The Study On Rhythm In Ligeti Piano Etude Ⅱ

In Professor Qian Renping’s<Dawn after Gloaming>, Ligeti’s3volumes of Etudes for Piano were regarded as the pinnacle work which saved music from the20th century piano trough. The intention of his Etudes for Piano has return to music composing of melody and rhythm instead of exploring the main timbre of the1960s. Especially in Book II, the Etudes contain complex textures, exotic polyrhythm, crazy speed, and the micropolyphony Ligeti had spent a long time to explore. And we can still get a glimpse of the impact of’Minimalism’during the trip to United States on him through the rhythm and accent. The rhythm combination in the piano Etudes of left and right overlap then gradually staggered and back to overlap drives performers into crazy. Ligeti stated that his Etudes for Piano were the studies for’piano brain’rather than for’piano hands’, which apparently indicates the difficulty and high technique of these Etudes.This paper, chose the second volume (Book II) of Etudes for Piano as the object of study, consists of five chapters. Start from the rhythm elements of music, and work as a basis, this paper has a perspective of the relevance between rhythm structure and pitch structure, rhythm structure, sound structure and movement structure. The author will deconstruction Ligeti’s unique characteristic of rhythm structure through the detailed analysis of the score cases so that to give a further insight into and grasp the style, connotation and rhythm characteristic of Ligeti’s late piano works. Following is the content and main point of each chapter discussed in this paper.In the first chapter, author, chose the Book I as a control to Book II, gave out an induction and summary of the traits of intensity level, texture layer, tone type, pitch system and harmony technique of Book I and Book II respectively.In the second chapter, author classified and summarized the different rhythms structure model of Book II.In the third Chapter gave a discussion and summary of the different rhythmic patterns which classified by author into’Consonant Rhythm’and’Inconsonant Rhythm. Fibonacci Sequence was use in the analysis of the’Consonant Rhythm’. Author analyzed the whole rhythm pattern based on the aspect of the binary relations between rhythm and tempo.In the fourth chapter, author focused on the music rhythm elements, combined with pitch, intensity, texture, sound, and many other musical elements, to analyze their effects to the configuration of the structure.In the final chapter, author carried out a comprehensive analysis and interpretation of the musical factors which affected the formation of Ligeti’s style tone, harmony, rhythm and etc., along with the non-musical factors like the childhood of Ligeti himself, painting and literature.