Gyorgy Ligeti

Gyorgy Ligeti0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Gyorgy Ligeti0:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is the composer George Nigerty.

Presenter0:35

Now this meagre allowance you have, mister Niggerty, of just eight discs, would you prefer to take scores rather than records?

Presenter0:43

Oh, it's a difficult question. No, maybe records. Records. Do you play records a great deal for pleasure at home? Yes, yes, I like music.

Gyorgy Ligeti0:50

Yeah.

Presenter0:52

I thought you might. In choosing your eight records, did you have any plan?

Presenter0:57

No, no. It's quality what uh it what's quality is very subjective. And I like every music, you know, so called very serious music, but also popular music. I am a jazz fan. But here I I choose only classical music. Did it take you long to choose?

Presenter1:14

Yes, I took this job very seriously. So y you see it's very difficult to have eight records. If it would be twenty, it would be mm better. Oh yes, fifty even better than that. Yes, yes. I I had to drop uh composers like Bach and Beethoven and Chopin and Schumann. So things were getting serious. Yes. What's the first one you've chosen?

Gyorgy Ligeti1:25

Even better than that.

Presenter1:37

It's a madrigal of Carlo Gesuardo Belta Poicetacenti.

Presenter1:45

Uh it's a totally crazy music. How do you mean crazy?

Presenter1:49

You see, putting in this context of the late Renaissance music, the time of Orlando Di Lasso and of Palestrina, this late Gesualdo Madrigals with the chromaticism, the irregularity, the m decadence is something absolute out of the context of the time. There are several composers like Marenzio or like Luzaschi or a little bit later Saracini having the the same mannerism, the same decadence, but I think Gesualdo he went really into madness in music.

Speaker 42:39

All I sunk

Speaker 43:16

I must end up.

Speaker 43:20

I must have

Presenter3:25

A five part matrigal by Giasualdo Belta Poecce Tacenti by the Quintetto Vocale Italiano.

Presenter3:34

Now, you were born in Transylvania.

Presenter3:37

A romantic name to to British ears. It's rather like Rory Tenia. Yes, but you know, uh the invention of the vampires of Dracula in Transylvania is in English. It's a British invention of Bram Stoker. Uh the story is not known in Transylvania.

Gyorgy Ligeti3:49

Yeah.

Presenter3:53

It was of course part of Hungary when you were born there. Yes, it was for a thousand years a part of uh Hungary, but uh when I m was born it was after the First World War in twenty three, so it was already Romania. Were you a town boy or a country boy?

Gyorgy Ligeti3:55

On the

Presenter4:08

Oh, it's a very small town. It's it's country. And one of a large family? No.

Presenter4:14

A musical family?

Presenter4:16

There was a very famous musician in the nineteenth century in our family. It was Leopold Auer, the very, very great violinist.

Presenter4:25

the teacher of all the great Russian Jewish violinists. Yes. Like Milstein and Heifetz and uh this was one uncle of my father, but he was the only musician. Now you said that you used to improvise Beethoven like symphonies in your head on the way to school. Yes, when I when I was a schoolboy, yes. So so I began to compose, so with fourteen, fifteen years. Sometimes Beethoven, sometimes Tchaikovsky. Yes, yes, it's right. And Greek and all this music which I knew in a provincial town in Transylvania in the thirties. In fact, you you didn't start music lessons until you were in your teens. Yes, very late. My father didn't want that I study music, so I began with piano being fourteen. It's very late and uh uh I would like to be a better pianist, but I am a very bad pianist because if you begin with fourteen you can not more have technique.

Presenter5:24

Right from the start was it your ambition to compose?

Presenter5:28

No, no. I wanted to be a scientist and to study physics and mathematics. But when I started to learn piano, I was fourteen, I liked music, and immediately I began to compose. But uh to be a professional composer it came much later. You graduated in music in the musical academy in in Budapest. That was, what, in nineteen forty nine? Forty nine, yes, after the Buddha. And then you stayed on.

Gyorgy Ligeti5:48

Fot in a

Presenter5:50

At the academy as a teacher. What were you teaching? Uh, composition? No, not composition. It was harmony and counterpoint. And I was very happy that I was not a teacher for composition because, you know, for forty-eight it was the communist, the Stalinist regime in Hungary and um composition was regulated after the zdanov rules of socialist realism and I hated this. In your own words, totalitarians don't like dissonances. Yes, yes. And I don't like totalitarians.

Presenter6:22

Now you played safe, as it were, when you were a professor of music, by specializing in folk songs. Nobody could argue with that.

Presenter6:32

No, uh you see, because for the Hungarian music life Bartok and Kodai were so important, every young composer had this it it was a must, you know, to go in in the country and to collect folk songs and I I did it, but very shortly. You you worked with Kodai? I knew very well uh Kodai, but I never worked with him.

Presenter6:54

What's your second record?

Presenter6:57

It's Monteverdi, a three-part madrigal for three men's voices, alle danse, alla gioia. You see, I I am an opera fanatic and Monteverdi is really not only the first but one of the greatest opera composers. But for the eight desert island record, I choose the late madrigales, which are less known, and I think they are also operatic music, very dramatic.

Speaker 47:49

Can we neat or not?

Speaker 47:59

A before meeting

Speaker 48:04

Or before

Speaker 48:06

Signor

Speaker 38:14

Nothing.

Presenter8:24

A Montevideo de Madrigal, alla danci, sung by Robert Tier, Alexander Oliver and Stafford Dean. Now, you were researching folk songs, but you were composing more adventurous music uh quietly on your own. Yes, it was for the drawer, because it was no performance possibility for the more advanced composition. You know, in the communist time modern music was prohibited. Even Bartuk, a great part of Bartuk's music.

Gyorgy Ligeti8:50

Even

Presenter8:54

This kind of like Romanian folk songs, uh this was uh allowed. But really uh pieces like uh the mandarin or like the music for strings was not allowed. Was there a group of you working together?

Presenter9:08

No, I was always alone. So there was no chance of getting some of the music performed even privately with a few friends? Yes, yes, we did it so at home. And I had some some performances even in public, but uh more of these folklore pieces, not of my own real important music. So you knew that in order to express yourself you had to leave Hungary. How could you set about that? I left Hungary not because uh I couldn't express myself as a composer, because I hated both communist and before the Nazi system. And um it was the first possibility to come out after the revolution in fifty six because before frontiers were closed.

Gyorgy Ligeti9:16

Yeah.

Gyorgy Ligeti9:24

Not all

Presenter9:50

And of course I suppose already, like most Central Europeans, you spoke several languages.

Presenter9:55

Yes, but not English. Not English.

Presenter9:59

You went out to Vienna. Yes, to Vienna. Who did you want to meet? Who were your musical heroes? At this moment I was very interested to go to Cologne because it was the studio for electronic music. It was in the mid-fifties where this was something very important, very new. And I wanted to meet people like Stockhausen, like Boulez, like Eymart, who was the director of the Electronic Studio. And it happened that I had a chance. Eymart invited me to come to Cologne. How long did you work in the electronic studio? Oh, about two and a half years. Did you find that rewarding? Yes, f it was very important at those times for me. But later I left Cologne because I didn't want to go on with electronic music. It was a very important experience for all my development as a composer. I was thirty-three years old when I came there. And after uh two years I found my domain is instrumental and vocal music. Now you had brought of course a lot of your compositions out of Budapest. What was the first one to be performed that really meant a lot to you?

Gyorgy Ligeti10:45

Yeah.

Presenter11:07

My first ring quartet, which I composed in'fifty three in Budapest, it was performed uh five years later, in'fifty eight, in Vienna. A big moment for you. Uh yes, uh not a big moment, because the performance was not so good.

Presenter11:22

No, the really important performance was a new piece, Aparicion, my first real legati style orchestra piece. I composed the first part in'fifty-eight in Cologne, the second in'fifty nine in Siena. And the performance was in Cologne in'sixty. Uh this was the first important and uh I think also very successful piece which was performed of my music.

Presenter11:46

What's the third desert island disc?

Presenter11:50

It's Mozart. You know, Mozart's string quartets are more known than the string quintets, but I think some of the string quintets are absolutely the most beautiful of music. They have a balance and a clarity. So I choose the string quintet in C major and um I think this is one of the mm m absolutely highest level examples.

Speaker 412:23

Uh

Presenter12:23

Uh

Presenter13:17

The opening of the Mozart string quintet in C major, the Amadeus Quartet plus Cecil Aronovich.

Presenter13:25

In nineteen sixty one, I think it was, that you started to be visiting professor in Stockholm. Yes. Did that also widen your ideas? Yes, very much. And there was time in Stockholm there was a group of composers like Blumdahl, Litholm, and uh musicologist Wallner, and um music life for contemporary music was flourishing in Stockholm until the mid sixties. You were also teaching at Stamford in California?

Presenter13:53

And in Hamburg? Yes, Stamford it was much later. I was for a half year in'seventy two. And after this I had an appointment to have a composition class in Hamburg, which I still have it. Let's run through some of your compositions of those days. Apparitions and atmospheres. And in 1963 your Requiem. Were you interested in church music? Were you brought up as a Christian? No, I'm a Jew. It has nothing to do with the Catholic liturgy. But the Dies Ire, this poem of Thomas Celano, was so important for me. It's, you know, something very frightening is the Last Judgment and the Day of how to say in English, Day of Dome.

Presenter14:34

But this very colorful poem with angels and with devil, it's more the a visual and the acoustic aspect of this phantasmagory of the end of the days. And this was my attraction. So to compose a requiem was a very lo lo very long before I I began several times to compose a requiem.

Gyorgy Ligeti14:36

Yeah.

Gyorgy Ligeti14:51

Good.

Presenter14:59

And a year or two later your choral work Lux Etoner.

Gyorgy Ligeti15:03

Oh no.

Presenter15:04

Yes, it's a part of not a part of the composition, but a part of the Requiem text. And there's a cello concerto, a couple of string quartets.

Presenter15:14

Name a work which really means something very special to you of that period.

Presenter15:20

One of the best known pieces is the Chamber Concerto. It's later in'sixty nine,' seventy I composed it, which I think is the most typical of my music in the late sixties.

Presenter15:32

Your fourth record, what's that?

Presenter15:34

It's Schubert, also the quintet in C major. If I would go uh, you know, on an island alone and I had to take one piece with me, I think it would be this a string quintet of Schubert, which is it is a mystery. The beginning of the second movement, I think, is one of the deepest, of the most magic and mysterious things. If you analyse you can analyse what happens in harmony and in the melody, but it's something more in it which you cannot describe. You have to listen to the music.

Presenter17:16

The opening of the second movement of Schubert's string quintet in C major, once again the Amadairs Quartet with William Pleith.

Presenter17:27

Your work was popularized when Stanley Kubrick, the film director, seized on three of your compositions to use on the soundtrack of his film 2001. How did you feel about that?

Presenter17:38

Uh I was very astonished. I like his films and he never asked me for music. So many people think I composed this music for the film, which is absolutely not true. And even there was no authorization, nothing. Really? I had a letter from a friend in New York and he wrote me when this film will come to Europe, uh just go to the cinema and see it because it's full of your music and then I was in Vienna, I went, I liked the film, I became very angry. So I and the two publishers, we took a lawyer to deal with Metro Gomme Meyer because they they just took the music without having right to do so. Do you think it was used intelligently in the film?

Speaker 417:53

Really?

Presenter18:19

Yes, I think so. And did mister Kubrick say he was sorry? No. I never met him.

Presenter18:27

Do you conduct yourself? No, no, no. I tried once, but I I'm better composer than conductor, so I give this job for other people.

Presenter18:37

Now, some of the things that are are thrown against modern music is a lack of serious purpose. You've indulged yourself in one or two musical experiments which don't seem to have much serious purpose. You devised a piece for a hundred metronomes set at different speeds.

Gyorgy Ligeti18:52

You know,

Presenter18:54

What was your intention then?

Presenter18:57

Oh, it it ha it has also a serious aspect. It was a study in rhythm. To have this different rhythmical layer, the methanomes as separate instruments, they go absolutely uh you know, regular. But the combination gives a very complex rhythmic pattern. But uh you mentioned a more uh humoristic aspect which was in this pie. You know, it was a time of happenings. I I made this piece in sixty two and uh I liked happenings, but I was o only a little bit ironical against happenings. So it was a happening which ironizes happening. It's a totally automatic concert.

Gyorgy Ligeti19:10

But

Gyorgy Ligeti19:27

Oh yeah.

Presenter19:34

If only one of your compositions were to survive, which one would you like it to be?

Presenter19:41

You see, it's always my last piece which I finished. At the moment it's a trio for horn, violin and piano, which for me it's a quite a new, you know, the beginning of the late Liga period. Have you heard it yet? You heard it perhaps? Yes, yes, it was performed. And you're happy.

Gyorgy Ligeti19:56

Have you heard it before?

Gyorgy Ligeti19:58

And your hand.

Presenter19:59

Uh yes, quite happy.

Presenter20:01

Good. What's your fifth record? It's Simone Bocanegra by Verdi. I told in connection with Monteverdi that I'm an opera fanatic and uh so it's surely Mozart and Verdi and many other opera composers. Uh I choose this record even if uh pieces like Rigoletto or Otello or Falstaff are more important than Simone Bocanegra. But I think this realization on recording by Claudio Abado and by Teatro La Scala is really

Presenter20:35

dramatically, musically and technically one of my favorite uh operas on record.

Speaker 420:51

Ah

Speaker 421:00

Fachen Wounds Yopias for Saddam and Patient.

Speaker 421:10

Yes, for the bird.

Speaker 421:23

One most of my stuff and

Speaker 421:40

I'm gonna

Presenter21:44

The voices of Piero Capuci and Nicolai Giarov in the last act of Verdi's Simon Bocanegra.

Presenter21:51

Now let's talk about your opera, Le Grande Macabre, which is getting its first London production by the English National Opera. Where and when was it first presented?

Presenter22:02

It was in Stockholm in seventy eight. How many productions since? Um this is the seventh production. You didn't approve of the of the of the Paris production. You you made a bit of a fuss about that. You thought they did it wrong. Oh, it was very beautiful, and certainly musically very beautiful. But um uh the the the whole story of the opera, what happens, was completely changed, so it had nothing to do whatsoever with the libretto.

Presenter22:25

Was it a subject you came across and decided you wanted to, or or did you decide to compose an opera and look around for a suitable subject? Yes, yes. This idea of an opera which should be a tragic and comic opera at the same time, so real buffo. I had it uh in my mind in the sixties. And um it was in seventy three that I found by chance this theatre piece of Michel de Guilderaud which suited really my ideas. Once again in in a different mood, we are back in a way with the Last Judgment, aren't we? Yes, yes. It's absolutely the same as the Requiem. It's something which must be very deep in myself being uh very important. The frightening of the end, we will die. But it's humoristic. It's a kind of uh maybe a self-defense against death. It is satirical, surreal, comic, tragic, baudy. Do you think that a no-holes-buck approach i i is a good way to put an idea across?

Presenter23:27

When I composed this piece in the mid seventies, it was important for me this idea. I I was very much influenced by pop art, not by pop music, but by the painters, by English and American pop painting, you know, uh putting in the picture or in the art object different objects of real life. And I use the whole story of opera more even all story of music like garbage objects. In general, is it an optimistic piece? No, I think it's a very tragic piece. And I think if you see and you listen to this opera for the first time, it will more appear as something very comical. When you know better the piece, you will realize that it's a very bitter, very pessimistic, very tragic piece.

Presenter24:13

Record number six.

Presenter24:15

It's Brahms, variations and funk on the handle theme, and I have to uh tell you that Brahms is not my favourite composer, but I wanted to have in these eight records really a piano recording which is the absolutely you know highest level of piano playing, and there are many very, very good pianists, but Rudolf Serkin is, I think, one of the deepest pianists of our time. And I think that this quite new record of Sirkin is one of the deepest and you know, one of the last things really in music, the way how uh Sirkin makes this large form of the Brahms variations.

Presenter26:05

One of the variations from the Brahms Variation and Fugue on a theme by Handel and it's played by Rudolf Seckin.

Presenter26:13

Already, mister Leggettet, the BBC and the English National Opera have commissioned another opera from you. Do you have a subject? Yes. It's very difficult to to say because it's one of the of the highest pieces. It's The Tempest by Shakespeare.

Presenter26:31

And in the same form, in the same sort of free-for-all atmosphere as Le Grand Maccabre? No, I think it will be completely different. Macabre is a tragic piece, but it has a humorous aspects. And in The Tempest there are the humorous uh moments of Caliban, but it's indeed a philosophical piece. And uh I think I became older and uh my music changed. So you will find things in this piece which are not another composer, I am the same composer, but more serious, more mature.

Presenter27:05

And of course an opera is a very demanding and big scale work.

Presenter27:09

Um can you describe your approach to your shorter works? Which comes first, a general idea or a theme? Does a theme develop into the whole work, or do you visualise the whole work? No, you see, the first is acoustical, but it's never a theme. I just listen with my inner ears and I listen to the music. So I I hear the music, I imagine the music as it will sound, the whole piece. But then when I write the score, there comes construction and also intellectual work. The first is really intuitive. Then my task is to transform this acoustic musical intuition, imagination, into a score. But it's never a theme, it's always the whole music there. What's your working discipline? Do you try to work regular hours each day or do you work in bursts?

Presenter28:02

I try to be regular, but I am very indisciplined, so oh, it's completely irregular. Do you work at the piano?

Presenter28:10

Sometimes, yes, sometimes not. Uh you know, when I was a refugee for ten years I had no piano and uh I had to compose without piano, and I think it was very important because it gave me a technique to imagine music and to write it down without the help of the piano.

Presenter28:26

What's your next record?

Presenter28:29

It's Hugo Wolf from the Spanish Liederbuch. I wanted to put you know, Leader, and uh there are so many fantastic leaders by Schubert and by Schumann, but Wolf too, and I think this special recording by Schwarzkop and Fischer Disco with Gerard Moore as a pianist is one of the highest moments of history of recording, I think. And I choose the last lead, Gegalipp Tergeetz, sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkop. I think in this piece there is a concentration of emotion. It's the moment where two lovers, you know, they are together but uh it's morning and uh a lady tells no no, go, no, go away because i it's too late and she's very, very anxious. And really the composition of this anxiety and emotion is absolutely constant. I I think these leaders are the most mature musical by Hugo Wolff and by the whole literature of leader.

Speaker 329:31

Ocean is mocked.

Speaker 329:39

East infinity for your skull Go on to steal.

Speaker 429:43

Yeah.

Speaker 329:47

Lady Hoffman is a motherless name as glorious.

Speaker 330:02

Kelly Pargiost, see there more good than

Presenter30:30

Elizabeth Schwartzkopf with Gerald Moore at the piano, a song from the Hugo Wolff Spanish Song Book.

Presenter30:38

How do you think you'd manage on a desert island? Have you ever imagined yourself as a Robinson Crusoe?

Presenter30:45

Uh not really. You see, I have such an experience as as a refugee and uh different dictatorships like Hitler and Stalin, so it was enough. I don't really imagine to be a Robinson. No, but you are, because of your experiences, a fairly self-sufficient man. You can look after yourself.

Presenter31:06

I am not depending on too high level, you know, luxury and that's on. And you think you probably escaped from a desert island as well? Yes, there were several desert islands. Somehow or other. Yeah. Your last record, what's that?

Presenter31:23

It's Bartok. Uh maybe the most fantastic work of Bartok is the music for strings, percussion and celesta, or also the sonata for two piano and percussion. But I choose children and uh women's choruses. They are very little known in the West. I think two choral pieces of Bartok, the cantata profano and this set of uh female choruses, there are twenty seven choruses are one of the most important pieces by Bartok. Uh you know, Bartok has two phases. One is the very barbaric, primitive, like in the beginning of the sonata for two pianos, and there is another side, like a crystal, very clear, and I think these choruses, very simple pieces, are like water, completely transparent.

Speaker 432:27

Give us free.

Speaker 432:31

God's Lord and God.

Speaker 432:39

What did us with you?

Speaker 432:46

And who is

Speaker 432:55

It must be

Presenter33:17

A song by Bartok, Regret, sung by a Hungarian children's and women's chorus conducted by Niklos Slabo.

Presenter33:26

Well, you've told us the one disc you'd take on a desert island, mister Ligerty, which is Schubert's Quintet in C major.

Presenter33:34

One luxury to take with you, just one object that you would love to have. Maybe a picture from Museum, which I don't own it. So if I would take one thing, I would take from Prado in Madrid, the Hieronymus Bosch picture, Garden of Earthly Delight. Splendid, we'll arrange that. Thank you in advance. And one book, you already have the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.

Gyorgy Ligeti33:41

But I think

Gyorgy Ligeti33:55

Um

Presenter34:00

Yes, it would be an English book. It will be Lois Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, of course, and with the original illustrations. Yes. And thank you, George Dickerty, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much, and goodbye. Goodbye, everyone.

Gyorgy Ligeti34:44

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.