The otherworldly music of György Ligeti (1923-2006), may sound eclectic and esoteric, but it continues to resonate with performances around the world.
Popularized by films like Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “The Shining,” and “Eyes Wide Shut,” Ligeti created a transformative experience that continues to inspire others. That includes Cascadia Composers, which will celebrate the centennial year of Ligeti’s birth with a concert featuring selections from his works and pieces by members who have been influenced by him.
“Kubrick used Ligeti’s music in ‘2001 Space Odyssey’ in the scenes that were the most memorable, the most riveting, the most scary, and the most transfixing,” said Portland composer Bob Priest. “The sound was mesmerizing. It is first used with the apes, who discover that they could use a bone to kill another ape, then the bone is thrown into the air and it becomes a spaceship. You again hear that mysterious and terrifying music again when the astronauts land on the moon and find the monolith. Then during the star gate sequence when they enter Jupiter’s atmosphere. This unforgettable music is from Ligeti’s ‘Requiem,’ and ‘Lux Aeterna,’ and ‘Atmosphères.’”
Priest was so blown away by what he heard that he drove to a record store the next day and bought a Ligeti album. It stimulated Priest to morph from being a rock musician to classical music enthusiast. Many years later, he even attended a masterclass from Ligeti at his apartment in Hamburg, Germany.
Concertgoers will hear selections from throughout Ligeti’s career, including Portland-based Arcturus Quintet performing the quirky “Six Bagatelles,” pianist Myrna Setiawan playing two of his visionary and staggeringly difficult piano “Etudes,” and coloratura soprano Madeline Ross and pianist Rebecca Stager going way over the top to deliver his surrealistic fantasy “Mysteries of the Macabre.”
“Ligeti’s music opened up my mind,” said composer Antonio Celaya, whose Ligeti-inspired “Go Ask Alice” will be performed at the concert. “It has such powerful emotional and sometimes visual images. My first encounter was with ‘2001 Space Odyssey.’ I was not a big science fiction fan, but in the film, the voices from Ligeti’s ‘Requiem’ were startling to me – and when they enter the planet’s atmosphere – that was stunning. Later, at conservatory, I went to the library and pulled out scores. It was pretty overwhelming.”
But Kubrick’s use of Ligeti’s music in the 1968 blockbuster film was illegal, because he never asked the composer for his permission.
“Kubrick originally commissioned a huge score from Alex North,” said Celaya. “It featured Indonesian and Persian instruments and a big orchestra, but Kubrick didn’t care for it. Instead, he decided to use Ligeti, who he was listening to while editing the film.”
Ligeti sued Kubrick in Europe, but settled for a nominal sum because the movie had catapulted him to a worldwide audience, an unimaginable accomplishment for a composer from within an avant-garde niche and a tumultuous background.
Born to a Hungarian-Jewish family in Transylvania, Ligeti wanted to study science, but the number of Jews admitted to the higher-level academy was limited. During the Nazi occupation, his father and brother died in concentration camps, but his mother survived. Ligeti was sent to a forced labor camp, and after the war he graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest in 1949. He taught there until 1956, when the Soviets crushed the Hungarian uprising. By hiding in a mailbag, Ligeti escaped to Vienna and traveled to Cologne where he worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen and other prominent composers.
The performances and recordings of “Apparitions” (1958-1959), “Atmosphères” (1961), “Requiem” (1963-1965), and “Lux aeterna” (1966) cemented Ligeti’s stellar credentials. Kubrick, always scanning the horizon for something new, latched onto Ligeti’s absolutely unique music and the rest is cinematic history.
It was via a recording of “Atmosphères” that composer Michael Johanson, who is on the faculty of Lewis & Clark College, became entranced by Ligeti’s music.
“Ligeti has profoundly affected my composing style,” remarked Johanson. “Atmosphères” has individual parts for each instrument in a section. It coalesces into huge, massive sonic clouds. The overall texture feels like a swarm of bees. What he does with texture is amazing. You hear bands of sound that evolve in interesting and unexpected ways over time. The effect is sublime, wonderous, and mysterious.”
Composer Jeff Winslow, who co-founded Cascadia Composers currently serves as its treasurer and secretary, strongly gravitated to Ligeti after hearing his “Etudes” for piano. “The materials were so traditional, but yet he combined them in such a way that I had never heard before.”
Ligeti had an insatiable curiosity for music outside the mainstream. He explored rhythms from Central Africa and the Caribbean, Romanian folk songs, jazz, drum machines, jazz, and pieces for player piano. He also loved Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books and the Marx Brothers.
Some of Ligeti’s innovations may have inspired works by Portland composer Gary Noland, Eugene-based composer Paul Safar, Bay Area composer John Bilotta, and Italian composer Daria Baiocchi that will round out the concert.
With its membership expanding nationally and even internationally, Cascadia Composers brings fresh ideas to the Pacific Northwest and aptly reflects Ligeti’s quest for new sounds. To wrap up the hundredth-birthday celebration, there will be a reception with Hungarian dishes and desserts as an “encore.”
“A Ligeti Odyssey: The First 100 Years” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, June 4, The Old Madeleine Church, 3123 N.E. 24th Ave.; $25 general admission, $15 seniors and working artists, $10 students, free for children 12 and under, cascadiacomposers.org, or at the door.
— James Bash
