György Ligeti: Music of the Imagination

by Richard Steinitz

One of the world's best known living composers, György Sándor Ligeti is widely acknowledged as the most influential and admired creative figure of the late twentieth century. His brilliantly conceived and challenging pieces, searingly intense at times and full of humor and irony at others, include the orchestral Apparitions and Atmosphères, piano études, the opera Le Grand Macabre, and the unaccompanied choral work Lux aeterna, which Stanly Kubrick actually pirated for the film soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey.In this book, Richard Steinitz fuses biographical, stylistic, and technical analysis to examine thoroughly the evolution of Ligeti's innovative music. Drawing extensively on his own private conversations with the composer as well as on many published and recorded interviews, Steinitz places Ligeti's extraordinary body of work within the context of his complex personal life.

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

416 pages, Hardcover

First published March 20, 2003

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed and thorough biography/study of the great composer. On a narrative level, it is most compelling in the earlier section, given Ligeti's life in Hungary under the two evil totalitarianisms of fascism and communism. After his escape to the West and first international success in the 1960s, the drama mostly went out of his life, which inevitably makes for a less interesting story (but thank heavens so, for Ligeti and music's sake). There are number of interesting biographical topics explored, nevertheless: the slightly fraught business dealings around Kubrick's use of his music, the reasons why the Tempest and Alice operas were never completed, the tortuous attempts to record his complete works, made possible by the generous patronage of a Swiss banker.
Each of the works is given a full exposition. Inevitably, the book relies on quite a lot of technical language in talking about the music, which means that the general reader is at a disadvantage. There are occasions where the author uses more metaphorical means to explicate and bring across the music, and these are very successful. It is enlightening to have Ligeti's musical, literary, scientific and cultural influences so extensively explored.
After the Études, the book gets a little rushed. Although it ends in 2002, before the composer's death in 2006, Ligeti has composed everything he was ever to, which makes the hope of new music in the final paragraphs poignant and forever to be unfulfilled. But the book does bring across strongly how valuable, painstaking, and innovative was Ligeti's contribution to 20th century music.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is essentially a biography of Ligeti's composition career, tracing his education, works, and the development of his compositional technique. Steinitz occasionally mentions a more personal life event, like the birth of Ligeti's son, but the focus is almost entirely on the music. Steinitz is a good writer, and his obvious admiration for Ligeti and his music is a big plus.I especially liked Steinitz' attention to the musical problems Ligeti was attempting to solve and the ways his techniques, aims, and aesthetic concerns changed over time.

[Ruxandra Balboa-Pöysti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating biography. Still in the process of reading it but can't avoid thinking it's worth a movie exacerbating the playful, experimental and necessarily schizophrenic character - successively Hungarian, then Romanian, then Hungarian again - of this composer - and a half a century of extremism in Europe.

[Doria · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very engaging and interesting biography of the Hungarian composer György Ligeti. Includes listening guides for many pieces, and even a few samples of Ligeti's handwritten scores. Written towards the end of the composer's life, it ends on a hopeful note, anticipating the arrival of music which would, sadly, never be written.