Lydia’s Blog

I’ve just read that Gyorgi Ligeti has died.

In my short career as a director and musician, I’ve been lucky enough to come into some pretty extensive contact with the works of modern masters, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio Kagel, Philip Glass, Bruno Maderna, Salvatore Sciarrino, Wolfgang Rihm, Peter Maxwell Davies, etc.

Contemporary music is a difficult thing. Composers are tugged between the desire to insinuate themselves into the larger story of concert music, and to diverge from the beaten path (or that path observed to have been beaten). You have composers like Previn and Adamo, who are creating a type of lyrical nostalgia, or Zender and Fujikura, who are hellbent on reining divergent media into the live performance of music.

Here’s my dirty secret: When I get home after working on Neuwerth, Ades or Donatoni–on Davies, Rao or Henze—I always flip on some Bach before heading to bed. It’s my sorbet for dessert. It restores the right angles in my brain. It reminds me of the broad, devastating wonder that can be made possible by the act of making music.

Not so with Ligeti. No Bach necessary. He wasn’t the appetizer, entree or sorbet…he was the whole fucking six-course meal with brandy and a cigar at the tail end. Shit, he was even the hooker at work under the dinner table. While directing Le Grand Macabre in Graz, it wasn’t abnormal to see me glazing out to Ligeti on my iPod during extended meal breaks…despite enduring it in rehearsal for seven hours a day. His music can be punishing or frail, bellicose or desperate, hysterical or catatonic. It has that rare, divine breath in it that will surely guarantee it’s life on recordings and in concert halls for centuries to come.

To me, Ligeti was a cherished reminder of both the legacy and future of this idiotic business in which I increasingly find myself to be taking part. He was the granddaddy, the joker, the prophet, the anarchist…and perhaps most importantly, the most apt possible guardian of the western musical firmament.

For those that might not be familiar with Ligeti’s work, the 2001: Space Odyssey soundtrack can provide you with a great point of entry.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 12th, 2006 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.