The Ligeti Structure Thinking Research

This dissertation discusses the music of Gyorgy Ligeti (1923- ), One of the World's Best known living composers, with a focus on the formation and representation of his structural thinking in his music.Undoubtedly, as one of the most important western composers in the 20th century, Ligeti deserves special attention. Since the 1950's, Ligeti, who has Austrian nationality but was born in Hungary, has greatly influenced on western modern composing through his adventurous thinking and unique technic. From the micropolyphony in Atmospheres to the mechanical rhythm in Poeme Symphonique for 100 metronomes, from the complex crossing rhythmical structure in Etudes for piano, to the practice going beyond the 12 equal-temperament, all of them embody the typical "Ligetian Style".The reason why I have selected Ligeti's Structural Thinking as the subject of this research, is that Structural Thinking has been at all times the core issue in Ligeti's composing process. On the one hand, the different ways of Ligeti's structural thinking in his works manifested the leading role to the development of his music. On the other hand, some special writing techniques were developed just from special structural thinkings. Structural thinking is the comprehensive consideration in a compose's mind when he is composing a musical piece, it contains the choices of the ways in which the music will develop and the decision on the form in which the piece will be. The structural thinking should transform into corresponding techniques and produce coincident sound effects. When making a comprehensive survey of Ligeti's music, one will find that there is often something "unexpected" in the structural process and structural shape, but that at the same time the work is always full of artistic value. His music has not only mannered treatment of materials, but also the "open-eyed" feelings. More importantly, although the sound of his music is often very extreme, it withstands repeated listening. In other words his works have found the best synthesis of the three aspects of original thinking, unique sound and pleasant hearing experience. This is just the problem for many modern composers.One of the prominent peculiarities of Ligeti's structural thinking is his innovative spirit.This comes from the strong pursuing of "Originality" in his musical language and his lofty ideals as an artist. Ligeti's music has manifested that almost each of his works has something new. Ligeti is always opposed to going the same road as someone else or himself. He once said:"since Beethoven, originality is important in the music." He deems that the composers in the 20th century should do like Beethoven and Debussy, and dare to take the innovative road, because today "originality and something new plays a great role in art."In order to realize the "Originality" of musical language, Ligeti searched for breakthroughs not only in music itself, but also from other disciplines outside of music. Since the 1950s, Ligeti has always used references from art, literature and philosophy, and combined them with the structural thinking in music, as a result he has opened a new possible way to express such musical meanings, for example "illusive space" and "static movement". Ligeti also has produced some concrete writing techniques, for examples micropolyphony, mechanical rhythm and tone colour as the whole movement in a piece, all of them have played a great role in Ligeti's music.The reason why I have chosen structural thinking as focus of my research is to try to analyze Ligeti's music from two of its aspects: ideas and techniques, and then to explain his unique manner. Because structural thinking is his most important conception, one can grasp the main matter of Ligeti's music if one can grasp the meaning of structural thinking.The following questions will be discussed in this dissertation: the formation and development of the conception of Ligeti's structural thinking, the main techniques in the structural process, the character of the structural shape, and the influences on the development of western modern musical composing. The works dealt with in this dissertation are mainly those composed from 1956 to today, and a few works from his hungarian time.Although not all of his works are discussed, the covered works do reflect the whole visage of Ligeti's music.According to the scope explained above, the dissertation will be divided into two parts. The first part includes two chapters, discussing the engenderment and formation of the conception of Ligeti's structural thinking from a macro perspective, emphasizing the influences from history. culture and the whole musical context in the 20th century. The second part includes four chapters, discussing the techniques used in Ligeti's works from a micro perspective. The third, fourth and fifth chapters emphasize "structural processes", while the sixth chapter analyzes "structural shape". This part is bigger than the first part, and is the main part of this dissertation. The final conclusion is a summary, it explains the theoretical and practical significance of my research.Some other important ideas about this dissertation should be explained. First, although the subject of my dissertation is a single case on one composer, it will be a valuable work, as Ligeti is a representative figure of the 20th century. Because by far no one in China has made a systematic research about him, my dissertation will to a certain extent play a pioneering role inducing further research. Secondly, in my research the importance of influences from philosophy, literature, art and natural science on Ligeti will be treated on the same level as influences from modern composition techniques. Thirdly, in the technique analysis this dissertation pays much attention to the determinative function of structural process to structural shape, without concluding any genre to the musical forms of his works. Fourthly, as for the nature of the concept of structure, this dissertation takes it as a open living organism, namely the closedness of the structure of a musical piece in 20th century modern music is somewhat relative, and the opening is somewhat unconditional (it is opposite in the traditional music). Just as in Ligeti's music, the structure is often not fixed, the score is sometimes just a part of a big composition, which is only in the composer's imagination.The explainations above can be not only regarded as a guidance for this dissertation, but also as an explaination of my methods in the researching process.