"
György Ligeti was one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century. He stood with
Boulez, Berio,
Stockhausen, and
Cage as one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time. His early works show the influence of Bartók and Kodály, and like them, he studied folk music and made transcriptions from folk material. In
Apparitions (1958-1959) and
Atmosphères (1961), he developed a style forged from chromatic cluster chords that are devoid of conventional melody, pitch and rhythm, but instead grow into timbres and textures that yield new sonic possibilities. The composer referred to this method as "micropolyphony." In
Aventures (1962), Ligeti devised a vocal technique in which the singers are required to make a full range of vocalizations, cries and nonsense noises to fashion a kind of imaginary, non-specific drama, but with rather specifically expressed emotions. Ligeti was almost alone among progressive composers from the latter twentieth century who have written popular and widely performed music."
AllMusic
This chronological playlist
was compiled after the lists of works on
Wikipedia,
Schott Music, and
gyorgy-ligeti.com. It features recordings from the
Ligeti Edition (Sony),
Ligeti Project (Teldec) and dozens more albums. At the end,I added another set of
the 18 Études from 18 different albums, including notable new releases from
Yuja Wang,
Jeremy Denk, and
Pour Irina played by its dedicatee
Irina Kataeva.
Get this collection in one the Spotify playlist: György Ligeti: Complete Chronological Catalogue & Études Mix (299 tracks, total time: 16 hours) Ctrl (CMD) + G to browse in
album view. For Ligeti's music used in Kubrick's films, see
this previous playlist.
