As the title suggests, Ligeticitations are first of all “citations” of recordings of composer György Ligeti’s works. Excerpts of various length are taken out of the original music and subjected to a kind of “close reading”. At the same time, a certain “licitation” is taking place: a negotiation regarding the musicality of individual elements – themes, sounds – which were not meant to appear on their own. Is a decontextualized quotation of music still musical? Can these elements form a new composition? Do they somehow contain other possibilities of continuation and connection? To what extent is this a random process and to what extent is it limited by the possibilities of the original composition?
What is at play in these licitations, each of which employs a different strategy, are not only the compositional implications and possibilities of the elements. There is also a dialogue between the style and soundscape of the original pieces (determined by the use of classical instruments recorded at a certain time in a certain space) and the techniques of current music production. The use of studio effects in manipulating the space and time of sound, its reverb, pitch, timbre and morphology adds another layer of expression absent in the original material.
Samples in Ligeticitations are not simply rearranged, looped or juxtaposed. Rather they are layered to form a kind of “meta-composition” which compresses a longer composition into a shorter time span or many compositions into a single piece. (Prof. Jo Ellen Jacobs claims that if musical composition is the structuring of time, then the repetitiveness of popular music is literally a waste of time. Ironically, one can save even more time thanks to studio techniques used by popular music.)
Ligeticitations are mostly assembled “manually”, i.e. without the use of a tempo grid. Although the editing still takes place on a computer, the result is much more organic as is the case when working with tape and scissors. The compositions were in part created for the modern dance performance S dovolením! by the SPOLK dance troupe. The show should premiere in the Ponec theatre in Prague in July 2021.
1. Ligeticitations 1: Intro 02:30
2. Ligeticitations 2: Chamber Concerto 05:43
3. Ligeticitations 3: Étude 2: Cordes à vide 03:00
4. Ligeticitations 4: 6 Bagatelles for Wind Quintet 04:44
5. Ligeticitations 5: String Quartet No. 1 03:48
6. Ligeticitations 6: Chamber Concerto: Calmo, sostenuto 05:10
7. Ligeticitations 7: Poème symphonique 04:29
8. Ligeticitations 8: Lux Aeterna 04:52
9. Ligeticitations 9: Outro 02:09
Author: Ondřej Galuška
Mastering: Ondřej Ježek
