György Ligeti: Style, Ideas, Poetics by Marina s> Lobanova Mark Shuttleworth (review)

Abstract

960 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 the boundaries which defined their working practices, and the degree of tension which may have existed on the philosophicalplane. Schoolof SlavonicandEast EuropeanStudies PHILIPCAVENDISH University College London Lobanova, Marina. Gydrgy Ligeti:Style,Ideas,Poetics.Translated by Mark Shuttleworth. Studia Slavica Musicologica, 29. Verlag Ernst Kuhn, Berlin, 2003. vi + 449 pp. Musical extracts. Notes. Bibliography. Chronology . Listof works.Index. E74.95(paperback). AT eighty, world famous in contemporarymusic circlesand well beyond, and already the subject of at least three English-languagemonographs (Griffiths, Toop, and Steinitz), Ligeti may appearto have all the criticalcoverage he, or the reader, could need. Thus, translatedfrom a Russian manuscript,lacking the luxuries of topic index, photo gallery, and uniformly legible music facsimilies, this by no means inexpensive volume may find itself at some competitive disadvantagein the music bookshop. However, it is in many ways a gem. Where Anglophone Ligeti portraiture has tended to emphasize the jokey eccentricities of an effortlesslywinning genius (BigglesFliesBeyond the AvantGarde?),Marina Lobanovapersonally shares the experience of Russian musical repression and lack of freedom to travel (till I987), and of cultural rebirth in Germany (as Ligeti's research assistant I991-93), and it shows.An immediate benefit is the vividnessof fifty pages of interviews,conducted at that unrepeatableperiod of post-Cold War liberation,which are asfrankabout inflatedegos and hard-hittingabout cardcarrying politicians and cultural apparatchiksof all kinds as they are witty, poignant, and revealingabout Ligeti'sself-evaluation.Butthroughoutthe 350 chronologicallyorderedpages of commentary on the complete worksto I993 (haltingat theViolin Concerto), Lobanova'sapproach,evidenced by no fewer than 500 footnotes and I I5 musical examples, is academically rigorous and probing in the tradition of Russian, and sometimes German and Frenchbut neverAnglophone criticalwriting. Thus Bakhtin, Denisov, Norwall and Salmenhaara are frequently cited authors and Griffiths is unknown, but none is more frequently cited than Ligeti himself with a critical engagement that emphasizes the theoretical rigour represented by his thirty-two articles and numerous other published writings. Lobanova's perspective asserts itself early on, in the specific details she bringsto understandingof the Bart6kinheritanceand the Soviet attitudesthat Ligeti was compelled to confrontin the late I 940s. But she is no less adroitin stylisticcomparison, and already in workslike the Metamorphoses nocturnes she identifies nascent Ligeti attitudes to tone colour, 'meccanico' music, the fugato, the morendo, the timbralmaskand the stylizedemotions, etc.. When we travel with Ligeti to the West and he finds himself 'extraorbital' to the absolutistStockhausen, Lobanova quotes Ivanov's Bakhtiniananalysisof the pluralization of contemporary consciousness (the untenability of the 'privileged observer' and his Eurocentric suppression of ignored traditions) and REVIEWS 96I suggeststhat thisleads to 'affirmationof the "dialogueprinciple"' (p. 30). For the Englishreader,this re-situatingof the Ligetitraitof unresolvedparadox is revealing one of many instances of a specific non-Western contextualization , culturalratherthanpersonal,of Ligeti'snot-yet-Westernizedperception that pluralism and relativity are the essential conditions of contemporary music. As we progress,it becomes apparentthat thisbook is a gigantic dissertation in which every work has been subjected to powerful scrutiny in all its aspects from the circumstances of commission and performance to the aesthetic, the technically formative, the analytical, and the contextual (often to remote artistic periods, mathematics, visual art etc., as well as the Ligeti oeuvre) while the author steers an ever deepening evolutionary narrative through the chronological adventure. This major achievement is supported by translator Mark Shuttleworth who honours the accepted meaning of English technical terms while maintaining a remarkablelevel of fluency and elegant readability. What a pity, then that such a mine of information and thinking is graced with an Index of Names only. The Ligeti-informedreader (thisvolume is hardlydestinedforthe novice)will oftenbe able to locate topics of interestfrom the Contents listing, where titles rub shoulderswith 'Time as Space' or 'In The WonderfulWorldof Mean-tone Temperament'. However, if the description of 'Generalised Hemiola' located at pp. 246-50 seems insufficient (for I have yet to find a convincing definition of what Ligeti after contact with Simha Arom and Central African Pygmy music -means by thisconcept, as the redistributionof x timesy beats asy times x beats seems too insignificantand one suspectssome furtherconcept related to suspended and released rhythmicpropulsion),then one reallywants to look up all other instances to round out one's understanding, and...