aeterna, it was included in the soundtrack of the classic Stanley Kubrick film 2001:A Space Odyssey (1968), making the composer’s name familiar to an internationalpublic. In Atmosphères, Ligeti explored the region that lies between instrumental andelectronic music. Although more than sixty individual lines can be identified in thescore, what we hear is a murmurous continuum. As he put it, he was composingwith blocks of sound—except that the blocks all merged into a continuous flow.

Ligeti’s Etudes for Piano illustrate another of his interests—the manipulation ofrhythm. In these pieces, Ligeti experimented with illusionary rhythm, where, forexample, the listener perceives a work to be much slower than it is actually playedbecause of the recurrence of certain accented notes. Inspiration for this rhythmictreatment came from a variety of sources, including a long-held fondness for para-doxes and mathematical puzzles and the musics he had studied of certain sub-Saharan African and Indonesian cultures. Around 1980, he became aware of theplayer-piano works written by Conlon Nancarrow (1912–1997), an Americanexpatriate living in Mexico, who was able to attain levels of virtuosity in rhythmand polyphony that were impossible in live performance. By punching holes inpiano rolls in a certain precise way, Nancarrow could superimpose elaboraterhythmic ratios that were then automatically played on the mechanical instru-ment. Ligeti sought to achieve a similar effect on a normal piano with a live personperforming.

The first étude from Book I, Disorder (Désordre), is the most rhythmically con-torted of the set. Here, Ligeti combines two distinct musical processes: an additivemetric pattern (5 + 3 or 3 + 5) and a simultaneous sounding of triple patterns in oneof the pianist’s hands and duple patterns in the other. (See Listening Guide 91 foranalysis.) These techniques make for “disorder” in the piece—the hands do notalways coincide in their accents, with one hand falling behind the other, then catch-ing up again, then lagging once more. All this proceeds at a vigorous tempo, withstrongly accented notes. Thus the music whizzes by so fast that the ear cannot pos-sibly disentangle the complexities involved. What you will hear is a rhythmic driveand texture of extraordinary force and energy that builds to a furious climax in theupper register of the instrument, then vanishes. Ligeti’s careful mathematical plan-ning throughout the work, and his borrowing of African concepts of additive meterand polyrhythms, are obscured by the overall perception of chaos. At the same time,the work presses the pianist’s virtuosic ability to new heights.

626 THE NEW MUSIC

Ligeti: Disorder (Désordre), from Etudes for Piano, Book I

DATE OF WORK: 1985

MEDIUM: Solo piano

FORM: Cycles of order and disorder, achieved through a mathematical systemof accents

TEMPO: Molto vivace, vigoroso, molto ritmico (very fast, vigorous, andrhythmical)

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Listening Guide

62785 Contemporary Composers Look to World Music

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR: Steady eighth-note rhythm, with shifting accents.Sense of disorder and order created from mathematical planning of

accents (additive meter).Very fast pace, with points of rhythmic convergence and divergence in

right and left hands.Exploration of wide-ranging registers of piano.

Hands begin synchronized, with movement in eighth notes in groups of 8 (accents in patterns of3 � 5 or 5 � 3), played legato, accents played forte; right hand gradually gets ahead of left bydropping one eighth note every 4 measures; dissonance increases.

Opening 7 measures, showing accents and divergence of parts:

Hands finally come together again with same accents; after 4 measures, same process beginswith eighth notes in right hand.

Shift in rhythmic patterns: both hands begin shortening patterns at different rates; hands andaccents synchronize in pattern of 4 eighths per measure (accented 1 � 3 or 3 � 1), then divergeagain as groupings change.

Both hands converge, then begin patterns of 3, but these are not coordinated or accented thesame; piece builds to crescendo; bass part (left hand) drops one octave lower.

Hands continue to diverge, fortissimo; briefly synchronize, then diverge again.

Hands converge at fff marking with all notes heavily accented; piece reaches climax.

Intensity and volume let down; both hands in treble range synchronized for a long time, thendiverge to more rhythmic complexity and increasingly dense texture.

Piece ends with hands ascending to upper end of keyboard.

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