György Ligeti - Melodien for Orchestra (1971) [audio + score]

György Sándor Ligeti (May 28, 1923 - June 12, 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time".

Melodien was a transitional piece for Ligeti, composed in 1971 on commission from the city of Nuremburg for its celebrations for the 500th anniversary of Albrecht Dürer’s birth. Ligeti was beginning to loosen his previously more sharply sequestered dichotomies of “clocks” (fast and highly energized musical machines) and “clouds” (slowly evolving – even static – soundscapes). His “micropolyphony” made use of motivic canons, but in such a way that the individual lines were seldom aurally identifiable. The titular melodies of Melodien are more “macro” in that sense: though the textures are still richly and intricately interlaced, unique lines emerge strongly, often linking contrasting sections. In effect, the piece is a series of “clocks” laid over a background of “clouds.” (Clocks and Clouds would be the title of a piece for female voices and orchestra that he salvaged from an aborted opera project the following year.) Melodien grows organically, but it is formally rounded, with something very like a recapitulation – or summation, at least – before fading away with a last, eerie wisp of “cloud.”
 “I tried to soften the dense ‘micropolyphony’ of my musical language, to make it less severe, more transparent,” Ligeti wrote (in Eric Wilson’s translation). “Basically, I remained true to my earlier style: the musical form unfolds like a spread-out web in time that is continually flowing on – but the individual voices no longer merge (as in my earlier music), but rather in their overlapping and interlacing you can discern them individually. The voices become individual melodies, with their own characteristic style, their own tempo, rhythm, and intervallic structure. If you hear the music for the first time, it appears to be a chaos of discrepant melodies – but if you know the music better, you can catch on to the internal connections and the hidden harmonic skeleton of the form.”

Performed by London Sinfonietta
David Atherton, conductor

[turangalila]

Thanks for posting! I've always thought that this piece has a very satisfying aesthetic quality. I have the score already, but it's great that you're giving more people the chance to discover this.

I could be wrong and/or reading too much into this, but this (along with San Francisco Polyphony a few years later) is like the end result from the more absurdist style he started when writing Aventures (a piece I don't care for at all). There's almost a distinct path you can trace, and the sharp and ridiculous gestures initially heard in Aventures get smoothed out each time:

Aventures --> Dies Irae (from the Requiem) --> 2nd movement of the cello concerto --> 4th movement of the chamber concerto --> Melodien

[SenicoOcinesMusic]

Its a different kind of texture if compared to atmosphere and lontano - i love how ambient and simultaneously melodic this is

[robkeeleycomposer]

Marvellous. Grown up modern music. The real thing. Ligeti at his best!

[MegaCirse]

Like the first light of twilight, this music opens your eyes to old promises and to all the anomalies of nature. Evocative of powers beyond observation, these pieces pull the strings of the heart, attract nostalgia and awaken regrets, flayed lives and the torpor of tormented watchers

[Scriabin_fan]

Idk why but your username is hilarious to me

[christophegeoffroy]

It's not Ligeti but Christophe Bertrand.