Music, Maths & Chaos

Author(s): Richard Steinitz

Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 137, No. 1837 (Mar., 1996), pp. 14-20
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1003886
Accessed: 26-04-2017 10:04 UTC

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 Music, maths & chaos
In the first of three articles RICHARD STEINITZ examines

the influence of science on Ligeti's recent piano musi

Richard Steinitz is 'Somewhere underneath, very deeply, there's a com-theory Calculations of proportion, Fibonacci num-
a Professor of Music
mon place in our spirit where the beauty of mathe-bers and set theory: these are commonplace consid-
at the University of matics and the beauty of music meet. But they don't
Huddersfield. In erations for the contemporary composer. A labyrinth
meet on the level of algorithm or making music by of number-crunching underscores the recent growth
addition to being
Artistic Director of calculation. It's much lower, much deeper - or much
of computer music, particularly on American uni-
the annual higher, you could say." versity campuses, a subterranean world of software
Huddersfield research in which, it has to be said, intuitive artistic
Festival of
impulses easily get submerged, to disappear without
HAD better start with a disclaimer or two. Ligeti
Contemporary
and modern mathematics is the main subject of
trace.
Music, he is
currently writing a
my discourse, and also provides an arrestingLigeti's lifelong avoidance of this kind of aca-
book on Ligeti for title. But it is not the whole story There is demicism
far and, indeed, of the whole electroacoustic
Faber & Faber. more in this music than number. These three arti- domain - apart from a short spell at the studios of
WDR under the guidance of Stockhausen and
cles, devoted mainly to Ligeti's extraordinary series
of (at the latest count) 15 Etudes for piano,Koenig will in the late 50s - indicates the absolute pri
1. Ligeti in a public
conversation with
touch on some of the other equally fascinating
macy, for him, of the inner ear, of an aural imagina
Richard Steinitz aspects of his thinking. Nor do I have any preten- tion governing every compositional decision. Non
(Huddersfield, sions to be a mathematician, merely an interested of his music is dominated by systematic mathemati
1993) amateur who, like many others, is easily captivated cal rigour, yet his interest in mathematical ideas,
2. Heinz-Otto
by the newly accessible demeanour of scientific particularly during the last decade, goes far deeper
Peitgen & Peter research, whether in areas of human biology,than cos- a merely superficial flirtation with popular sci-
Richter: The beauty mology or dynamic systems. ence. Ligeti is impressively knowledgeable at a tech
offractals (Berlin & An extremely intelligent and aware artist, Ligeti nical level and has for several years sustained an
New York, 1986). nonetheless views the modern world from the stand- ongoing dialogue with one particular mathemati-
3. (London, 1995). point of art. Essentially, the concepts of moderncian, Heinz-Otto Peitgen, one of a team of German
mathematics and physics have provided him with pioneers of fractal geometry whose book, The beauty
4. The two cultures
models - processes and patterns which have stimu- offractals,2 with its magnificent computer-generated
and the scientific
revolution lated comparable but different processes in his images, makes a point of emphasising the unity of
(London, 1959). music. Yet more than any living composer, I would science and art.
argue, Ligeti has responded in musical terms to con- Unity? That Renaissance ideal, reaffirmed in the
temporary thinking about phenomena in the natural Enlightenment, has become deeply fractured, pro-
sciences. Only, the inspiration he has drawn from gressively characterised by mutual antagonism and
the amazing revelations of recent research is more an inability to communicate. Only in the last two
poetic and procedural than precisely computed. We decades have there been signs of reconciliation. Last
are dealing more with kinship than with calculation; year a leading professor of literature, John Carey,
so, fortunately, we have no need for impenetrable published an anthology in what might be considered
equations in my text, indeed there will be virtually an unlikely subject, The Faber book of science, plead-
no equations at all. Those who faltered at the firsting in effect not only for a general scientific literacy
algebraic hurdle in Xenakis's Formalised music need amongst those who profess to pursue the arts but
not take fright. even for the appreciation of science as quasi-poetry
Mathematics and music are ancient bedfellows,The title of another compilation of views from inter-
arguably achieving a more convincing correlationnational scientists, The third culture,3 attempts to
than in other art forms. The modern mathematics of bridge the divide identified by CP Snow in his 1959
dynamical systems, generally known as chaos the- Rede Lecture.* It's editor, John Brockman, argues
ory, has given new impetus to this relationship that the postwar dominance of literary intellectuals
because it is particularly applicable to natural phe-has now been displaced by a new breed of articulate
nomena which evolve in time. Music is a similarly exponents of molecular biology, chaos theory, neural
temporal (and complex) phenomena, and so is illu- nets, virtual reality, the inflationary universe, etc.
minated by the example of other organic processes. Their impressive domain of new knowledge
Of course, other 20th-century composers, notably embraces many of the truly significant intellectual
Xenakis, have generated their musical creative pro- accomplishments of our time Its virgin territories of
cesses from intricate mathematical reasoning, in his interdisciplinary research include advanced com-
case largely derived from statistics and probability puter graphics which, in attempting to simulate

14 THE MUSICAL TIMES / MARCH 1996

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nature's secrets, have incidentally elevated the meta- 5. 'Of
stration of the mysterious formation of fractals, clocks and

morphosis of visual pattern into its own art form. To clouds', in Objective
Ligeti felt an instinctive kinship between his musical
such an interplay between technical exploration and procedures and the structures being revealed knowledge
by (rev.
Oxford, 1979).
imaginative fantasy belongs the music of Ligeti. modern mathematics.
Although some 20th-century composers were Irregular and erratic phenomena in the natural 6. James Gleick:
trained in mathematics and related disciplines like world had long puzzled scientists, since they can'tChaos:
be making a
new science (New
engineering, on the whole, it has been the literary explained according to traditional Newtonian laws
York, 1987), p.7.
and critical currents of modernism and its aftermath of motion. As early as 1903, the maverick French
that have motivated them: the work of Mallarm6 and mathematician Henri Poincar6 recognised a funda- 7. First investigated
by an iconoclastic
Joyce, the influence of linguistics and semiology - to mental law of chaos, that minute inaccuracies in ini-
group of
touch only the tip of a giant literary iceberg whosetial conditions can quickly lead to vast differences. postgraduates,
slow-release liquification into the cultural currents But it was in the 1960s and 70s that connections calling themselves
of the century has penetrated many areas of emerged between the behaviour of physical organ- the Dynamical
informed musical discussion. Ligeti in the 1960s wasisms in widely separated fields. Some of theSystems firstCollective,
not unaffected. His two classic mini-operas, Aven-indicators came in 1961 from Edward Lorenz's com- at the University of
California in Santa
tures and Nouvelles aventures of 1962-65, although puter models of meteorology. Then, through obser- Cruz.
wholly devoid of specific subject-matter, dissect thevations of lightning and the formation of clouds, the
8. Nature's numbers:
fabric of language and communication with devas-branching of blood vessels and trees, in genetics,
discovering order and
tating insight and a uniquely wicked humour. Themetallurgy, topology, astronomy, even market eco-
pattern in the
Second String Quartet of three years later, in consol- nomics, similar processes began to be noticed and universe (London,
idating Ligeti's technical and expressive concerns ofsimilar models proposed. Disorder, it was claimed, 1995), p.112.
that decade, asks all sorts of questions about musicalmight seem disorderly, but in fact arose from basi-
language: What are its symbols? In what lies conti- cally very simple and universal principles. Whereas
nuity? How do its structural layers interrelate? previously scientists had assumed complex causes
But Ligeti was less interested, one suspects, in for complex results, the realisation gradually
structuralist concepts of language, than in a moredawned that 'quite simple mathematical equations
Dadaist surrealism, stemming from his own child-could model systems every bit as violent as a water-
hood dreams and fantasies, and from an exception-fall'.6
ally fertile visual imagination, for which the natural The resultant science of nonlinear dynamics is an
world provided endless source material. Meanwhile, exciting new area of mathematics that has arisen out
his rhythmic experiments of the 1960s and '70s, of attempts to answer fundamental questions: Is our
embodied in Continuum (1968), the Chamber Con- world deterministic, or is it governed by chance?
certo (1969-70) and most significantly in Monument -But, particularly for musicians, its terminology is
Selbstportrait - Bewegung (1976), provided a prece-potentially misleading. Chaos theory deals not with
dent for the more complex polyrhythmic explo- what John Cage understood as the completely ran-
rations of the 1980s. In these pieces, too, we dom, but with systems displaying apparently irregu-
encounter Ligeti's first attempts at an 'art of illusion',lar or unpredictable behaviour yet which obey hid-
a sort of trompe l'oreille, an acoustic equivalent of theden, purely deterministic laws.
apparent sleight-of-hand practised by electroacousti-
cians and by mathematicians engaged in the com-
puter-generation of fractal images.
In Clocks and clouds (1972-73) Ligeti postulates
S INCEaboutaround 1970,haveastonishing
chaos and predictability
made in many areas of research. One of the
been discoveries
two ways of experiencing time: the one measured by most influential came from investigating a
periodicity, the other a more fluid and amorphous commonplace occurrence: water droplets falling
music. (Interestingly, Sir Karl Popper's lecture,5 fromfrom a dripping tap.7 The impossibility of measuring
which Ligeti's took his title, anticipates chaos theoryinitial conditions with infinite precision, which this
in its comparison of both deterministic and indeter- study revealed, exposed crucial flaws in what had
ministic interpretations of the universe.) These tech- previously been considered the unassailable laws of
nical preoccupations received new stimulus as soonNewtonian dynamics. It seems that minute impreci-
as the young science of dynamical systems began tosions - what scientists call 'sensitivity to initial con-
find a wider public. Ligeti realised that the new the-ditions' - can have the most radical and spectacular
ories which sought to explain the precarious balanceconsequences. A British research mathematician, Ian
between order and disorder, pattern and chaos, andStewart, has neatly summarised the situation: 'This
the apparent origin of both conditions in measurable amplification of error is the logical crack through
deterministic situations, had intriguing parallels which... perfect determinism disappears'.8
with the way he composed. Their attempts to articu- The graphic representation of dynamical systems
late, measure and control turbulent systems (a cen-has underlined the value of sensory perception to
tral problem of post-Newtonian physics) were our deductive intelligence (we might note, again,
equally fascinating issues for the composer. From his Ligeti's acknowledged susceptibility to visual stim-
first encounter in 1984 with Professor Peitgen anduli.). Tracing the development of a dynamical sys-
his Bremen team, and with their spectacular demon-tem, the computer reveals how an initial flow may

THE MUSICAL TIMES / MARCH 1996 15

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 Ex.l: from 'Vertige'. ? Schott & Co. Ltd and used by kind permission.
r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..--- - - - - - .7.-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..- -

/-/

v- ser r S rh vkaro,,

S osr

be lamin
Man
bifurcat
rath
until,
on vi
a
becomes
line.
behaviou
cept
altered,
add
tions ma
infin
the
converge
ers trace
Alth
images
to w
a
fully sym
genc
Fractals
trol
intriguin Self-
- for instance in the florets of a cauliflower and the
tinguish
structure of leaves - and so illuminates our under-
means th
portion
standing of the universe, pointing to connections
Koch
between abstract mathematics sno and everyday experi-
puter
ence. The essence of the revolution sc of the last twenty
which
years lies in the overthrow of an old belief h - that
was firs
simple systems behave simply and complex systems
formula
are impenetrable - by its opposite: i.e. simple sys-
outcom
tems give rise to complex behaviour, complex sys-
problem
tems to simple, and the laws of complexity are uni-
differen
versal. Mandelbrot based his intellectual life around
embrace
the proposition that simplicity breeds complexity.
more th
This might also be a motto for late Ligeti.
real, The degeneration ofrat
simple premises into chaotic
tal -
outcomes has a directall
parallel in the music of Ligeti,

16 THE MUSICAL TIMES / MARCH 1996

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 Ex.2
in which the progressive deformation of apparently
innocent material can lead to spectacularly anarchic
results. In any case, from early on, Ligeti's music had
'fTI
Lwt L L?L
inclined towards a non-linear discourse. That's not
to deny that some of his music achieves an excep-
tionally seamless continuity; think of Lontano. But
he also enjoys the anti-logical non sequiturs of his
favourite author Lewis Carroll - also a mathemati- sounds13 how to produce an endless glissando that 9. Peitgen &
cian. appears to ascend for ever although, in fact, no Richter, op. cit.: p.4.
Paradoxically, complex systemes, whether in change of register occurs. All three of my chosen 10. Gleick, op. cit.:
music or physics, produce turbulence and coherence Ligeti studies are acoustic variants of this curious p.227.
at the same time. What looks like random behaviour effect. All three are initially deterministic systems 11. Etudes pour
may, from a different perspective, reveal ancontaining hidden variables, in which the amplifica- piano, premier livre
(Mainz/London,
exquisitely fine structure. In the mysterious regions
tion of error leads to more-or-less dramatic develop- 1986).
where order and chaos compete, scientists in differ-ments. Like many of the studies, therefore, they
encompass mathematical as well as musical issues;
ent disciplines have discovered identical characteris- 12. 'Circularity in
pitch judgment', in
tics. And when Peitgen speaks of 'how magnificently
although, as Ligeti's remarks at the head of this arti-
Journal of the
complex the boundary region generally is' between cle suggest, that kinship may be more intuitive than Acoustic Society of
pattern and chaos, and of how his pictures 'revel calculated.
in All three contain recursively overlapping America, vol. 36,
the beauty of these regions'9 one feels that the and proliferating scales, which not only multiply but pp.2346-53.
response of the scientific observer is as emotionalare - progressively magnified. In Etude no.9 we hear
13. (New Jersey,
and musical? - as it is coolly analytical. As mathe- wave upon wave of falling chromatic scales of con-
1969)
maticians topple the tyranny of the straight line stantlyof changing length. Etude no.13 is built on
Euclidian geometry, one is reminded of that ecstatic numerous ascending chromatic scales embedded in
sense of new discovery with which 20th-centurya vigorous hemiola-based texture. Etude no.14 has
composers proclaimed their liberation from the bar- crab-like ascending figures in two parts developed as
line. a sequence of expanding and contracting intervals.
In the second of these articles, I propose to look These various musical spirals suggest an infinity of
in some detail at the first volume of Ligeti's litudes motion capable of endless repetition. Each cascades
pour piano, since these are published together atusa into a fantastic whirlpool of giddy hallucination,
reasonable price,11 and are also recorded, so are more as if the ground itself were turning, and the listener
accessible and better known. In examining these a spinning figure on a revolving plane.
extraordinary pieces we shall also encounter Ligeti's Indeed, if there is any shared characteristic of the
highly developed treatment of polyrhythm and 15 Etudes it is surely their common feeling of insta-
hemiola, ancient techniques which Ligeti has inge- bility. But then, didn't Ligeti's earlier music also
niously and extravagantly reworked to the point induce of sensations of vertigo? Hasn't it always
obsession. My third article will consider some of the exposed us to spiralling, side-slipping movements,
other attributes of Ligeti's later music such as the re-to giddy rotations and unsteady pulse whilst chas-
emergence of melody, indeed the persistence of one mic voids opened up unexpectedly? The title of the
particular idae fixe, and his growing fascination with ninth etude ('vertigo' or 'dizziness') acknowledges
special temperaments and tunings. And, to come full that this metaphor has never been far away.
circle, we must touch on the Piano Concerto, since In 'Vertige', quite small initial discrepancies pro-
it's first movement is one of the most complex and duce momentous developments. At first Ligeti's
dazzling polyrhythmic pieces ever written, whilst material is deceptively orderly, even elementary: a
the fourth is Ligeti's most explicit musical applica- descending 16-note chromatic scale in even quavers.
tion of fractals. For the moment, it seems to me that The character of the music - and cunning of the
a useful introduction to the ideas I've already raised composer - rests entirely upon what happens to it.
is contained in three of the later piano studies, nos.9,Firstly, there are repetitions; for this is an infinitely
13 and 14. repetitive spiral, flooded with new entries, like over-
These three, 'Vertige' (Vertigo), 'Lescalier du dia- lapping waves, as their predecessors sink from view
ble' (The devil's staircase) and 'Columna infinita' (see ex.1). Then there are minute changes: in the
(The endless column), constitute an identifiable time distance between entries and in the number of
sub-group of studies. Each explores in its own way descending semitonal steps in each scale. At first all
the same issue: how to create, on the keyboard, the scales have 16 notes, with intervals of eight,
musical equivalents of those spirals and vortices seven or five quavers between each entry Soon the
observable in nature (in plants, fluids, shells, galax- gap between entries shortens to only two or three
ies etc), in man-made objects (drills, spindles) and quavers (and the occasional four or five) drawing
in an electroacoustic illusion devised by the psy- the listener into disorientating accelerations. Mean-
chologist Roger Shepard12 and refined by the com- while the scales themselves either expand or con-
poser Jean-Claude Risset. The later describes, in his tract, reducing in length where the insistent mass of
Introductory catalogue of computer-synthesised overlapping entries inhibits movement, but also

THE MUSICAL TIMES / MARCH 1996 17

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 Ex.3: from 'lescalier du diable'. @ Schott & Co. Ltd and used by kind permission.

r I l ;fl r IL 1, 1111 --t

... _ ... .,.

III-
-,,- -?
Fg ' J ,2_1! Iv ? . -' '-
rrll - 7 i r-, rT

.fi -; -:, : 3..

? rl I I r u d

I I

,
Ll t? -~ ~ b.~l

4 1
i Vr

14. The extenWe meet similar dramatic juxtapositions and

mathematical
37superimpositions in otherde studies, rigour and capri-
constitution of a
'Devil's Staircase' is
ciousness coexisting in more-or-less equal measure.
band
Nowhere are such contrasts more theatrically excit-
teen s
explained and
illustrated in There
ing than in 'Lescalier du diable'. This etude, the 13th,
Manfred Schroeder: makes a direct reference to the mathematics
the fi of
Fractals, chaos, menci
dynamical systems in its title, since a 'Devil's stair
power laws case'14 is also a particular instance
and so of self-similarit
(New York, 1991),
unmi
based on Cantor sets. The Cantor set is a paradoxi
pp.167-71
cal abstract construction formed by a simple recur
tently
tonal
sive process which, although first propounded by
19th-century mathematician, Georg Cantor, only
tent,
the same. came into its own when Benoit Mandelbrot noticed
Disorientated by these swaying rotations, from the its relevance to fractal geometry. Take a set of frac-
25th bar we are offered melodies to clutch on to, an tional numbers between zero and one (or, for ease of
identifiable 'theme' indeed, first heard in the left hand illustration, just take a straight line), then remove
and soon after in the right. But these melodies, too, some central subinterval, usually the middle third.
are rhythmically asymmetric and do little to stem the Two segments remain. Reapply the process to both
dizzying flood of spiralling chromatic scales. In 'Ver- of them. Now four segments remain. Continue the
tige', then, we have a musical representation of a par- process ad infinitum. The result is Cantor dust, an
ticular condition of physical turbulence. But Ligeti, infinite number of points arranged in clusters,
despite his creative obsessions, is neither fanatical infinitely sparse, whose total length is 0. A 'Devil's
nor dryly academic. He can't resist the dramatic jux- staircase' is a secondary phenomenon derived from
taposition of other ideas. Here it is the melodic emer- the recursive 1/3 to 2/3 proportions within the Can-
gence of prominent intervals, triadic chords and tor set; that is, a series of unequal steps produced by
pedal notes that eventually and unexpectedly enfolds plotting (on axes representing binary and ternary
the swirling chromatic micropolyphony in the all- fractions) the mathematical relationships between
embracing key of B major! the eliminated and surviving segments.

18 THE MUSICAL TIMES / MARCH 1996

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Ex.4: from 'Coloana farA sfhrsit' for player piano. ? Schott & Co. Ltd and used by kind permission.

-1 LL.

FeLIA __-44661

I F wr I I I I I-,-- T_Z 1A
ia d"_1
64= i14
9-"4 &&
a I A It 11
1 a I II rN
I W 1. :!a:!:I?
p T -
1; Pi
1, #I&=
1 1 Ifirl
.0 1
t4 1 2 4- 1 __,"l
.11l ? d-1- 1 -1 1 1 1 1 o. f I
1 t ll F I JAIF -1 1 IACA
-7 1 L? i- I r i IF I

61 6
Al i-a 1 I it I i
11
a LIr I

L ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ligeti constructs his musical staircase using his motif climb up an endless staircase, flight upon
own numerical system. But it, too, exhibits recursive flight, octave by octave. Meanwhile, the pattern
qualities, whilst its hemiola rhythmic cells of 2 to 3 restarts in low register, as if emerging from dark sub-
recall the binary-ternary geometry of the devil's terranean dungeons. Like the synthetic spiral - the
staircase. The piece starts softly but ominously with computer-generated illusion - it seems to rise ad
energetic, additive rhythms based on a 'metrical infinitum, yet remains enigmatically the same.
model' containing 'subgroups' of seven, nine, eleven 'Eescalier du diable' is the most flamboyant of all
and nine quavers. After a bar-and-a-half's false start, the studies. Its patterns can be represented numero-
this metrical model is presented in full, and then logically, but are intended first and foremost to gen-
repeated over and over, always subdivided into cells erate polyrhythmic energy. About half-way through,
of 2+2+3 / 2+2+2+3 / 2+2+2+2+3 / 2+2+2+3 / 2+2+3 / the upward circling quavers are arrested by a deep Bb
2+2+2+3 etc. The elongated 'step' of three quavers,minor triad ushering in an immensely slow section
emphasised by legato phrasing, makes a smallof rising chords which climb majestically and inex-
plateau, whilst the unequal but orderly progressionorably, one note at a time, increasing in volume until
of the subgroups recalls the irregular staircase of thedrawn into two superimposed cycles of bell-like
graphic image. The study also exhibits a 'pitchostinatos tolling variously in rhythms of 2/4, 2/3 and
model' starting on the first note, so immediately out3/4. All this culminates in a series of apocalyptic
of synchronisation with the rhythmic model. As forchords swinging back and forth demonically, like
its structure, the first note of each cell starts pro- bells pealing above a thunderous orchestra of gongs
gressively higher, following a 12-note chromatic and tamtams - sonic images which are described
scale from B up to A#. To begin with, the remainingthus by Ligeti on the piano score itself, and whose
pitches in each cell are derived from two matchingexplicit symbolism recalls Berlioz and Messiaen.
intervallic groups contained within the whole-toneHere we have Ligeti at his most melodramatic, in
scale commencing on Gb, one group associated with music overwhelmingly powerful and thrilling.
each half of the chromatic scale (see ex.2); the com- In the 14th etude, ascending scalic spirals continue
bination of scales endows the basic motif with a dis- unbroken throughout the piece, although a brief
tinctive harmonic identity. This idea recommences counterpoint of triadic chords also appears. Ligeti
on the note B after every 12 cells. named the study 'Columna infinita' only after he had
So much for systematic orderliness. Now for the largely composed the music. The reference is to a 29-
divergencies, the demonic perfidy which lends the metre-high column created in 1937 by the sculptor
music its increasing frenzy There is, for instance, the Constantin Brancusi in the Romanian town of Tirgu
discrepancy between the pitch model which recurs Jiu. Cast in iron and coated in bronze, so that it
every 12 cells and the metrical pattern of 16 cells, so gleams in the sun, the column is a repetitive series of
that the repeating pitches automatically restart each expanding and contracting shapes whose soaring
time at a new point along the metrical model; and geometry appears capable of infinite extension.
thus there results a new hemiola and melodic pat- Brancusi's modular construction consists of a suc-
tern at each repetition (see ex.3). In fact, nothing is cession of paired truncated pyramids placed alter-
rigid. Entries soon overlap, come more frequently, nately base to base and apex to apex. The Tirgu Jiu
begin on different pitch classes and are doubled in a column has 161/2 modules (an extended single pyra-
variety of parallel thirds, fourths, fifths and sixths - mid at the base, 15 full modules, plus a half module
one could regard these as instances of musical bifur- on top). Two aspects of this design are reflected in
cation. The rotating repetitions of the principal Ligeti's etude. Firstly, the study has 161/2 musical

THE MUSICAL TIMES / MARCH 1996 19

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 modules, each beginning in low register and mount- modules in all. As I have already mentioned, one fur-
ing progressively higher, played alternately by each ther element contributes to the grandeur of the
hand but overlapping so that the pianist must repeat- music, an imposing theme of chords in the hemiola
edly cross hands. Secondly, each of these modules is rhythm 3+2+2+3+2+2+2, heard twice during the last
itself an ascending column of pitches composed basi- third of the study, once in each hand.
cally in two lines, the intervals between these diads Of these three studies, no.14 is the most single-
expanding and contracting not unlike the shapes of minded, the purest version of a recursive musical
the Endless Column (see ex.4). spiral. Technically it's so difficult that it's published
Characteristically, the music contains potentially in two editions, one for 'player piano' - a link with
chaotic variables, whereas Brancusi's modules are Nancarrow, whose polymetric studies for mechani-
basically all the same. Like the descending chro- cal piano catalysed Ligeti's own explorations. Yet the
matic scales in 'Vertige', the expanding-contracting, study is not unplayable, as Pierre-Laurant Aimard
and rising patterns of 'Columna infinita' get longer, demonstrated in breath-takingly brilliant playing of
beginning in the left hand with 44 quavers and cul- (then) eleven completed etudes at the Huddersfield
minating in a full right-hand module of 129 quavers! Contemporary Music Festival in 1993. His perfor-
The astonishing length of this last is made possible mance convinced me, at least, that Ligeti's 6tudes
(despite the apparent limit imposed by the 88 keys rank with the most imaginative, ingenious and daz-
of the piano) because the pitches zigzag, moving zling achievements of 20th-century solo piano
alternately up and down and only ascending as a sta- music. True, they are fiendishly difficult. Yet, to such
tistical tendency. This final and longest module is miracles of invention, virtuosity and profound musi-
partnered by a 'half' module of 45 quavers in the left cality, all adventurous pianists should want to
hand, the bravura ending being marked ffffffff! The aspire!
16 full modules begin progressively lower and end As I said at the beginning, mathematics con-
progressively higher, taking their starting notes from tributes only part of the story - although there's cer-
a descending whole-tone scale. The first four mod- tainly more to say about it. In my next article, I shall
ules start on C; thereafter pairs of modules (one in examine further the ideas of 'disorder' in Ligeti's
the left hand, one in the right) commence succes- etude of that name; but I hope also to convey some
sively on Bb, Ab, Gb, E, D and C an octave lower - 16 of this wonderful music's other attractions.

UNIVERSAL EDITION, VIENNA

NEW TITLES
L. Berio Sequenza VIIb
For Soprano Saxophone
?9.50

J. Haydn II Maestro e Io Scolare

For Piano Duet
Edited by Elbner/Jarecki/Bauer-Bung
Vienna Urtext Edition ?7.15
ZARLIVOST
EIFERSUCHT
L. Janaicek Zarlivost (Jealousy)
Klaier zuviretndZni For Piano Duet
O I

Preface by Alena Nemcov,

19EII MORAVIA
Issued in co-operation
UNIVERSAL
with the
Moravian Museum ?11.00
SHOWROOM SALES DEPT

48 Great Marlborough Street UE 38 Eldon Way, Paddock Wood

London, W1V 2BN Kent, TN12 6BE
Telephone: 0171-437 5203Universal Telephone: 01892 833422
Edition

20 THE MUSICAL TIMES / MARCH 1996

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