Preview
LAND’S END CHAMBER ENSEMBLE AND ROSA SELVETICA
Ligeti! The Composer at 80!
Sunday, November 16
The Rozsa Centre (University of Calgary)
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey stands as one of the most celebrated if not audacious films ever made. From the dawn of man to the humanization of the machine, viewers are led on a journey through the history of mankind. Film studies aside, Kubrick’s choice of music to accompany the sprawling cinematography lends the film a great deal of its power. Initially he sought music from composer Alex North, who had previously collaborated with Kubrick for Spartacus. Much to North’s disappointment though, his score was never used. Instead, the soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey was made up of a bizarre collection of classical and contemporary works ranging from Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (whose fanfare opening is aurally synonymous with the film) to the Viennese classic waltz The Blue Danube. Three works by celebrated Hungarian composer György Ligeti were also used. His 1961 work Atmosphères was used to such an eerie effect that often the music is difficult to separate from the image of a screeching band of man-apes in the film.
Kubrick’s use of Ligeti’s Atmosphères, Requiem and Lux Aeterna without permission prompted Ligeti to file a lawsuit against MGM Studios. This was followed by a lengthy correspondence proving that Ligeti had a case, but that a judicial process would be long and costly. Instead Ligeti secured compensation and the hullabaloo subsided.
Regardless of how Ligeti felt about the use of his music, 2001: A Space Odyssey introduced it to a mass audience that otherwise would have been unaware of his pioneering work in contemporary music. But almost 30 years later, Ligeti’s music is still associated with the film. To celebrate Ligeti’s 80th birthday this year, Calgary’s Land’s End Chamber Ensemble is attempting to bring Ligeti’s music out from under the shadow of Kubrick’s film and shed light on the work of one of the most influential musical pioneers of the late 20th century. According to Daniel Béland, president of the board of directors for Land’s End Chamber Ensemble, the concert is the perfect vehicle with which to highlight Ligeti’s contribution to contemporary music.
"Ligeti is a composer that is more difficult to classify than, say, modernist composers like Boulez or Stockhausen," says Béland. "He is a composer that never really followed a trend. He was always someone who really followed his own path or at least many different paths…. Kammerkonzert, the work to be played in the concert, was composed in the late ’60s during a time of transition after his experimentation with the micropolyphonic textures and complex rhythms of the works heard in Kubrick’s film. It’s music that’s almost on the edge…very complex and theatrical."
Along with Ligeti’s Kammerkonzert, two contemporary works of considerable influence are also programmed – Bela Bartok’s Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion and Arnold Schoenberg’s arrangement of Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune. Their music played an influential role in the development of Ligeti’s own compositional voice. Bartok’s field research of Hungarian folk music in the early 1900s planted the seed for the creation of ethnomusicology, an area that Ligeti also contributed to with his study in Romanian folk music after graduation from the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest in 1949. Both composers drew heavily from the folk melodies they compiled and studied.
With Debussy the connection is less tangible, but Béland notes the musical influence is still there. Besides the fact that Debussy’s Prelude really signalled the beginnings of modern music, Beland notes that attention to detail and orchestral colour were influential in many of Ligeti’s works.
"These are three colourful works in very different ways," says Béland. "The concert is much like a mixed bag. It’s varied but at the same time coherent. I think people will be surprised.
"Though it’s contemporary music, it is still music that is very accessible…. That’s the thing with Ligeti. The reason he is such a great composer is because there is always some form of unity in his works even though the music is very diverse and complex. It’s also very atmospheric in a way. You can feel direct emotions, which is not always the case in modernist music.
Ligeti’s music is like the human face of modernism. It’s not dry. There are many different emotions – humour, irony, melancholy. You always know it’s Ligeti." |
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