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Shades of the Studio: Electronic Influences on Ligeti's "Apparitions"
Author(s): Benjamin R. Levy

Source: Perspectives of New Music , SUMMER 2009, Vol. 47, No. 2 (SUMMER 2009), pp.
59-87
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25753697
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Shades of the Studio:
Electronic Influences on
Ligeti's Apparitions
Benjamin K Levy
Briefarticles
comments
such as histhat Gyorgy ofLigeti
"Metamorphoses Musicalmade
Form"1 in interviews,
suggest that lectures, and
his early experiences in the Cologne electronic music studio in the
1950s, immediately following his flight from Hungary and his introduc
tion to the techniques of the avant-garde, helped shape his later style of
composition, and that both general principles and specific techniques for
sound manipulation that he discovered through these experiences led to
the creation of his first mature orchestral pieces, Apparitions (1958-59)
and Atmospheres (1961). Indeed, one product of that period, Piece elec
tronique no. 3 (1957-58) was originally conceived under the title
Atmospheres, but was left unfinished, and was renamed when the orches
tral work took over that title, suggesting (despite Ligeti's denial of any
explicit relationship2) a shared aesthetic concern and more than a mere
chronological connection. Yet Ligeti's comments often lack concrete
examples of how his work in the studio informed his later compositions.
And while the orchestral compositions have attracted considerable fame

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60 Perspectives of New Music
and scholarly attention,3 there are very few significant studies on Piece
electronique no. 3 or on his other two electronic compositions, Glissandi
(1957), and Artikulation (1958), that clarify the connection. Perhaps
on account of the unfamiliarity of the electronic medium, secondary
sources tend to skirt over the details of the construction of these works
in favor of general descriptions of their character?for example the
"humor" of Glissandi or the interest in a synthetic language demon
strated in Artikulation.* To understand these details, a close study of
Ligeti's compositional sketches is essential. By comparing sketches and
passages from the electronic pieces with both the score and the sonic
impression of Apparitions, this study focuses on the specific composi
tional techniques and the resulting gestures and textures which Ligeti
discovered while working in electronic music and then carried over into
the orchestral medium, thereby illuminating a previously neglected side
of this important stylistic transformation. This investigation will proceed
from rhythmic practice, where Ligeti first began to experiment with and
expand upon the serial methods of his contemporaries, to the more
original compositional devices he developed involving the coordination
of rhythm, pitch, and other parameters.
The change in Ligeti's approach to rhythmic organization was perhaps
the most profound shift in his stylistic metamorphosis during the late
1950s, as it encompassed both large-scale formal design and more
surface level patterning. Moreover, it was in the domain of rhythm
where Ligeti began to reconcile serial practices with what he had taken
from Bartok, through the Hungarian theorist Erno Lendvai, and where
ultimately, Ligeti found his own voice, developing the characteristically
"static" and "textural" style for which he became famous.
When Ligeti escaped Hungary during the revolution of 1956, he
described himself as largely ignorant of the practices of the Western
European avant-garde:
Invited by Dr. Herbert Eimert, I came to Cologne in 1957 as a

"virgo intacta," so to speak, having no idea, then, not only about
electronic music, but also even more generally about what had hap
pened compositionally in the post-war years in Western Europe.5
He went on to say that he was inspired to compose a type of "static"

music while still in Hungary, but was without the technical means to
realize this vision because until he arrived in Cologne, he "had not got
beyond the concept of notation based on metre." Even two of his more
adventurous Hungarian-period compositions, Metamorphosis nocturnes
and Musica ricercata, were "conceived within the framework of

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Shades of the Studio 61
conventional time measurement and periodic structure."6 Many of

Ligeti's new colleagues at the West Deutsche Rundfunk (WDR) Studio
in Cologne considered the pairing of serial and electronic music to be
the union of the most advanced compositional techniques of the day
with the most advanced technology.7 It is not surprising, then, that
Ligeti looked to serial electronic music when searching for the means to
overcome this compositional problem, and that he confronted this
difficulty in the electronic medium before applying his solution to
orchestral writing.
Some traces of metrical thinking are still evident in the sketches for his
first tape piece, Glissandi. They show that Ligeti calculated time
primarily in seconds, and the piece also contains passages that fall into
regular or semi-regular rhythms.8 But observing Karlheinz Stockhausen
and Gottfried Michael Koenig in Cologne cutting pieces of tape
according to variable time scales with no standard bar length certainly
pushed him to develop new ways of handling rhythm. In the later
electronic piece Artikulation, all durations are quite literally segments of
magnetic tape calculated in centimeters and cut to different lengths. In
Artikulation, Ligeti also embraced the anonymity of the tape segments
in terms of their content; he grouped segments of tape of a certain
length into families based on general characteristics including register,
attack qualities, sine-tone versus noise content, and so forth, and then
randomly selected a representative from that family to fill the
corresponding duration in the piece.9 This method may seem strikingly
free in an environment so dedicated to serial composition, but at this
time Stockhausen and Koenig were themselves exploring the use of
"statistical" distributions within a serial framework. Moreover, it is only
the most surface-level details of the composition that are left to chance;
other aspects of the piece?including the arrangement of durations?are
meticulously planned.
In his rhythmic plan for Artikulation, Ligeti did not adopt the
duration rows used by serial composers working at the time. In fact, he
criticized the adherence to duration rows in pieces like Boulez's
Structures la in an analytical essay for the journal Die Reihe10 and in the
more theoretical article "Metamorphoses of Musical Form," which
appeared in a later volume of the same journal. Specifically, he objected
to the fact that in such a system, the longer durations inevitably make up
more of the piece than the shorter ones, creating a kind of imbalance.
He favored the following solution:

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In the first part of my orchestral piece "Apparitions" I used a reper

toire of durations (intervals of entry) with values attached to each
element such that the product of each duration-value and the num
ber of times that it occurred in the whole structure was a constant.
By this means an equilibrium of intervals of entry was achieved: the
shorter a particular duration-interval, the more frequently it
appeared in the context, and so many short durations were used for
every long one [so] that the sum of the short ones equalled [sic]
that of the long.11
He further noted that:
In my electronic piece "Articulation" I used a similar principle of

distribution with the following difference however: here, the prod
uct of the individual duration values and their frequency of occur
rence was not a constant, but changed according to the different
kinds of texture that are used in the piece. The result is that the
specific average density varies from texture to texture. Obviously
one can set up numerous other statistics of distribution, depending
on the specific ideas one has about the work one is composing.12
The tape segments undergo substantial reordering and recombination

through the course of the piece and are next to impossible to trace
through the whole of the composition. Nevertheless, in his listening
score for Artikulation, the theorist Rainer Wehinger identifies material
for one passage that comprised "150 bits of tape one cm in length, and
one bit of tape 150 cm in length."13 This elementary example matches
the technique Ligeti has described. Figuring a tape speed of 76.2
cm/sec, which was standard at the WDR, this particular type of material
is presented in durations ranging from 0.013 to 1.969 seconds?an
indication of the minute level to which the durations in this piece were
planned and the degree to which Ligeti had moved away from thinking
in terms of beats and measures.
My own examination of the sketches for Artikulation14 confirms this
approach and shows a similar system of sorting other materials by their
individual durations. In sketches labeled "Material 3," the series of
durations shown in Example 1 appears. The first column of Example 1
lists each duration value in centimeters, and the second column,
condensing the information in the original sketch, shows the total
number of tape segments cut to that duration. (In the original, Ligeti
wrote out all the numbers from one to the value I show in the second
column, and then wrote the letter "R," "S," or "U" over each number
to indicate the type of material on the corresponding tape-segment.

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These letters stand for Rauschen [noise], Sinus [sine tones], and Ugato
[barking].15) The third column is the product of the first two; this is my
own calculation, which does not appear in the original sketch. It shows
that each product of the duration in centimeters and the number of tape
segments is approximately 30. The values above 30, at the end of the
example, received longer descriptions and are often termed "objects;" in
fact all of Ligeti's sketches using this technique contain a few durations
which are larger than the product, and must have stood outside this
system.
Length Instances Product

1 30 30
1.1 28 30.8
1.2 26 31.2
1.3 24 31.2
1.4 22 30.8
1.5 20 30
1.7 18 30.6
1.9 16 30.4
2.1 14 29.4
2.3 12 27.6
2.5 12 30
2.8 10 28
3.1 10 31
3.4 8 27.2
3.7 8 29.6
4.1 7 28.7
4.5 7 31.5
5 6 30
5.5 6 33
6.1 5 30.5
6.7 5 33.5
7.4 4 29.6
EXAMPLE 1: ARTIKULATION, MATERIAL 3. THE DURATION LENGTH IN

CENTIMETERS TIMES THE NUMBER OF INSTANCES THAT DURATION IS USED
EQUALS APPROXIMATELY 30.

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This same technique is found in Apparitions where it can be traced

from the composition's abstract plan directly to the score.16 The
premiere of this piece was a landmark moment in Ligeti's career; the
opening passage features low, sustained, semitone clusters which are
immediately stirring, and invitingly different, especially when imagined
in the context of avant-garde works for which Webern's starkness and
clarity were models. The low frequencies and the density of the clusters
make these sonorities noisy and hard to identify precisely, and yet these
same features, when combined with soft dynamic levels and long
durations, make the sound somewhat neutral and easier to internalize as
a state of being rather than an external event, a distinction that Ligeti
makes in his own description of the piece.17 The creation of this
amorphous, freely floating initial state, however, depends as much upon
the rhythmic procedures governing these initial clusters as it does on the
choice of instruments, register, and interval content.
Despite the perceived novelty of their effect, the method of determin
ing the various lengths of these static clusters is closely tied to the
technique Ligeti used in Artikulation. In sketches for Apparitions the
diagram in Example 2 is found. It shows twelve referential durations,
which in the second column are specified in thirty-second notes,
ranging, then, from one sixteenth note to five whole notes. The number
of occurrences of each of these durations is given in the next column,
and in this case, the product is written out in the original sketch, and is
equal to approximately 160. A thirteenth value equal to 256 thirty
second notes is given in parentheses; as with the larger values in
Example 1, this value seems to stand outside the system, and in this
case, as will ultimately be shown, it is not used in the final version of the
piece.
These individual occurrences are then distributed into four groups,
which respectively will constitute the four sections of the first movement
of Apparitions. In other pages of the sketches, Ligeti outlines the
duration scheme for these four groups (see Example 3).
The letter names in Ligeti's sketch correspond to the rehearsal letter
which ends that section, thus "A" designates from the beginning to
Letter A, "B" from Letter A to B, and so forth, with "V" standing for
the Hungarian vege, meaning "end," or quite possibly for vilagos
meaning "light" and indicating a connection to an earlier draft of the
piece, Sotet es Vilagos (dark and light).18
A careful examination of these numbers reveals that in distributing the
individual durations from Example 2 into the sections defined by
Example 3, Ligeti modified his duration scheme slightly. He left out
nine instances of the number 2, four 3s, two 4s, and one 10. The

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Duration Instances Product

I 2 80 160
II 3 53 156
III 4 40 160
IV 6 27 162
V 10 16 160
VI 14 11 154
VII 20 8 160
VIII 32 5 160
IX 48 3 144
X 80 2 160
XI 112 1 112
XII 160 1 160
(xiii) 256 1 256
EXAMPLE 2: APPARITIONS L THE DURATION IN THIRTY-SECOND NOTES TIMES THE

NUMBER OF INSTANCES THAT DURATION IS USED EQUALS APPROXIMATELY 160.
rationale for this grouping and the modifications of the numerical

scheme may have been related to the resulting proportions between the
lengths of these larger sections. In an interview, Ligeti stated:
In the first movement of Apparitions, I applied Bartok's golden sec

tion as interpreted by Lendvai. Its first part is in a low register and
the second in a high register; the relative duration of the two parts
corresponds to the golden section. Subsequent shorter parts of the
movement are also divided in the same proportion. The golden sec
tion is in fact the dominant formal principle of the work. Looking
back on it, I must say that I could have applied any other principle
of proportions just as well.19
This last sentence is particularly telling, since it turns out that the pro
portion of 2:3 (or approximately 0.667) reflects the major divisions of
this movement better than the golden section (approximately 0.618).

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160 80 48 32 20 14 10 6 4 3 2
32 20 14 10 6 4 3 2
20 14 10 6 4 3 2
14 10 6 4 3 2
6 4 3 2
2
(a) Section A, sum = 585
32 20 14 10 66444433332222
20 14 10 6644443333222
10 6644443333222
10 6644443333222
6644443333222
6 6 2 2 2
2 2 2
(b) Section B, sum = 396; three instances of 2 are unused resulti
20 14 10
14 10
10
(c) Section C, sum = 195.
256 112 80 48 32 20 14 10 6 4 4 3 3 3 2 2
48 32 20 14 10 6 4 4 3 3 3 2 2
14 10 6 4 3 3 3 2 2
10 6 4 3 3 3 2 2
6 4 3 3 3 2 2
4 2 2
2 2
2 2
2 2
2 2
(d) Section V, sum = 877; sum without 256 = 621.
EXAMPLE 3: APPARITIONS I. THE DISTRIBUTION OF INDIVIDUAL DURAT

INSTANCES INTO THE FOUR SECTIONS OF THIS MOVEMENT.

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The sums of the individual values for each of the four sections are shown
in Example 4a, along with some of the proportions between these sec
tions.
The duration of 877 thirty-second notes, which Ligeti specified in his
sketch for V, does not actually occur in the piece, and there is some
ambiguity as to exacdy how long this final section lasts. In the
completed score, the duration from Letter C (which begins with the
high-register violin cluster near the end of bar 73) to the final bar line is
637 thirty-second notes. The last two measures, however, are filled with
rests, and if they are not counted, one finds a duration of 573. Within
this range of 573 to 637, one finds two significant values. Subtracting
the parenthetical duration of 256 from the original total of 877 yields
the result of 621, close to the upper limit of this range. The value of
585, which is the length of section A, lies closer to the beginning of this
range. Moreover, if the value 585 is taken as the ideal length of the last
section, then the situation closely resembles the "dominant formal
principle" described by Ligeti, as demonstrated in Example 4b. The
piece has a 2:3 relationship between the entire movement and the initial
sections (A-C), which occur in the low register, before the final section
(V) shifts abruptly higher.20 This same 2:3 proportion is also reflected in
A B C V
585 390 195 877
Ratios between major sections:
V:A = 3:2 A:B = 3:2 B:C = 2:1 A:C = 3:1
(a) Apparitions I. Durations between major sections.
A B C V
585 390 195 *685
Ratios between major sections: 3:2:1:3

Entire movement (A-V) to low register sections (A-C): 1755:1170 = 3:2
Initial sections A:B = 3:2
(b) Apparitions I. Revised durations and ratios between major sections.
EXAMPLE 4

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the first two sections. The ambiguous ending silence may thus be a
compromise between the previously determined durations and these
idealized proportions.21
Having settled on a distribution of the individual durations into
sections reflecting the above proportions, Ligeti went about arranging
them into an order that would produce the musical surface of
Apparitions. Here he proceeded intuitively, rather than by any serial
ordering, but always with a concern for how his durational scheme
could lead to his stated goal of a static musical texture. Example 5 shows
some modification of the numbers at this point?the upper row of
numbers comes directly from the values shown in Example 3a, while the
lower row shows the values Ligeti actually employed in the piece. The
modifications were most likely to avoid repetition, which could lead to
some sort of periodicity or even a brief feeling of meter, and also to
increase the variety of rhythmic units, including numbers such as one
and seven which were not part of the original scheme. Where Ligeti
subtracted from one value, however, he added this amount to another,
so that the sums and their underlying proportions remained unchanged.
Example 5 b presents the original sketch in which Ligeti worked out
these alterations, as well as notes about the orchestration, the number of
pitches sounding, and the dynamic level connected to each duration
value.22
This scheme corresponds to mm. 1-30 of the score, shown in
reduction in Example 6. Here each number denotes the duration, in
thirty-second notes, from the onset of sound or silence to the onset of
the next sound or silence. The series of numbers replicates the second
row of Example 5. Thus we see the means by which Ligeti was able to
fully realize his first piece of static music. But the relationship between
this rhythmic technique and Ligeti's aesthetic goals demands further
reflection, as the latter help explain many of the decisions, and seeming
liberties, that Ligeti took in proceeding from his initial sketches to the
finished score.
Revisiting the composer's description of this movement reveals the
importance of his choice in ordering the individual durations. He
remarked that the beginning is "a stationary, very soft, very low, and
very long sound,"23 followed by other "planelike" sounds, which are
then disturbed by more impulsive events, described in terms of "attacks"
and "energy-influx" with the ultimate result that "the network is
irrevocably changed; the stationary sounds heretofore only weakly
stirred by internal vibrations are now crumpled. Trills and tremolos
animate the sounding masses, and a continually irregular fluctuation of
the dynamics hinders the retrieval of any equilibrium."24 To this end,
the outer sections (A and V) contain a mixture of longer and shorter

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CO &Cla> a.c+ n>COr+CQ_o"
actual piece; both lines sum to 585 to preserve the proportions shown in Example 4.
(a) Apparitions I. Section A. The upper line shows durations derived from Example 3, Section A; the lower line shows adjusted durations used in the
EXAMPLE 5
160 48 20 80 32 14 20 32 10 20 14 6 10 14 14 10 6 4 10 4 6 3 2 3 4 6 3 4 61602 2 564 3162 803 2282 12 20 32 12 16 14 6 10 16 12 10 6 4 12 5 7 3 1 4 5 6 2 3 7 2 1 5 4 1 2 1 4

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o CO
'ft,
2 ? 2
x
ft
16
2 3 2
-1 y H J
41 ? 2
,'vi 6iC- ? '*<(: *(t<?w si*#~J*><r ecu? c>TK. rtu<e (au^
8,
4
3*8 * ft ft
(b) A reproduction of Ligeti's sketch for this section of Apparitions I. EXAMPLE 5 (CONT.)
Ik
f2#t. war
rp

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|\Vinds[ I 1 I I
i i i| g- 11? ij
IStnngjjj, ijj- H <^ i, <J g- t '37-4
B Q|j
a f
? a a?, a i& > * i v 3 ?i - is ii i j ^

5gM
-m LU UJ IdJ l!i
EXAMPLE 6: APPARITIONS I. REDUCED SCORE OF SECTION A (MM. 1-30)

SHOWING RHYTHMIC DESIGN.
durations, while the inner sections (B and C) contain mostly shorter

ones; these are arranged in the piece, first to effect a gradual acceleration
through part A, then to create a more turbulent area through parts B
and C, and finally to bring about fierce juxtapositions in the last section,
where long sustained clusters are interrupted by chaotic passages,
labeled "wild" in the score. Thus, while the statistical balance of longer
and shorter durations is a tool for achieving an aperiodic rhythm,
essential for the locally floating, static feeling of the work, the freedom
of ordering within that global balance is essential for realizing the
dynamic effect of the movement as a whole.
In fact, with each stage of the realization of this movement of
Apparitions, the composer allowed himself certain freedoms. First, in
calculating the product of durations and instances, Ligeti accepted a
certain "margin of error," which is to say that the product is not exactly
a constant, but falls within a certain acceptable deviation. Then in
defining large sections Ligeti altered the initial distribution to create
certain proportions, and within these sections, he left open the specifics
of ordering, allowing himself the flexibility to achieve his aesthetic goal,
as the work gradually disintegrates from stasis into more and more
agitated forms of motion.

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While Ligeti did seem to think of his statistical rhythmic distributions

as an outgrowth of serialism, providing a type of rigor to ensure that no
note value would predominate,25 he also eliminated much of the
troubling automatism of the ordered duration series, so that by the
composition of Apparitions this rhythmic technique results in an
underlying framework rather than a strictly deterministic ordering of a
set of note-values. The periodic, metric grid which frustrated Ligeti in
his earlier compositions, including Musica ricercata and Metamorphosis
nocturnes, was replaced with this aperiodic design, based on an irregular
timeline, but leaving the composer the freedom to create a musical
surface that articulates points on this timeline in any number of ways.
For instance, some points are marked by the entrance of a new cluster,
and others by the change from sound to rest. This allows Ligeti to carry
certain clusters past the duration suggested by the original scheme, and
to create some ambiguity by leaving other suggested durations only
partially filled. In the A section (see Example 6) he does so sparingly,
beginning in measure 22, where the duration of ten thirty-second notes
is marked by the interval between the entrance of the strings and the
entrance of the cembalo, while the string cluster, itself, is held over as
the brass articulate still other points on the timeline. The piece goes on,
however, to diverge more and more from the stasis and equilibrium of
the beginning, culminating in "wild" passages featuring triplets and
quintuplets, which the scheme itself is incapable of deriving, over
extremely long-sustained clusters.
While the shape of the first movement of Apparitions is largely
described by the rhythmic design as shown in the sketches, the ways in
which other parameters, such as attack strength, dynamic level, cluster
width, and register, work alongside this design is an important
consideration in Ligeti's newly emerging compositional style, and may,
once again, have been significantly influenced by his experiences in
Cologne. As Apparitions continues, it presents more and more gestures
that result from the interrelationships between the rhythmic design and
these other parameters. Many of the gestures have clear precedents in
Ligeti's tape pieces, and, moreover, show Ligeti's increasing awareness
of aspects of sensory perception through experiments in the studio. In a
lecture on the "Effects of Electronic Music on My Compositional
Work," Ligeti recounted an experiment carried out by Gottfried Michael
Koenig involving a succession of sounds played back at different speeds.
In Koenig's work there were successions of sine tones in which one

could recognize the individual elements separately. The speed of
succession lay over the limit of blurring of about 50 milliseconds

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[50 ms]. The succession could be perceived as such. However,

these same tone-successions were contracted in time. That could
easily be accomplished through simple technical manipulation in
the studio. Through this, the individual tones submerged into the
area below the limit of differentiation . . . and the progressions,
which were originally successive, turned into a simultaneity.26
Perhaps thinking of his design for Apparitions, according to which

internal types of motion gradually move to more pronounced external
motions, Ligeti went on to express his opinion that, rather than either of
these extremes,
It is most interesting when the whole occurrence is not so far con

tracted, and not so temporally compressed, that it all coincides in
our hearing, but rather when it contains some transitional room in
which to play?when one finds some elements over the limit of
blurring of about 50 ms, and others below, so that a durational
emergence and submergence takes place, then at one point rhythm
changes over into tone color, and at another tone color changes to
rhythm.27
Ligeti named this phenomenon Bewegungsfarbe, or "fluctuating

color." In his electronic works, he commonly used durations below the
50 ms threshold, which, at a tape speed of 76.2 cm/s, would equal 3.81
cm of tape. For instance, Example 1, above, shows numerous segments
in Artikulation that do not sound as individual events, but rather as
elements in this type of fluctuating color. More examples can be found
in Piece electronique no. 3, where the minimum unit of duration is one
centimeter and where successions of entrances spaced by only one or
two centimeters are quite common.
While such speeds are easily achieved in the electronic music studio,
they are impractical for acoustic instruments, to say the least. In sketches
for Apparitions Ligeti worked out notation for the division of a whole
note into as many as 60 parts by nesting different combinations of
triplets, quintuplets and other divisions; in sketches for Atmospheres he
even labeled these as Sebessejjek [speeds], and calculated the duration of
the various divisions, down to 3/50 of a second?quite close to the
limit of differentiation. Nevertheless, Ligeti acknowledged the difficulty
this poses in performance, and proposed a more practical solution.
"Since you cannot play an instrument fast enough to produce a
succession of notes at a rate of twenty per second, I built rhythmic shifts

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into the music."28 As a specific example of such "shifts"?essentially

cross-rhythms?he mentioned Atmospheres, but they are already evident
in his earlier work, Apparitions, perhaps most clearly in the second
movement.
For example, in measures 17-18 of this movement (shown in
Example 7), the cross-rhythm of ten against nine occurs in the violins.
The second violins, playing ten subdivisions at a metronome marking of
half note = 40 (or quarter note = 80) produce 13.33 attacks per second.
Four first violins play nine subdivisions, and since there is no common
factor between ten and nine, and they coincide with the second violins
only on the quarter-note beat. The total number of independent attacks
comes to 18 per quarter note, or an average of 24 per second, truly
exceeding the limit of blurring. The different groupings of violins also
share part of the same range, in which it will be impossible to perceive
EXAMPLE 7: APPARITIONS II. CROSS-RHYTHMS IN MM. 17-18.

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the individual instruments playing the notes, let alone discern any
melodic direction within this cluster.
In other sketches Ligeti calculated the number of changes per beat
across instrumental families. In fact many of the "wild" sections in the
first movement of Apparitions have such indications. In Example 8, a
transcription of one such sketch, which corresponds to measures 61 and
62 of the finished score, Ligeti worked out the total number of attacks
per sixteenth note, across all of the keyboard instruments, and wrote this
number below.30 Under the fourth column, which has eleven attacks, he
included the value 10 in parentheses, possibly accounting for the fact
that the last note of the piano and last note of the celesta coincide
exactly. Similarly, in the fifth column he adjusted the value from 11 to
10, although the rationale in this case is not as clear, and there appears
to be some inconsistency in these two adjustments. Nevertheless, the
general concern with the number of attacks in a given time frame?a
concern which began with his observation of Koenig's work?is quite
clear. All of these calculations are based on strictly accurate renditions of
complex rhythmic figures, but Ligeti seems to be inspired by
instrumental mistakes, even counting on their occurrence. He cites a
precedent which he realized retrospectively in Wagner, of all composers.
He states that, "the string parts at the end of Walkure (Feuerzauber) are
such that no violonist [sic] can play them, all of them make mistakes,
different mistakes all the time. These mistakes add up and create a
floating, fluctuating pattern, i.e. Bewejjunjjsfarbe."31
Examples 7 and 8 show extreme instances of this electroacoustically
inspired technique involving complex rhythmic patterns that are used in
pivotal moments of the piece. Other examples, including the
EXAMPLE 8: TRANSCRIPTION OF APPARITIONS SKETCH.

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increasingly turbulent gestures in Section B of movement one, help

prepare these more dramatic moments. These figures include tremolos
which are to be played as quickly as possible and trills where pairs of
instruments oscillate between the same notes. These gestures also have
the potential for internal motion, minute fluctuations, and blurring
effects that pave the way for other gestures, including ones that exploit
the effects of both rhythm and dynamics on our perception of pitch.
Along with these rhythmic agitations, Section B introduces a number
of different dynamic changes, leading to a truly unique event in the
tremolo cluster of measure 49, shown in Example 9, along with a
spectrograph. A chromatic cluster from E3 to B4 in the violins and
violas diminuendos, while an adjacent cluster from Eb3 to Dl in the
cellos and basses crescendos. This coordination of duration, pitch, and
dynamics suggests that these are not two separate events or two
polyphonically sounding clusters, but rather one event, shifting the
focus of its register from high to low?moreover, Ligeti's rhythmic
scheme (derived from the techniques discussed above) indicates this as a
single event with the duration of 32 sixteenth notes. Due to the barely
audible dynamic marking (pppp)-, this example occupies a critical spot in
the movement's development from stasis, to vibration, to actual motion.
While all of the individual pitches are constant in every respect other
than dynamics, the effect of the whole is one of distinct registral and
even spatial motion moving from one part of the orchestra to the other.
This gesture, while unusual for orchestral writing, is indebted to
common electronic studio techniques, namely subtractive synthesis (or
filtering) and cross-fading. Cross-fading was used to achieve smooth
transitions between two events or different channels, or even between
ft pppp
IPPPP
(a) Apparitions I: Measure 49, score reduction.32
EXAMPLE 9

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(b) Apparitions I: Measure 49, spectograph, 2'55"-3'05".33 The initial energy (darker
coloration) in the low register comes from a single bass drum attack, after which one can
see the shift in intensity from the upper register (especially around 350?400 Hz, at 2'57")
to the lower (especially evident around 100 Hz at 3'00").
EXAMPLE 9 (CONT.)
different timbres. In the studio, it can be accomplished in a number of

ways, either by manually fading out the input to one microphone while
fading in another, or for a small segment, by splicing pieces of tape at an
angle rather than perpendicularly. When spatializing parts of his Gesanjj
der Jiinglinge, Karlheinz Stockhausen achieved a similar result by playing
a completed segment of the piece through a highly directional speaker
on a rotating table, and physically turning it around while recording it
back into four different microphones in the corners of the room.34
The electronic work Artikulation makes frequent use of such
techniques. For instance, to intensify the feeling that the beginning of
the piece is fading in from a distance, Ligeti cross-fades material with its

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reverberation. In his sketch (transcribed in Example 1035), he indicates

that the basic material consists of "dry [i.e. unreverberated] impulses
[szaraz imp.]". Below this are two parallel lines, much like staves in a
score; one, labeled "dynamics [dinantika]" crescendoing to the
maximum value of 0 dB, while the other labeled "reverberation" [Hall]
fades out about halfway through. This would most likely indicate that
the basic material was composed, a second version was created with
reverberation, and then the two versions were cross-faded together to
achieve a smooth transition in timbre.
In another section of Artikulation, material fades from one channel
into another, and the sketches here are similar to those above. The
Roman numerals in Example 11 represent the different channels of the
quadraphonic original, generally ordered with I as the front, II the
right, III the back (not used in this example), and IV the left; thus the
spectra of this example, from about l'lO" into the piece, move
smoothly from right to front and then from front to left. The use of
cross-fading in the electronic studio was common enough for changes in
timbre and spatial location, but using this kind of technique to fashion a
type of pitch glissando, as in Example 9, from measure 49 of
Apparitions, would not have been standard, and shows the degree to
which Ligeti had thought about the capabilities of the electronic studio,
and how they could be reworked into original orchestral effects.
Another unusual type of glissando that occurs in measures 62-63 of
Apparitions (Example 12a) has a clear precedent in Piece electronique no.
3. In Example 11 one can see that the lowest note of the chromatic
cluster jumps upwards to become the highest, and as this process
replicates itself, the entire cluster seems to shift slowly upwards. The line
graph included in Example 12b clarifies the cluster's gradual ascent.
AResz
1
Szaraz imp (4) Dinamika 0 "Kdzel jon"
IR&eg
Hall: kcvcs
EXAMPLE 10: ARTIKULATION: BEGINNING, SKETCH SHOWING CROSS-FADING

BETWEEN REVERBERATED AND UNREVERBERATED VERSIONS.

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Coming just a few measures after the cross-fading cluster (m. 49), this
gesture can be understood as a more advanced state in the progression
from stasis to motion. In the previous example none of the individual
voices moved, but there was apparent motion as the dynamic balance
shifted towards the lower register; here the individual parts each move
once or twice by a large leap, yet the sound as a whole creeps upwards
continually, slowly, and with difficulty.
Ligeti first attempted this effect in his unfinished Piece electronique no.
3, where, in fact, it constituted the predominant type of motion. Both
ascending and descending glissandi are evident in Example 13, a
spectrograph of a passage from near the end of that piece. It is also
significant that in each piece, the individual entrances of the notes that
make up the glissandi are separated by the smallest units Ligeti
considered in his rhythmic planning?thirty-second notes (even
subdivided to sixty-fourths) for Apparitions and durations of one or two
centimeters for Piece electronique no. 3. In his sketches for the electronic
piece, Ligeti also listed the succession of individual frequencies that
could proceed directly from one to the next with no intervening rests.
This would ensure optimum efficiency in recording these tones onto
tape, and would also group these pitches and durations into individual
lines and assign them to a single production source?that is, to a single
"voice"?in a way directly analogous to the lines that each individual
instrument plays in Example 12. So the treatment in Apparitions of
instruments in the manner of sine-tone generators has clear precedent in
the earlier work.
Another connection between the electronic pieces and the orchestral
works is evident at the most basic level of timbre. The sine tones used in
Piece electronique no. 3 were most likely the result of Stockhausen's
EXAMPLE 11: ARTIKULATION: SECTION BEGINNING AT l'lO", SKETCH SHOWING

SYNCHRONIZATION OF CHANNELS TO EFFECT SPATIAL MOTION FROM CHANNEL II
TO I TO IV (RIGHT TO FRONT TO LEFT).36

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Violoncello (*
Contrabass 3
(a) Apparitions I: Gliding cluster created by single large leaps in the cello and bass (mm.
62-64); instruments are reordered according to the pitches they play.
EXAMPLE 12

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(b) Measures 62 and 63 are represented in a line graph, with each horizontal unit being a
thirty-second note and each vertical unit a semitone beginning from Gl.
EXAMPLE 12 (CONT.)
influence and the pervading ideology of the Cologne Studio that the
additive synthesis of sine tones (along with filtered white noise) should
be able to produce any conceivable timbre. Yet Ligeti employs them for
quite a different effect, as he explained to Peter Varnai:
My idea was that a sufficient number of overtones without the fun

damental would, as a result of their combined acoustic effect, sound
the fundamental. ... I planned to make music out of pure sine
waves with harmonic and subharmonic combinations, by introduc
ing [these sounds] gradually, not all at once. I imagined that

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EXAMPLE 13: PltCE &LECTRONIQUE NO. 3\ SPECTROGRAPH OF THE

FINAL PASSAGE, r46"-2'07".37
slowly, different composite sounds would emerge and slowly fade

away again like shadows. . . . When I tried to do all that in the stu
dio, it turned out to be a quite illusory idea, unfeasible. It dawned
on me that the sound I wanted could be realized much more easily
with an orchestra.38
Thus one of Ligeti's goals was to excite audible frequencies that were
not actually generated by any of the oscillators. The staggered entrances
and exits of individual strands may have actually been his attempt to
make these difference tones emerge gradually?when enough of the
partials were sounding, the fundamental would vibrate weakly, when
more were present, it would grow in strength. Although this experiment
was not entirely successful, it demonstrates an important aesthetic point.
Ligeti's concern was not with the purity of these sine tones for their
own sake, or for their ability to sound the intervals of a row precisely, as
Stockhausen has implied was the case for his Studie 7, but rather for
creating a continuously changing effect?the slowly emerging difference

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tone?from the discrete entrances and exits of individual sine tones, and
thus, once again, to blur the distinction between the discrete and the
continuous.
Ligeti remarked that, "to label instrumental music as 'natural' and
electronic on the other hand as 'technical' or 'artificial' is misguided?
there aren't really violin sounds in 'nature,' either; this is also quite
artificial. The violin was built by man just as much as the electronic
generator."39 While this quote is somewhat glib, the present study has
shown that there are indeed many similarities in the way that Ligeti
treated traditional and electronic instruments in these compositions?
not only in his notational practice or physical implementation, but also
in his concern for the irregular or unpredictable elements in each. There
is a basic similarity in the difference tones to be generated by Piece
electronique no. 3 and the blurring created by the piling of
instrumentalists' mistakes?in each situation Ligeti was attempting to
turn an unpredictable aspect of the system into a compositional tool.
Moreover, Ligeti seemed to treat the audience in the same way, relying
on the limits of human perception, and in particular the minimum
perceptible units of duration and intensity, for the implementation of
other effects. This study has shown examples of gestures which
challenge both our perception of duration, in the Bewegungsfarbe
effects, and our perception of intensity, with the cross-fading events.
Each gesture leads to a distinct and new aural construct, blurring the
perception of pitch, and helping to undercut the independence of these
supposedly separate parameters.
Ligeti always resisted being placed into any single musical camp or
being associated with any single ideology, and if his synthesis of the
parallel influences of serialism and electronic music was not entirely
surprising, it was certainly idiosyncratic. In the early years of the WDR,
Stockhausen, Eimert, and most of the other composers working there
saw electronic music as a means to produce perfectly proportioned, and
somehow "pure" compositions, which could be rendered mechanically,
with clinical precision. In contrast Ligeti often focused on the irregular
aspects of both electronic and acoustic media, and how they intersect
with the imperfect nature of human perception. While on one hand this
study has shown how Ligeti was indebted to serial thought and
electronic music, it also reveals how these intense perceptual concerns?
refined by experiences in the studio?led him away from the separate
treatment of individual musical parameters, and towards new
possibilities for integrating these interrelated musical domains, and
ultimately led him towards his truly distinctive voice.

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Notes
1. Gyorgy Ligeti, "Metamorphoses of Musical Form," trans. Cornelius

Cardew in Form?Space, Vol. 7 of Die Reihe (Bryn Mawr, Pennsy
vania: T. Presser; London: Universal Edition, 1965, German edition
1960), 5-19.
2. This denial is most explicit in his interview in Paul Griffiths, Gyorgy
Ligeti (London: Robson Books, 1997), 17. Ligeti does, however,
acknowledge indirect influences; an interesting take on one possible
connection is provided by Jennifer Iverson, "Shared Compositional
Techniques between Gyorgy Ligeti's Piece electronique No. 3 and
Atmospheres" Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 22 (April
2009), 29-33.
3. See for example Erkki Salmenhaara, Das musikalische Material und
seine Behandlung in den Werken "Apparitions" "Atmospheres,v
"Aventures" und Requiem von Gyorgy Ligeti (Regensburg: Gustav
Bosse Verlag, 1969), and Jonathan Bernard, "Inaudible Structures,
Audible Music: Ligeti's Problem, and His Solution," Music Analysis
6, no. 3 (Oct. 1987), 207-236, as well as sources cited specifically
below.
4. Richard Toop, Gyorgy Ligeti (London: Phaidon Press, 1999), 56
57. See also Richard Steinitz, Gyorgy Ligeti: Music of the Imagina
tion (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003), 79.
5. Gyorgy Ligeti, "Auswirkungen der elektronischen Musik auf mein

kompositorisches Schaffen," in Experimented Musik, ed. Fritz
Winckel (Berlin: Mann, 1970), 73. Translations are the author's,
unless otherwise noted.
6. Gyorgy Ligeti, Ligeti in Conversation, trans. Gabor J. Schabert

(London: Ernst Eulenburg, Ltd.), 33-34.
7. See for example, Herbert Eimert, "What is Electronic Music?" trans.
Cornelius Cardew, in Electronic Music, Vol. 1 of Die Reihe (Bryn
Mawr, Pennsylvania: T. Presser; London: Universal Edition, 1958,
German edition 1955).
8. All sketch materials are held in the Gyorgy Ligeti Collection of the
Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. The author's claims
are based on his examination of these sketches in June 2004, and
again in May and June 2009. The sketches for Glissandi can be

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found in the folder inventoried as: Sammlung Gyorgy Ligeti, Musik

manuskripte, Glissandi, Skizzen.
9. This compositional method is recounted in greater depth in both
Rainer Wehinger's Ligeti?Artikulation: Electronische Musik (Mainz:
B. Schott's Sohne, 1970) and in Ulrich Dibelius's Moderne Musik
(Munich: Piper, 1966).
10. Gyorgy Ligeti, "Pierre Boulez: Decision and Automatism in Struc
ture la," trans. Leo Black in Young Composers, Vol. 4 of Die Reihe
(Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: T. Presser; London: Universal Edition,
1960, German edition 1958), 36-62.
11. Ligeti, "Metamorphosis of Musical Form," 14.
12. Ibid.,p.l4,n. 28.

13. Rainer Wehinger, Ligeti-Artikulation: Electronische Musik (Mainz:
B. Schott's Sohne, 1970), 17.
14. Examples 1-3 are the author's transcriptions of sketches held at the
Paul Sacher Foundation, Sammlung Gyorgy Ligeti, Musikmanu
skripte, Artikulation, Skizzen.
15. It is not uncommon for Ligeti to use German for technical terms,
especially ones he might have learned recently for use in electronic
music, and Hungarian for more descriptive terms. While it is impos
sible to tell precisely, these descriptions make it seem likely that
much of this material ended in up what Ligeti terms section A3,
about 30 to 40 seconds into the piece.
16. Some of my calculations?while done independently?reproduce
those in Gianmario Borio "Komponieren um 1960" in Die
Geschichte der Musik, III: Musik der Moderne, ed. Matthias Brzoska
and Michael Heinemann (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2001), 293-311.
17. Gyorgy Ligeti, "States, Events, Transformations," trans. Jonathan
Bernard, Perspectives of New Music 31/1 (Winter, 1993), 164-71.
18. Borio (op. cit.) remarks on this interpretation.
19. Ligeti, Ligeti in Conversation, 43. Toop (op. cit., 68) also reports
this as the golden section. See also Erno Lendvai, Bela Bartok: An
Analysis of His Music, 2nd ed. (London: Kahn & Averill, 1979),
especially pp. 17-26 which deals with the golden section in deter
mining proportions of large forms.

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20. Borio differs here, suggesting that the idealized section lengths are
derived as multiples of 13 or as Fibonacci numbers plus multiples of
13. Borio also finds golden section divisions within some of the
individual sections of the piece, with varying degrees of exactitude
or alteration from the ideal.
21. There is a similar ambiguity earlier in the piece as sections A and B

are divided by two measures (64 thirty-second notes) of rest which
Ligeti describes in "States, Events, Transformations," as a "form
interrupting pause," (167) suggesting that it interferes with the ide
alized form and may deviate from the intended proportions. While
these two measures (mm. 31-32 in the finished score) do bring sec
tions A and B closer to a golden section proportion (0.601 rather
than 0.667), neither these nor the ending measures of rest create a
parallelism with the proportions of the entire piece as Ligeti's quote
implies.
22. Paul Sacher Foundation, Sammlung Gyorgy Ligeti, Musik

manuskripte, Apparitions. This image is reproduced with the
permission of the Paul Sacher Foundation.
23. Ligeti, "States, Events, Transformations," 166.

24. Ibid., 166-67.
25. See for example passages in "Metamorphoses of Musical Form,"
where he treats these globally balanced distributions as an out
growth of serial manipulations and identifies his own rhythmic
distributions as one of various "tendencies that are possibly coming
to the fore," within the "'freer' phase of serial composition,"
("Metamorphoses," 12) even while acknowledging that these newer
developments may hold the "seeds of its own dissolution" (Ibid.,
14).
26. Ligeti, "Auswirkungen," 75. Ligeti also begins his "Musik und
Technik: Eigene Erfahrungen und subjective Betrachtungen" in
Computermusik: Theoretische Grundlagen, Kompositionsgeschichtliche
Zusammenhange Musiklernprogramme (Laaber: Laaber Verlag,
1987), 9-35, with a longer discussion of Koenig's experiment.
27. Ibid.
28. Ligeti, Ligeti in Conversation, 40.
29. Gyorgy Ligeti, Apparitions (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1964), 12.

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30. Paul Sacher Foundation, Sammlung Gyorgy Ligeti, Musik

manuskripte, Apparitions.
32. The dynamic markings for the cellos and basses are different in dif
ferent editions of the finished score. In the manuscript facsimile
edition (U.E. 13955) the basses crescendo to mf while the cellos
crescendo to mp. In the engraved edition (U.E. 18 326) all cellos
and basses crescendo to mf.
33. Gyorgy Ligeti, The Ligeti Project II, Berliner Philharmoniker, dir.
Jonathan Nott, Teldec Classics, 85373-88261-2. Spectrograph pro
duced with Spectra Plus FFT Spectral Analysis System (Campbell,
CA: Sound Technology, Inc., 1998).
34. Recounted in Joel Chadabe, Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of
Electronic Music (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall,
1997), 40.
35. The sketch transcription here comes from the Paul Sacher Founda
tion, Sammlung Gyorgy Ligeti, Musikmanuskripte, Artikulation,
Skizzen, and is also reproduced in Wehinger (op. cit., Figure 13).
36. The sketch transcription here comes from the Paul Sacher Founda
tion, Sammlung Gyorgy Ligeti, Musikmanuskripte, Artikulation,
Skizzen, and is also reproduced in Wehinger (op. cit., Figure 16).
37. Institute of Sonology, His Master's Noise, BVHAAST CD 06/0701.

Spectrograph produced with Spectra Plus FFT Spectral Analysis Sys
tem (Campbell, CA: Sound Technology, Inc., 1998).
39. Ligeti, "Auswirkungen," 77.

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Shades of the Studio: Electronic Influences on Ligeti's "Apparitions"

Author(s): Benjamin R. Levy

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25753697

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Invited by Dr. Herbert Eimert, I came to Cologne in 1957 as a

He went on to say that he was inspired to compose a type of "static"

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conventional time measurement and periodic structure."6 Many of

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In the first part of my orchestral piece "Apparitions" I used a reper

He further noted that:

In my electronic piece "Articulation" I used a similar principle of

The tape segments undergo substantial reordering and recombination

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Length Instances Product

EXAMPLE 1: ARTIKULATION, MATERIAL 3. THE DURATION LENGTH IN

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This same technique is found in Apparitions where it can be traced

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Duration Instances Product

EXAMPLE 2: APPARITIONS L THE DURATION IN THIRTY-SECOND NOTES TIMES THE

rationale for this grouping and the modifications of the numerical

In the first movement of Apparitions, I applied Bartok's golden sec

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(a) Section A, sum = 585

(b) Section B, sum = 396; three instances of 2 are unused resulti

(c) Section C, sum = 195.

(d) Section V, sum = 877; sum without 256 = 621.

EXAMPLE 3: APPARITIONS I. THE DISTRIBUTION OF INDIVIDUAL DURAT

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(a) Apparitions I. Durations between major sections.

Ratios between major sections: 3:2:1:3

(b) Apparitions I. Revised durations and ratios between major sections.

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160 48 20 80 32 14 20 32 10 20 14 6 10 14 14 10 6 4 10 4 6 3 2 3 4 6 3 4 61602 2 564 3162 803 2282 12 20 32 12 16 14 6 10 16 12 10 6 4 12 5 7 3 1 4 5 6 2 3 7 2 1 5 4 1 2 1 4

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? a a?, a i& > * i v 3 ?i - is ii i j ^

EXAMPLE 6: APPARITIONS I. REDUCED SCORE OF SECTION A (MM. 1-30)

durations, while the inner sections (B and C) contain mostly shorter

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While Ligeti did seem to think of his statistical rhythmic distributions

In Koenig's work there were successions of sine tones in which one

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[50 ms]. The succession could be perceived as such. However,

Perhaps thinking of his design for Apparitions, according to which

It is most interesting when the whole occurrence is not so far con

Ligeti named this phenomenon Bewegungsfarbe, or "fluctuating

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into the music."28 As a specific example of such "shifts"?essentially

EXAMPLE 7: APPARITIONS II. CROSS-RHYTHMS IN MM. 17-18.

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EXAMPLE 8: TRANSCRIPTION OF APPARITIONS SKETCH.

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increasingly turbulent gestures in Section B of movement one, help

(a) Apparitions I: Measure 49, score reduction.32

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