‘A “new music” from nothing’: György Ligeti’s Musica ricercata

Abstract

The beginning of the 1950s marks a turning-point in György Ligeti’s early career. By that time Ligeti had become disappointed regarding his rather marginal position in Hungarian musical life, and he might well have felt some dissatisfaction with his own artistic output, as well. He recognized that he should leave his former style and build up his own expressive means and musical language from elementary material. For this purpose, he set himself certain compositional tasks, and imposed restrictions on pitch content, intervals, and rhythms ‘as if to build up a “new music” from nothing’. Accordingly, Musica ricercata , which is the first fruit of his experimental project, marks a renewal of Ligeti’s musical thinking primarily on terms of the compositional technique. The present study examines the main problems of compositional technique raised in Musica ricercata (primarily that of chromaticism and dense polyphony) and points out significant influences shown in the work (such as those of Bartók, Stravinsky, and Romanian folklore).