Metamorphosis in Music

Abstract

In the 1950s and 1960s György Ligeti went through a remarkable transition from writing music in the style of Bartók to working at the cutting edge of the avant-garde. Through careful study of the sketches and drafts, as well as analysis of the finished scores, Metamorphosis in Music takes a detailed look at this compositional evolution. The book begins with Ligeti’s synthesis of folk music and modernism in Musica ricercata and continues through the turn of the 1970s, examining nearly every major work as well as numerous unpublished studies. It shows Ligeti’s early discovery of twelve-tone technique, the influence of electronic music on his orchestral writing, and his involvement with the absurdist Fluxus group, and it argues that the repertoire of techniques he developed in this experimental period was incrementally codified into the composer’s personal style in the mid- and late 1960s. The conclusion looks at Ligeti’s approach to form and expression at the turn of the 1970s, when one phase of his metamorphosis had run its course, and the new challenge of composing an opera loomed on the horizon. Throughout the book, sketch study works alongside comments from interviews—counterbalancing the composer’s crafted public narrative, revealing hidden influences, lingering attachments, and insights into the creative process, and ultimately helping complete the picture of how he found his voice in a generation straddling the divide between the modern and postmodern eras.