Ligeti as everything except himself, digo eu.

O autor deste artigo,, o alemão Manfred Stahnke, compositor de Hamburgo, estava no Bartók Seminar como assistente de Ligeti. Participei nesse curso de Ligeti em 1990 em Szombathely na Hungria. Foi extraordinário! Duas semanas intensas com cursos, workshops do novo software Max orientados por Marco Stroppa, de direção por Peter Eotvos (lá conheci Daniel Kawka que mais tarde tocou a minha obra "Estudo-Figura" em Lyon e Saint Etienne onde fui assistir, pelo seu recém-formado Ensemble Orchestral Contemporaine) e muitos concertos. Assisti à estreia de "Quasi una Fantasia" de G. Kurtag. Numa das aulas colectivas Ligeti deu-nos a ouvir o estudo Galamb Borong, numa versão MIDI feita por Manfred Stahnke. Volker Banfield tinha tido um acidente grave e precisaria de um ano para estudar esse Étude do volume 2. Não traduzo o artigo. Quem se interessar poderá certamente ler o original. É uma abordagem crítica das várias tipologias recorrentes que foram produzidas àcerca dos Estudos de Ligeti depois de 1985.

Não deixam de ser um espanto: Ligeti as everything except himself, digo eu.

//

In the large body of writing dedicated to the Études, which has grown since the works’ first appearance in 1985 and, is too large to detail in full here, one can discern certain patterns and recurrent themes on the part of the commentators, which lead to particular constructions of the works and sometimes the composer in general.

a) Ligeti as cross-culturalist, as evidenced by the influence in particular of African drumming and Javanese/Balinese gamelan.

(b) Ligeti as both neo-romantic and heir to a golden age of romantic pianism, as influenced by the influence, made explicit by the composer, of the piano works of Chopin, Schumann, Debussy and others, as well as simply the sheer virtuosity of the works.

(c) Ligeti as pro-American, as evidenced by the influence of Conlon Nancarrow, American minimalism, and of the jazz of Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans.

(d) Ligeti as postmodernist, on account of aspects of (a), (b) and (c) and other influences such as the ars subtilior. In this context (often situating the Études within a broader body of work beginning with the Horn Trio (1982)), Ligeti’s range of historical and geographical allusions is presented as an antidote to supposed stylistic purity and abstraction of some ‘othered’ modernism.

(e) Ligeti as scientist, as evidenced by the influence of chaos theory, fractals, and the elucidation of many mathematical patterns within the works

(f) Ligeti as (Western construction of) Eastern European melancholic and nostalgic, on account of the recurrence of the “lament” motiv and hermeneutical readings of ‘Automne à Varsovie’ to the then-assistir political situation the in Poland.

in Mantaining Disorded, c/ Ian Pace