The Characteristics And Evolution Of Harmonic Techniques In Ligeti's Compositions

Gyorgy Ligeti is the most famous western composer in 20th century. This dissertation takes music genres and styles as background, to post his thoughts and techniques of harmonic language in different period, and by which to settle and generalize the developing track of his harmonic thoughts and techniques.The dissertation is consisted of four chapters. The first chapter discusses Ligeti's aesthetic concept and harmonic thoughts, and the historical background to formative them. To depict that author analyzed the development of 20th century European harmonic thoughts and techniques, the Hungarian music tradition, European social culture, and Ligeti's formation and development of aesthetic concept and harmonic thoughts.The second chapter discusses his technical characters of personal practicing stage. The first section treats his exploring to folk music mode. The second to fourth sections discusses his exploration for techniques such as central chords, central note groups and central note series. The fifth section takes First String quartet as example to address Ligeti's primary exploration for acoustical techniques.The third chapter discourses upon his autumn of technical characters of harmonic language, i.e. the middle period of his creative life. Former three sections treat Ligeti's typical works of acoustic techniques style, by completely analyses and study the acoustic harmony structure, the relationship and the development of acoustic harmony materials, the characters and example analysis of acoustic harmony's whole pitch structure, to open out his various explorations and experiments. The fourth section taking the exploration as example, discusses Ligeti's combinational relationship between his acoustic harmony and non-acoustic & pitch techniques, to explain composer how to combine the pitch structure in his early exploration and the acoustic harmony in his late exploration.The Fourth chapter treats Ligeti's harmony language in his integrating development period, i.e. the afternoon of his creative life. First, author explains Ligeti's late works that are affected by main stream in that era. So called main stream means go back to ancient, regression, integration, etc. Afterward, author depicts the technical characters of acoustic techniques in Ligeti's late works.The conclusion mostly depicts the developing track of his harmonic language.