Lendvai comes to Cologne

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Lendvai comes to Cologne: Gyrgy Ligeti

in the 1950s and '60s
Paper given at the 2002 European Music Analysis Conference, Bristol University

With the sound of Stockhausen's Gesang der Jnglinge ringing in his ears
from a radio broadcast, Gyrgy Ligeti fled Soviet-invaded Budapest in
November 1956. He arrived in Cologne a month later to work with
Stockhausen himself in his studio at Westdeutscher Rundfunk, where this
piece and others had been realised. From this key location, Ligeti was thrown
into the middle of European high modernist composition, which was still
preoccupied with the development of a post-Webernian serial method.
Although Ligeti was in close contact with such figures as Boulez, Maderna,
Nono and Stockhausen, conventional wisdom states that that he found little
interest in the methods of integral serialism, preferring instead to forge his
own path. However, in his first year in Cologne, he published his seminal
analysis of Boulez' Structure 1a. It seems clear that serial method held some
particular interest for him, at least at this early stage. In fact, his
investigations of it almost took precedence over his composition at this time:
Apparitions was not completed for a further year, and the electronic piece
Glissandi was realised only a few months before the Structure analysis was
published in 1958. In his 1974 article charting the origins of the total serial
method, Richard Toop claims that the analysis was suggested by
Stockhausen, then editor of Die Reihe, as a way to help Ligeti earn money.
This may well be the case, but the modest financial rewards from publication
in an avant-garde music journal do not by themselves account for the
devotion and thoroughness lavished by Ligeti on his analysis. It seems
reasonable to say that his earliest experiences with total serial music held
some great fascination for Ligeti, a fascination he was eager to satisfy. Yet
the question, also formulated by Toop, remains: why should such an
apparently un-serial composer as Ligeti undertake such a piece of work at all,
and to such a high degree of apparent enthusiasm?
In an attempt to clarify Ligeti's relationship to total serialism through the late
1950s and 1960s I will be investigating the influence the Bartk analyst Erno
Lendvai had on Ligeti and his music, and contextualising this influence within
high modernist Cologne. My purpose is to help to clarify Ligeti's compositional
development in light of his parallel work as an analyst both in Cologne and in
Budapest before his emigration.
Before he left Hungary, Ligeti had been Professor of Analysis at the Liszt
Academy for six years. Lendvai was amongst his colleagues, working as a
visiting lecturer from 1954. At this time, Lendvai was writing his two early,
defining, works on Bartk, An Introduction to the Analysis of Bartk's Works
and Bartk's Style, both published in 1955. It seems improbable that the two
men did not share at least some of their ideas at this time. Indeed, in an
interview with Pter Vrnai published 1983, Ligeti states that he "was in
complete agreement" with Lendvai's analyses. For all Hungarian composers of
the 1950s Bartk, who had only recently died, was an inescapable spritual
mentor, influence and challenge. Lendvai's analyses were the first successful
attempts to reach a full understanding of his compositional technique. They
have therefore held a certain fascination for a generation or more of
Hungarian composers. In a currently unpublished paper given by Simone
Hohmaier at the first international conference on Gyrgy Kurtg at
Balatonfldvr last year, the music of both Kurtg and Pter Etvs was
shown to have certain roots in common with a number of Lendvai's Bartk

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analyses. In particular Hohmaier drew attention to aspects of symmetrical

construction and pitch expansion in the works of both these composers,
which finds certain parallels in Lendvai's work. Perhaps the simplest example
of this is in Kurtg's own 'Hommage Bartk' from book 1 of his Jtkok,
[EXAMPLE] in which the symmetry of contrary motion is pursued rigorously
outwards from middle C.
Further examples of Lendvaian thinking can be found in compositions by
other composers such as Lszl Sry, who employs a Fibonacci series to
determine the rhythmic proportions of his piece Csigajtk ('Snail Play') of
1973. While it would be rash to suggest at this point that Lendvai's writings
served as some sort of compositional treatise for these individuals, it is true
to say that as the first clear analyses of Bartk's compositional style they held
an importance for anyone following in the composer's footsteps. While their
worth to analysts today is debatable, there is little doubt in my mind of their
value as a compositional resource and encouragement to young Hungarian
composers. Far more than almost any other composer, the unique and
revolutionary achievements of Bartk cast an overwhelming shadow over any
composer succeeding him in Hungary. By turning to analyses such as
Lendvai's, composers could fathom some of the fundamentals of Bartk's
composition (at least as Lendvai himself saw them), and exploit or avoid
them as they chose. As I now hope to demonstrate, Ligeti, at least for a time,
chose to freely adopt a number of the theoretical models demonstrated by
Lendvai.
Because the points I wish to make about Ligeti's employment of ideas derived
from Lendvai are general ones applicable to much of his music of the period
under discussion, I shall draw examples from a few pieces rather than focus
on one individual piece in greater depth. These pieces are Apparitions of
1958-9, Atmosphres of 1961 and Continuum of 1968.
The fundamental principles of Lendvai's analyses of Bartk are built on the
divisions of the golden section, and the fibonacci series of numbers to which
this is related. From this position, Lendvai describes many of the scales,
harmonies and formal structures of Bartk's compositional style. Lendvai is
also concerned with symmetrical systems - something he believes is a rare
common feature of both Eastern and Western European music - as evidenced
in his development of the axis theory and its deployment in Bartk's music.
Another striking, if contrived, image of symmetry is that produced when an
ascending scale based on the intervals of the golden section is superimposed
upon a descending acoustic scale. [EXAMPLE] My purpose here is not to
provide a critique of Lendvai's methods, but to isolate those conclusions he
reached which may have been of interest to a composer such as Ligeti. As I
have said, there does seem to be a case for stating that a number of these
analytical conclusions fed into the compositions of Ligeti and his
contemporaries. What isolates Ligeti is that he was the only one of these
composers, because of his emigration from Hungary, to carry these models
into the late serial environment of Western Europe.
The use of golden sections in Ligeti's music is briefly documented elsewhere Michael Hicks in his analysis of 1993 highlights the presence of one dividing
the two main sections of Continuum at bar 126, a point musically highlighted
by a change in figuration from narrow scales to broad arpeggios, and the first
registration change of the piece. [EXAMPLE] However, in his analysis, Hicks
also draws attention to other musical elements which would not look out of
place in one of Lendvai's analyses of Bartk. These include a number of key
harmonic fields, shown in example 4 [EXAMPLE]. In the first half of the
example, Hicks isolates what he, and the composer, call a 'typical Ligeti
signal', occuring at two key formal points of the work - at the start and the
beginning of section two at bar 50. Hicks highlights the parallels between the
beginnings of these two sections. I would further add to this the observation

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that the so-called 'Ligeti signal' is also a classic harmony of Bartk's drawn, as
Lendvai argued, from the intervals of 2, 3 and 5 semitones - all numbers from
the fibonacci series. Furthermore, the two 'signals' are related symmetrically
to one another.
In his next paragraph, Hicks isolates another harmonic field, shown in the
second half of example 4. This chord is described as being cadenced onto
after a period of intervallic blurring throughout the second section, and is of
structural significance because of its place as the final harmony of this section
of the piece. However, if one puts aside for the moment the central blurring,
the chord itself is a Bartkian major-minor chord, or gamma chord, familiar
once more from Lendvai. Hicks even goes so far as to derive this chord's
construction from the Ligeti signal chord as a pair of symmetrical 'unfoldings';
I would like to suggest that the connection between these two chords may
find its precedent in Lendvai's writings.
Ligeti's pieces written immediately after his emigration from Hungary should
show the greatest use of Lendvai's principles, since they would be freshest in
Ligeti's mind. Indeed, in his interview with Pter Vrnai, Ligeti talks of how
the idea of applying the golden section as a principle of construction to his
music was in his thoughts. He attempted to realise a work in the Cologne
studio in which the proportions of the golden section were applied to
harmonic partials, but the piece failed musically and was abandoned.
However, the prevailing mood of total musical organisation which inspired
this electronic experiment fed into his acoustic compositions of the time, not
least of which was his first great orchestral work Apparitions. Ligeti himself
acknowledges his use of golden sections in the construction of the first
movement, which I will clarify here.
There are a total of 234 crotchet beats in the first movement, just one more
than the perfect fibonacci number of 233. Since the quotient of two adjacent
numbers in the fibonacci series approaches the golden ratio of their sum, for
233 crotchets the golden section falls at either 89 or 144 crotechets. Thus,
the golden section of this movement of 234 crotchet beats falls at very
slightly more than 89 or 144 crotchet beats in. Counting beats, then, we find
that the 144th crotchet falls in bar 71, at the basses' tremolando. By Ligeti's
own description, this movement falls into two parts: the first in the low
register, the second in the high, with the golden ratio determining the lengths
of the respective sections. At the point of the golden section, the music has
come to the very lowest reaches of the modern orchestra: a bottom C on the
double basses. However, as so often in Ligeti's music, this note is heavily
blurred: in this instance by the C sharp one semitone above. This C sharp is
itself lowered microtonally in the following bar, and both notes - at such a
narrow interval and in such a low register - collapse into near noise,
particularly with the addition of tremolo markings. The music disappears from
the bottom end of the orchestra's compass, and even from the boundaries of
discernible pitch to prepare the beginning of the second, higher register,
section. This begins at bar 73 and features sustained pitches throughout its
length as high in the orchestral range as the previous bass notes were low.
[EXAMPLE] The golden section therefore marks the conclusion of the first
section of the movement, and is highlighted by an extrapolation of both its
register and its blurring of the noise/sound dichotomy.
Further examples of the use of a golden section to locate key structural
points may be shown briefly on the following diagrams. [EXAMPLE] At bar
80, for example, the final section of 89 crotchets divides further into the
fibonacci numbers 34 and 55, and this point is marked by a rapid outburst on
harp, percussion and keyboards, after which the piece dissolves into little
more than a single sustained cluster fading out to the work's end. The second
diagram illustrates similar divisions which may be found in another orchestral
work from this period, Atmosphres.

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However, both of these works are considerably more complex than

Continuum, and further analysis of the presence of golden sections falls
outside the scope of my paper here, although Ligeti's own comments
regarding Apparitions especially suggest that more may be found underlying
the work's fundamental structure.
At this point, having established what elements of Lendvai's thinking Ligeti
brought to his music in Cologne, I wish to investigate how these ways of
thinking influenced his confrontation with total serialism.
Ligeti's reading of the methodology of total serialism may be inferred from his
analysis of Structure 1a. He very quickly abandons point-by-point description
and analysis of pitch relationships, to consider form, duration, density and
texture. In this analysis, the actual content of the row is pushed further and
further into the background, to be eventually replaced by monochrome blocks
on graphs [EXAMPLE] in which the global character of each statement of
the row is considered, and not the details within each of those statements. Of
course, the passacaglia-like nature of Boulez' piece, in which the row is
successively stated in all of its inversions and transpositions, lends itself to
such an analysis. However, it is not the only necessary reading of the piece.
Marc Wilkinson's analysis, published in the same year as Ligeti's, takes a very
different approach. Although his analysis is not as thorough, Wilkinson deals
much more carefully with the consequences deriving from the local details of
the row itself - certain symmetries arising from notes a major third apart, for
example - making the content of the row the focus of his study, and not the
greater structure in which the row functions, as Ligeti does. If we imagine a
number of levels of compositional construction - analogous to a Schenker
diagram - in which a composer may impose his will to a greater or lesser
extent, then Wilkinson deals principally with the lowest levels of this
structural hierachy: the pitch and duration content of the row, and the
melodic-harmonic interactions which result. Ligeti's analysis however focusses
on the central levels: once he has made the necessary comment that Boulez'
row is a quotation from, and homage to, Messiaen, he almost entirely
disregards the pitch and durational content of the row. (Although towards the
end of the analysis he does draw attention to some local detail, this is
generally with a view to illustrating a more global point.) And aside from very
general, and somewhat unsatisfactory, observations on the fluctuation of
densities with each restatement of the row, scant attention is paid to the very
highest structural level of the piece. Alongside the obvious interest and
admiration for the workings of the piece's intermediate structural levels, there
seems an inferred dissatisfaction with its most local and most global
structural elements, and their interaction within a top-to-bottom
compositional process.
The sense one gets from reading Ligeti's analysis is that Structure 1a is a
piece which functions in a way similar to a clockwork toy: once it has been
wound up, it is switched on and left to run automatically until the end. This is
a criticism often levelled at the piece. Ligeti himself has never been averse to
using pre-compositional procedures in his music (even once, in Pome
symphonique for 100 metronomes, picking up on the clockwork analogy), but
he has never employed integral serialism even though as a young and
impressionable man he was surrounded by its leading practitioners. I believe
that the reason for this may be found between the lines of his Structure
analysis.
Returning to Lendvai, behind his belief in the golden section as a key musical
building block is his assertion of the difference between arithmetic and
geometric series. The example he gives of the difference between the two is
as follows. In the case of a Mozart theme, for example, in order to attain
balance there is a symmetrical division of phrases into two- and four-bar

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lengths: this follows arithmetic laws, as each phrase is created by the

addition of regular units. However, the use of the golden ratio to divide a
phrase follows geometric principles, since it cannot be expressed as a rational
fraction, and is best expressed as a geometric shape. More interestingly,
when employing a geometric system such as the golden section, one is able
to begin from a total duration and subdivide down to the smallest level of
construction, ie top down; or start from the smallest unit and work up to a
total duration, ie bottom up to the highest structural level. The point is that
the golden section principle can be applied on all levels of the composition as Lendvai suggests it may be in Bartk's music and as we have seen
between a number of Ligeti's pieces. In this respect it provides a much more
satisfactory and rigorous global process than the arbitrary arithmetic of
integral serialism. After all, although the length (and highest structural
determinant) of Structure 1a is governed by the repetitions of the row in all
of its 48 standard permutations, even this number is fairly freely chosen: why
not use just the 12 transpositions, or the even just the four inversions to each
achieve an equally 'complete' effect? In a work such as Continuum I have
hopefully illustrated how Ligeti uses as a basis for this music a much more
thorough compositional process than that provided by integral serialism, one
in which the same rules govern the local harmonies and the most global
structures: both the lowest and highest structural levels of composition find
their parallels in Lendvai.
Much of the interest in Ligeti's music is found in the tension between process
and invention, and the exploration of this is the stated aim of his Structure 1a
analysis. That article is subtitled 'Decision and Automatism', and Ligeti's
thrust is to find the points in Boulez' system in which the composer, or
chance, have intervened. This is the 'clocks and clouds' duality alluded to
later in Ligeti's output. What I would suggest is that in integral serialism
Ligeti found a method which was paradoxically not systematic enough at its
core for him to make use of. In order to create the tensions felt in a slowly
decaying and flawed system - an aspect of Ligeti's music which has persisted
throughout his career - the background system must be as rigorous and
determined as possible. Ligeti's analysis describes Structure 1a as relatively
indeterminate at its highest and lowest structural levels, and perhaps this is
the root of his dissatisfaction with serial method per se. His reading of the
piece would certainly suggest a frustrated intrigue with the methods he draws
from it. Dissatisfied with the compositional implications his own analysis of
European integral serialism has uncovered, Ligeti seems at this moment of
confrontation to have turned to an apparently more thorough and flexible
methodology derived in part from his background in Hungarian analysis, and
the world of Lendvai and Bartk.
tim.johnson77@btopenworld.com

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