Hungarian composer: György Ligeti
was known for his wide imagination and big fantasy.
Already many early childhood memories
became inspiration for later works.
Especially two episodes
played crucial role for his later creation:
First:
getting to know the literature of hungarian writer
Gyula Krúdy
One novelle in particular made deep impact on Ligeti:
the story about a widow,
leaving alone in an house
full of measurement tools,
ticking clocks
and metronomes.
This later inspired
so called mechanical rhytmical patterns
in the music of Ligeti.
Great example of those patterns is
“poème symphonique for 100 metronomes”.
There was also another tremendous influence
on the future works of Ligeti :
a dream,
which he had during early childhood.
This dream became inspiration
for so called “web of sounds”
or micropolyphony
seen in most famous pieces of the composer like:
“Atmosphères” or “Apparitions”
Ligeti desribed this dream in the following way:
“In my early childhood I once dreamed
I wasn’t able to make it as far as my crib
(which represented a safe haven)
because the room was filled with a thin-fibered,
dense, and extremely intricate web.
Apart from me,
other beings and objects also hung in the huge network:
moths and beetles,
huge damp, dirty cushions.
Every movement of the creatures caught in the web
caused the entire system to tremble.
Now and then
the movements were so strong
that the web ripped in places
and several beetles were set free,
only to stray once more into the billowy undulant meshwork.
These incidents gradually changed the structure of the web.
Inextricable knots formed in some places,
other bits developed
into caverns where isolated shreds floated about.
The metamorphoses in the system were irreversible,
no past state could be restored.
There was something inexpressibly sad about this process,
the hopelessness of the trickling of time and a past that could never be retrieved.”
