new music in Cologne and Darmstadt, Ger., Stockholm, and Vienna, where he composed electronic music (e.g., Artikulation, 1958) as well as music for performers. In the early 1960s he caused a sensation with his Future of MusicA Collective Composition (1961) and his Pome symphonique (1962). The former consists of the composer regarding the audience from the stage and the audience's reactions to this; the latter is written for 100 metronomes, operated by 10 performers. Most of Ligeti's music after the late 1950s involved radically new approaches to music composition. Specific musical intervals, rhythms, and harmonies are often not distinguishable but act together in a multiplicity of sound events to create music sometimes of remarkably smooth stillness, sometimes of dynamic anguished motion. Good examples of these effects occur in Atmosphres (1961) for orchestra and Requiem (196365) for soprano, mezzo-soprano, two choruses, and orchestra. In Aventures (1962) and Nouvelles Aventures (196265), Ligeti attempts to obliterate the differences between vocal and instrumental sounds. In these works the singers hardly do any singing in the traditional sense. In Ligeti's cello concerto (1966), the usual concerto contrast between soloist and orchestra is minimized in music of mainly very long lines and slowly changing, very nontraditional textures. Other works include Clocks and Clouds (1973), for female chorus and orchestra, and San Francisco Polyphony for orchestra (1974).