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Table of Contents

Preface ............................................................................................................................................. 1

1 Part One: Personality and Fundamental Aspects of the Work .................................... 5

1.1 Biographical Sketch ............................................................................................................. 9 1.2 Questions of Identity ......................................................................................................... 15 1.3 Towards an Intellectual Physiognomy ............................................................................ 18 1.4 A “Non-Puristic” Music.................................................................................................... 26 1.5 Metaphors, Allusions and Synaesthesias ......................................................................... 28 1.6 Innovativeness: Aspects of Compositional Technique ................................................. 34 1.7 Motion Types, Tonal Gestures and Expressive Characters ......................................... 40 1.8 Time and Space. Imaginary Space ................................................................................... 44 1.9 New Sound Images – New Semantemes.

“Cystoscopy”, Vacuum and Music of the Spheres ........................................................ 50 1.10 A “Double-Bottomed” Relation to Tradition ................................................................ 55 1.11 Diversity of Inspirational Sources. A Universalist Concept of Art and Music ........ 57 1.12 New Ways of Transcending the Tempered System ...................................................... 63 1.13 Backgrounds of Ligeti’s Popularity .................................................................................. 66

2 Part Two: Works ............................................................................................................... 71

2.1 Composing in the Homeland ........................................................................................... 73 2.2 Going beyond Serialism .................................................................................................... 76 2.3 Apparitions and the Dream of the Web ........................................................................... 79 2.4 Atmosphères – a Secret Requiem? ...................................................................................... 84 2.5 Micropolyphony ................................................................................................................. 89 2.6 Language and Music in the Requiem ................................................................................. 94 2.7 Lux aeterna ......................................................................................................................... 103 2.8 Continuum ........................................................................................................................... 106 2.9 New Conceptions of the Concertante: Notes on the Cello Concerto .......................... 110 2.10 On the Three Pieces for Two Pianos ............................................................................ 114 2.11 Mad World Theater: Le Grand Macabre.......................................................................... 117 2.12 The Turning Point ca. 1980 ............................................................................................ 140 2.13 Épater l’Avant-garde:

Retrospective and Forward-Looking Elements in the Horn Trio............................... 144 2.14 Notes on the Hölderlin Fantasies .................................................................................. 151 2.15 Construction and Imagination: Principles of the Piano Etudes ................................... 156 2.16 “Quasi-Equidistance” and Polyrhythm: Coordinates of the Piano Concerto ............. 180 2.17 The Violin Concerto ........................................................................................................ 192 2.18 The Horn Concerto ......................................................................................................... 207

VI

Afterword: Beyond Avantgarde and Postmodernism .......................................................... 211

3 Part Three: Appendix ...................................................................................................... 215

3.1 Abbreviations ................................................................................................................... 217 3.2 Notes ................................................................................................................................. 218 3.3 Register of Works ............................................................................................................ 231 3.4 Selected Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 236 3.5 Index of names ................................................................................................................. 249