Gyorgy Ligeti: Music of the Imagination

Rating:
Summary: A Great Guide to Ligeti's Music
Review: Richard Steinitz has written a book that all lovers of Ligeti's music should read. It might well persuade others to try the music, too. It is a book long in the making, Steinitz has been in contact with Ligeti over years, and has had extensive time with him to check details.

There is a mass of biographical information, especially about the early years in Transylvania and in the whirling political confusion of WW2 and the immediate post-war years. Fascinating stuff, although this isn't a biography in the sense of trying to investigate all the ins and outs of Ligeti's psyche (and all the better for that!)

It has to be said that if, like me, you are not musically trained, then some of the analysis is pretty tough. There were places where I had no choice but to skip. Sometimes, as in the discussion of the piano etudes, the sheer density of the musicological argument is daunting.

But I've still given the book 5 stars. When the technicalities got too much I put down the book and listened to a recording of the music instead. Then I found that the ideas I could take from the discussion were stimulating a richer hearing. My ears were bigger! For example, I have never put "San Francisco Polyphony" that high in my favourites of Ligeti's work - but I need to reconsider that now I've read and re-listened. The turn in Ligeti's work with the Horn Trio is clearly established, as are other key turning points in Ligeti's oeuvre and this enables a crtitical, historical, approach to the music.

So I've been helped to sudy (by ear) Ligeti in greater depth. Richard Steinitz, founder of the wonderful and important Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in Britain, has already done so much for modern music - and this book is another invaluable contribution.

We can only hope that Ligeti has a late efflorescence (like Elliot Carter), and that this book becomes out-dated and needs to be updated regularly.

Rating:
Summary: By far the best of the Ligeti biographies
Review: Richard Steinitz's GYORGY LIGETI: Music Of The Imagination is the best biography of this contemporary composer available today, and essential reading for those who are passionate about Ligeti's output. It goes as far as the premier of the "Hamburg Concerto" and the 2000 set of Weores songs, and as Ligeti has composed little to nothing in the meantime, the book is still entirely up to date.

Steinitz's work alternates biographical details with analysis of Ligeti's works. One learns a lot more about Ligeti's life from this biography than from others, as Steinitz was fortunate enough to have several conversations with Ligeti. The analysis of Ligeti's music can occasionally get pretty technical, but even those with a passing knowledge of music theory can learn a lot from the book. The biography certainly expands one's appreciation of Ligeti's music, which is what one hopes for from a musical biography. After this you'll easily hear how "Lux Aeterna" (written, we're told, during an addiction to morphine) and "Lontano" are linked through a similar melody hidden in each. The inspirational basis of each Piano Etude is revealed, and "San Francisco Polyphony" stops seeming like a throwaway work and instead as a key part of Ligeti's maturation.

This is, in a way, "authorised biography". There is a lot of adoration of Ligeti, and Steinitz takes Ligeti's side in the coverage of polemic in the book, such as in Ligeti's opposition to Peter Sellar's staging of "Le Grand Macabre" and the composer's disappointment with the ensembles chosen to complete Sony's "Gyorgy Ligeti Edition" series. Since I am myself a faithful fan of Ligeti, I don't see this as a downside.

If you've been collecting the two series' of Ligeti's collected works in performances supervised by the composer himself (Sony's "Gyorgy Ligeti Edition" and Teldec's "The Ligeti Project"), consider this a vital companion to getting the most out of the music. I really can't find anything to complain about with the book.