Gyorgy Ligetis Duo fur Violine und Klavier, das mit dieser Ausgabe erstmals publiziert wird, entstand im Dezember 1946, wahrend seines Studiums an der Franz Liszt-Musikakademie in Budapet. Ligeti betrieb zu jener Zeit intensive Kontrapunktstudien. Daruber hinaus ist das Werk der auf Bartok und Kodaly zuruckgehenden Idee einer kunstvoll stilisierten Volksmusik verpflichtet.

Ein Klassiker der zeitgenossischen Musik! Im 1967 entstandenen Orchesterwerk des prominenten ungarischen Komponisten schweben und gleiten vor allem Piano- und Pianissimo-Klange in einer spannungsgeladenen Atmosphare. Mit den Worten Ligetis "wachsen harmonische Gebilde gleichsam in andere hinuber - wie wenn man aus grellem Sonnenlicht in ein dunkles Zimmer tritt und die Farben und Konturen nach und nach wahrnimmt.".

An irresistible elemental power emanates from the eleven pieces of the Musica Ricercata composed between 1951 and 1953. The early piano work by the famous Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti arose from experiments with minimalist structures of rhythm and sound in order to build a New Music from nothing, so to speak, according to Ligeti himself. The effect that he achieves with just a few tones is inspiring. In the first piece, he uses one tone to which is added another tone at the end. In the second piece, the music consists of three tones, in the third of four, up to twelve tones in the eleventh piece. The second piece of the Music Ricercata served as soundtrack for the film Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick.

When Ligeti taught composition at the University of Stockholm in the 1960s, he met his famous Swedish fellow composer Hilding Rosenberg (1892-1985). Ligeti wrote this musical greeting on the occasion of Rosenberg's 90th birthday.
The little piece is easy to play, composed in an extremely instrument-related manner and sounds really good. It shows that Ligeti, like Bach, Schumann and Bartok, was able to write easily playable and at the same time tonally convincing music in his personal style. Whether at an audition in a music school class or (as an encore) at a concert, it is impossible to resist the immediate charm of this composition.

I composed the orchestral piece Melodien in 1971. I tried to loosen up the dense micropolyphony of my musical language, to make it more transparent. Basically, I stayed true to my earlier style: the musical form unfolds like a stretched fabric in the continuously flowing time, but the individual voices no longer merge (as in my earlier music), rather they can be heard individually in their overlapping and interweaving . The voices become individual melodies, with their own style, their own tempo, rhythm and interval structure. If you listen to the work for the first time, it appears as a chaos of discrepant melodies - but if you know the music better, the internal connections become tangible, the hidden harmonic skeleton of the form becomes tangible. (Gyorgy Ligeti)

This facsimile edition offers an impressive access to the composer's work. A study score in modern notation is also available.

Ramifications represents a further development of my method of composition with complex musical net-formations. it is, as it were, a terminus in the development from dense and static to broken-up and mobile. The title refers to the polyphonic technique of the part-writing. in one skein, individual parts that are twisted together move in divergent directions so that the strand of the voice gradually become disentangled. The total form is made up of the alternation of ramification and unification of the parts and of the rents or bunching together of the net-formation that ensues from this. And as well as that, there are in this piece new aspects of a micro-tonal harmony. Even earlier I was occasionally working with deviations from the equal temperament (Requiem, Volumina, Harmonies, Second String Quartet). But what is new here is the consistent application of an idea of hyperchromatic harmony. This is made possible by one half of the string instruments being tuned a quarter-tone higher than the others. From the automatically ensuing differences in intonation when the instruments are played, arises a fluctuation in pitch such that one can hardly ever hear exact quarter-tone intervals. In only a few dense places approximative quarter-tone clusters result. apart from that we find a totally new kind of uncertain harmony, as though the harmonies had rotted: thex have a strong taste and decay has permeated the music.
- Gyorgy Ligeti.

The formal thinking behind the piece is based on the interaction between individually determined periodic rhythms and a cumulative polyrhythmic overall structure. Although the overall rhythmic structure is on an indeterminate level intermediate - the result of adding individual periods of different length is at any given time random -, it is again determinate on the higher level of the temporal development of the overall from.

This overall form consists of the three phases: uniformity - gradual structuring - and uniformity, whereby uniformity in the initial phase arises form the collective blur of the individual periods, and in the final phase is a results of the periodicity of the one remaining ticking metronome. There are no distinct divisions between the three phases: the rhythmical process leads smoothly and gradually from one phase into the next. This appears to be a continuous process but consists of individual, discontinuous moments as each metronome stop suddenly. In the sparsely instrumented final phase with only a few metronomes left ticking, this discontinuity becomes audible, most obviously when the last metronome stops.

- Gyorgy Ligeti

Originally composed by Gyorgy Ligeti for solo violoncello and established in the cello repertoire, the sonata is now available in an arrangement for guitar (2013) by Kostas Tosidis. Tosidis transcribes contemporary solo cello literature for the guitar to add to the guitar repertoire and explore technical as well as interpretative possibilities.

I composed the Piano Concerto in two stages: the first three movements during the years 1985-86, the next two in 1987, the final autograph of the last movement was ready by January, 1988. The concerto is dedicated to the American conductor Mario di Bonaventura. .

The markings of the movements are the following: .

1. Vivace molto ritmico e preciso .
2. Lento e deserto .
3. Vivace cantabile .
4. Allegro risoluto .
5. Presto luminoso.

The first performance of the three-movement Concerto was on October 23rd, 1986 in Graz. Mario di Bonaventura conducted while his brother, Anthony di Bonaventura, was the soloist. Two days later the performance was repeated in the Vienna Konzerthaus. After hearing the work twice, I came to the conclusion that the third movement is not an adequate finale. my feeling of form demanded continuation, a supplement. That led to the composing of the next two movements. The premiere of the whole cycle took place on February 29th, 1988, in the Vienna Konzerthaus with the same conductor and the same pianist. .

The orchestra consisted of the following: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, tenor trombone, percussion and strings. The flautist also plays the piccoIo, the clarinetist, the alto ocarina. The percussion is made up of diverse instruments, which one musician-virtuoso can play. It is more practical, however, if two or three musicians share the instruments. Besides traditional instruments the percussion part calls also for two simple wind instruments: the swanee whistle and the harmonica. The string instrument parts (two violins, viola, cello and doubles bass) can be performed soloistic since they do not contain divisi. For balance, however, the ensemble playing is recommended, for example 6-8 first violins, 6-8 second, 4-6 violas, 4-6 cellos, 3-4 double basses. .

In the Piano Concerto I realized new concepts of harmony and rhythm. .

The first movement is entirely written in bimetry: simultaneously 12/8 and 4/4 (8/8). This relates to the known triplet on a doule relation and in itself is nothing new. Because, however, I articulate 12 triola and 8 duola pulses, an entangled, up till now unheard kind of polymetry is created. The rhythm is additionally complicated because of asymmetric groupings inside two speed layers, which means accents are asymmetrically distributed. These groups, as in the talea technique, have a fixed, continuously repeating rhythmic structures of varying lengths in speed layers of 12/8 and 4/4. This means that the repeating pattern in the 12/8 level and the pattern in the 4/4 level do not coincide and continuously give a kaleidoscope of renewing combinations. .

In our perception we quickly resign from following particular rhythmical successions and that what is going on in time appears for us as something static, resting. This music, if it is played properly, in the right tempo and with the right accents inside particular layers, after a certain time rises, as it were, as a plane after taking off: the rhythmic action, too complex to be able to follow in detail, begins flying. This diffusion of individual structures into a different global structure is one of my basic compositional concepts: from the end of the fifties, from the orchestral works Apparitions and Atmospheres I continuously have been looking for new ways of resolving this basic question. The harmony of the first movement is based on mixtures, hence on the parallel leading of voices. This technique is used here in a rather simple form. later in the fourth movement it will be considerably developed. .

The second movement (the only slow one amongst five movements) also has a talea type of structure, it is however much simpler rhythmically, because it contains only one speed layer. The melody is consisted in the development of a rigorous interval mode in which two minor seconds and one major second alternate therefore nine notes inside an octave. This mode is transposed into different degrees and it also determines the harmony of the movement. however, in closing episode in the piano part there is a combination of diatonics (white keys) and pentatonics (black keys) led in brilliant, sparkling quasimixtures, while the orchestra continues to play in the nine tone mode. .

In this movement I used isolated sounds and extreme registers (piccolo in a very low register, bassoon in a very high register, canons played by the swanee whistle, the alto ocarina and brass with a harmon-mute' damper, cutting sound combinations of the piccolo, clarinet and oboe in an extremely high register, also alternating of a whistle-siren and xylophone). The third movement also has one speed layer and because of this it appears as simpler than the first, but actually the rhythm is very complicated in a different way here. Above the uninterrupted, fast and regular basic pulse, thanks to the asymmetric distribution of accents, different types of hemiolas and inherent melodical patterns appear (the term was coined by Gerhard Kubik in relation to central African music). If this movement is played with the adequate speed and with very clear accentuation, illusory rhythmic-melodical figures appear. These figures are not played directly. they do not appear in the score, but exist only in our perception as a result of co-operation of different voices. .

Already earlier I had experimented with illusory rhythmics, namely in Poeme symphonique for 100 metronomes (1962), in Continuum for harpsichord (1968), in Monument for two pianos (1976), and especially in the first and sixth piano etude Desordre and Automne a Varsovie (1985). .

The third movement of the Piano Concerto is up to now the clearest example of illusory rhythmics and illusory melody. In intervallic and chordal structure this movement is based on alternation, and also inter-relation of various modal and quasi-equidistant harmony spaces. The tempered twelve-part division of the octave allows for diatonical and other modal interval successions, which are not equidistant, but are based on the alternation of major and minor seconds in different groups. The tempered system also allows for the use of the anhemitonic pentatonic scale (the black keys of the piano). From equidistant scales, therefore interval formations which are based on the division of an octave in equal distances, the twelve-tone tempered system allows only chromatics (only minor seconds) and the six-tone scale (the whole-tone: only major seconds). .

Moreover, the division of the octave into four parts only minor thirds) and three parts (three major thirds) is possible. In several music cultures different equidistant divisions of an octave are accepted, for example, in the Javanese slendro into five parts, in Melanesia into seven parts, popular also in southeastern Asia, and apart from this, in southern Africa. This does not mean an exact equidistance: there is a certain tolerance for the inaccurateness of the interval tuning. .

These exotic for us, Europeans, harmony and melody have attracted me for several years. However I did not want to re-tune the piano (microtone deviations appear in the concerto only in a few places in the horn and trombone parts led in natural tones). After the period of experimenting, I got to pseudo- or quasiequidistant intervals, which is neither whole-tone nor chromatic: in the twelve-tone system, two whole-tone scales are possible, shifted a minor second apart from each other. Therefore, I connect these two scales (or sound resources), and for example, places occur where the melodies and figurations in the piano part are created from both whole tone scales. in one band one six-tone sound resource is utilized, and in the other hand, the complementary. In this way whole-tonality and chromaticism mutually reduce themselves: a type of deformed equidistancism is formed, strangely brilliant and at the same time slanting. illusory harmony, indeed being created inside the tempered twelve-tone system, but in sound quality not belonging to it anymore. .

The appearance of such slantedequidistant harmony fields alternating with modal fields and based on chords built on fifths (mainly in the piano part), complemented with mixtures built on fifths in the orchestra, gives this movement an individual, soft-metallic colour (a metallic sound resulting from harmonics). .

The fourth movement was meant to be the central movement of the Concerto. Its melodc-rhythmic elements (embryos or fragments of motives) in themselves are simple. The movement also begins simply, with a succession of overlapping of these elements in the mixture type structures. Also here a kaleidoscope is created, due to a limited number of these elements - of these pebbles in the kaleidoscope - which continuously return in augmentations and diminutions. .

Step by step, however, so that in the beginning we cannot hear it, a compiled rhythmic organization of the talea type gradually comes into daylight, based on the simultaneity of two mutually shifted to each other speed layers (also triplet and duoles, however, with different asymmetric structures than in the first movement). While longer rests are gradually filled in with motive fragments, we slowly come to the conclusion that we have found ourselves inside a rhythmic-melodical whirl: without change in tempo, only through increasing the density of the musical events, a rotation is created in the stream of successive and compiled, augmented and diminished motive fragments, and increasing the density suggests acceleration. .

Thanks to the periodical structure of the composition, always new but however of the same (all the motivic cells are similar to earlier ones but none of them are exactly repeated. the general structure is therefore self-similar), an impression is created of a gigantic, indissoluble network. Also, rhythmic structures at first hidden gradually begin to emerge, two independent speed layers with their various internal accentuations. .

This great, self-similar whirl in a very indirect way relates to musical associations, which came to my mind while watching the graphic projection of the mathematical sets of Julia and of Mandelbrot made with the help of a computer. I saw these wonderful pictures of fractal creations, made by scientists from Brema, Peitgen and Richter, for the first time in 1984. From that time they have played a great role in my musical concepts. This does not mean, however, that composing the fourth movement I used mathematical methods or iterative calculus. indeed, I did use constructions which, however, are not based on mathematical thinking, but are rather craftman's constructions (in this respect, my attitude towards mathematics is similar to that of the graphic artist Maurits Escher). .I am concerned rather with intuitional, poetic, synesthetic correspondence, not on the scientific, but on the poetic level of thinking. .

The fifth, very short Presto movement is harmonically very simple, but all the more complicated in its rhythmic structure: it is based on the further development of ''inherent patterns of the third movement. The quasi-equidistance system dominates harmonically and melodically in this movement, as in the third, alternating with harmonic fields, which are based on the division of the chromatic whole into diatonics and anhemitonic pentatonics. Polyrhythms and harmonic mixtures reach their greatest density, and at the same time this movement is strikingly light, enlightened with very bright colours: at first it seems chaotic, but after listening to it for a few times it is easy to grasp its content: many autonomous but self-similar figures which crossing themselves. .

I present my artistic credo in the Piano Concerto: I demonstrate my independence from criteria of the traditional avantgarde, as well as the fashionable postmodernism. Musical illusions which I consider to be also so important are not a goal in itself for me, but a foundation for my aesthetical attitude. I prefer musical forms which have a more object-like than processual character. Music as frozen time, as an object in imaginary space evoked by music in our imagination, as a creation which really develops in time, but in imagination it exists simultaneously in all its moments. The spell of time, the enduring its passing by, closing it in a moment of the present is my main intention as a composer. .
(Gyorgy Ligeti)

Ligeti's piano etudes are some of the most splendid works ever composed for this instrument. Every ambitious player is eventually going to examine these milestones of contemporary music literature. The musical community had to wait for new piano works from the pen of Ligeti for quite a long time. now a new volume has been published: Etudes pour piano, troisieme livre.

In the years 1997 till 2001 the magician of sound wrote new etudes which pose challenges to the pianist that are revealed only at second glance.

Widmung / Dedication: dediee a Gyorgy Kurtag.

These six character pieces come from Ligeti's famous piano cycle 'Musica ricercata'. Now wild, now cheerful, now contemplative, now excited - each of these miniatures is an unmistakable gem.
The minimalist bagatelles already exist in popular arrangements for wind quintet, wind ensemble and accordion. Their new arrangement for saxophone quartet by Fabio Oehrli sounds very convincing, as if the composition has almost been made for this instrumentation.

This solo sonata was written between 1948 and 1953. The two opposing movements Dialogo and Capriccio follow the generally accepted slow-fast principle, with the second movement being inspired, according to Ligeti's own statement, by Paganini's Capricci.

This solo sonata was written between 1948 and 1953. The two opposing movements Dialogo and Capriccio follow the generally accepted slow-fast principle, with the second movement being inspired, according to Ligeti's own statement, by Paganini's Capricci.

Since the time of his childhood in Transylvania, Ligeti had been familiar with both Hungarian and Romanian folk music. He makes reference to approximately fifty folk song arrangements similar to Né.gy lakodalmi tá.nc which he had completed in the early phases of his compositional career. .
The four individual song texts highlight a wide range of aspects of a wedding. The first poem describes the bride's happiness and how beautifully she will be dressed, but also displays her hesitance, insecurity and fear of a future as a ".bird in a cage".. In the second poem, the bride is unwilling to enter into marriage. she fears that the preparations which have been undertaken are insufficent. The young girl in the third poem is full of pride and wishes to be the bride, ".the most seemly, to look at with pride"., but also naturally hopes that she ".will yield a flower, not just a dry stalk".. The subject of the final poem is the bridgeroom whose thoughts on his wedding are full of optimism if his uncle plays the violin at the ceremony.

Hungarian - English - German.

Ligeti wrote this piece during his studies, influenced by the style of his role models Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly. Time, dynamics and tempo changes provide delightful contrasts in the both modern and folk-song choir. The work is performable in Hungarian, German and English.

Hungarian - English - German.

Ligeti illustrated the transition from low midnight to bright day initially with an eight-voice double canon, then in an increasingly motetic style. With onomatopoeia, like the cock crow, the ticking of a clock and the peal of bells, a great effect in the concert is guaranteed.

Eines vor allem macht die ungarische Musik aus: Es ist der Rhythmus. Das gleiche kann man auch ü.ber Rockmusik sagen - denn Rock ohne Rhythmus ist nichts! Was passiert aber, wenn man beide Musikrichtungen miteinander kombiniert? Wer die Antwort haben mö.chte, hö.rt sich am besten den phä.nomenalen Hungarian Rock des ungarischen Komponisten Gyö.rgy Ligeti an. Wie der jung gebliebene Altmeister der zeitgenö.ssischen Musik es schafft, aus einem einfachen Cembalo einen solchen Gitarrensound herauszuholen, wird wohl sein Geheimnis bleiben. Auf jeden Fall zaubert er eine solche Energie aus diesem Instrument, dass es einem direkt in die Beine geht. Also: Warum nicht einmal ungarische Rockmusik?

At first, it all sounds very easy. The notes leap through and over one another as if conjured up by a magician. However, nothing goes quite as smoothly as it seems, and here and there the music snags. notes get in each other's way and somehow it all gets somewhat out of hand. Our young Harry Potter still has a lot to learn ... Ligeti has a brilliant grasp of how to capture the essence of this scene in music. With a generous portion of wit and reminiscences of "minimal music" a la Steve Reich, the composer allows the story to unfold and is effortlessly successful in creating one of the most difficult pieces in the entire piano literature. Tempo and hectic activity, active agitation and slapstick stumbling: this all combines to illustrate "The Apprentice Wizard".

It is fascinating how the famous Hungarian composer skilfully superimposes rhythms which, with shifted accents and different speeds, create a third dimension of hearing, like an optical illusion. The breathtaking whirling of the keys in 'Desordre', the first of 18 etudes for piano altogether, is a sign of Ligeti's enthusiasm for Central African music which later was to become so important to him.

Ein Stü.ck, das man in Stresssituationen wohl besser nicht hö.rt. ".Continuum&ldquo. von Gyö.rgy Ligeti ist eines der berü.hmtesten Werke der 1960er Jahre, ein Klassiker der Moderne. Entspannen kann man sich dabei nicht. Auf der stä.ndigen Suche nach einem festen Haltepunkt wird das Ohr zunehmend verwirrt und gerä.t, wie der ebenfalls geforderte Spieler, in Stress. Der klimperkastenartige Klang des Cembalos trä.gt den Rest dazu bei, dass der Zuhö.rer binnen kurzer Zeit anfä.ngt, wenn auch vielleicht nicht enerviert, so doch zumindest nervö.s zu werden.