Discussing his Horn Trio, György Ligeti imaginatively describes the second movement as a dance that was “inspired by different folk musics of nonexistent people, as if Hungary, Romania, and all of the Balkans were located somewhere between Africa and the Caribbean.” And in more general remarks about his works, he goes on to suggest that, rather than overtly referencing their stylistic features, he abstracted technical principles from various traditions and combined them into an idiosyncratically amalgamated musical language. This essay shows an expansive approach to hybridity in Ligeti's Violin Concerto and Hamburg Concerto, going well beyond previous remarks about African rhythmic influences. Ligeti's practice encompasses not only rhythm, but also texture, pitch, and tuning systems; it spans a wider breadth of traditions as well, including newly identified sources such as flute and panpipe ensembles from New Guinea and yodeling traditions from across the globe. An analysis of passages from these late concertos – undertaken alongside evidence from his ethnomusicological sources, recordings, and sketches housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung – demonstrates the intricacies and patterns of Ligeti's late style and the compelling statement it makes about the role of hybridity and globalization in contemporary life.
Arom, Simha. Aka Pygmy Music (UNESCO: Music and Musicians of the World, 1973).
Arom, Simha. African Polyphony and Polyrhythm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Arom, Simha. Banda Polyphony (UNESCO: Music and Musicians of the World, 1976).
Arom, Simha, Wolfgang Marx, and Louise Duchesneau. “A Kinship Foreseen: Ligeti and African Music, Simha Arom in Conversation,” in György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds, ed. by Louise Duchesneau, and Wolfgang Marx (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011), 107–122.
Busse Berger, Anna Maria. The Search for Medieval Music in Africa and Germany (1891–1961) (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020).
Corbett, John. “Experimental Oriental: New Music and Other Others,” in Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music, ed. by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 163–186.
Duchesneau, Louise. “‘Play it Like Bill Evans:’ György Ligeti and Recorded Music,” in György Ligeti: of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds, ed. by Louise Duchesneau and Wolfgang Marx (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011), 125–147.
Everett, Yayoi Uno. “Intercultural Synthesis in Postwar Western Art Music: Historical Contexts, Perspectives, and Taxonomy,” in Locating East Asia in Western Art Music, ed. by Yayoi Uno Everett, and Frederick Lau (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 1–21.
Hartt, Jared. “Les doubles hoqués et les motés: Guillaume de Machaut’s Hoquetus David,” Plainsong and Medieval Music 21/2 (2012), 137–173.
Kubik, Gerhard. Theory of African Music, 2 vols. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel. “Compositional Procedure in Machaut’s ‘Hoquetus David,’” Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 16 (1980), 99–109.
Levy, Benjamin. “Ligeti’s Distant Resonances with Spectralism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music, ed. by Amy Bauer, Liam Cagney, and William Mason (online ed., Oxford Academic, December 8, 2021).
Lichtenfeld, Monika (ed.), György Ligeti: Gesammelte Schriften, 2 vols. (Mainz: Schott, 2007).
Rice, Timothy. “Béla Bartók and Bulgarian Rhythm,” in Bartók Perspectives: Man, Composer, and Ethnomusicologist, ed. by Elliott Antokoletz, Victoria Fischer, and Benjamin Suchoff (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 196–210.
Scherzinger, Martin. “György Ligeti and the Aka Pygmies Project,” Contemporary Music Review 25/3 (2006), 227–262.
Schuster, Meinhard and Gordon Spearritt. “Music of the Iatmul,” liner notes in Music of Oceania: The Iatmul of Papua Niugini (Basel: Institute for Musicology of the University of Basel, no date).
Stahnke, Manfred. “The Dove and the Bear: ‘Galamb Borong’ and the Connection to ‘Ars Subtilior,’” “I Don’t Belong Anywhere:” György Ligeti at 100, ed. by Wolfgang Marx (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), 71–92.
Suchoff, Benjamin (ed.). Béla Bartók Essays (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1992).
Wilson, Charles. “György Ligeti and the Rhetoric of Autonomy,” Twentieth-Century Music 1/1 (2004), 5–28.
Zemp, Hugo. Swiss Yodeling Series: ‘Jüüzli’ of the Muotatal (Watertown, MA: Documentary Educational Resources, 1986–1987).
Zemp, Hugo, and Vida Malkus. “Aspects of ’Are’are Musical Theory,” Ethnomusicology 23/1 (1979), 5–48.