Two Organ Studies

Hungarian composer György Ligeti wrote music that both cognoscenti and the uninitiated have enjoyed for over 50 years. He remains one of the most critically-acclaimed and influential modernists, yet to the wider public he will be remembered for his numerous film projects (particularly Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and The Shining). The Jewish Ligeti spent time in forced labor confinement during the Second World War; still he fared better than his parents, who were sent to Auschwitz. He eventually finished his education, writing music redolent of Bartók and Kodály. It was not until he escaped Soviet-controlled Hungary in late 1956 that Ligeti began to compose prolifically, inspired by contact with leading composers in West Germany and Austria. The first organ study, entitled Harmonies, was written in 1967. Ligeti creates the sound of a consumptive instrument, using low air pressure to produce eerie microtonal fluctuations (pitch changes smaller than those heard in conventional Western music). He first achieved the effect by removing the organ’s electric motor and substituting a household vacuum cleaner! Coulée, from 1969, is equally atmospheric but for a different reason. With echoes of Seurat, Escher, and Gestalt psychology, Ligeti’s incessant rapid pitches gradually morph into a continuous aural stream, such that the mind’s ear regards as continuous what was initially heard as discrete.

(c) Jason Stell