Ligeti – Raum – Interpretation

Space and interpretation are of far-reaching importance for the music of György Ligeti, both as compositional and as practical performance categories. Space exists as imaginary sound space and analytical tonal space, but also as real performance space. Similarly, in Ligeti's work, interpretation – singing and playing – is encountered as both the material of composition and the performative realisation of works. Up to now, musicology, largely following Ligeti's theoretical considerations, has dealt primarily with space as an imaginary sound space and analytical tonal space, as well as, albeit to a lesser extent, with interpretation – with playing processes – as the material of composition. So far, she has hardly or not at all dealt with the performative parts of the two categories.

These will be the main subject of the international symposium Ligeti – Space – Interpretation, made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. With regard to the interpretation of Ligeti's works, four major thematic areas suggest themselves:

Ligeti and his interpreters. Ligeti kept a wary eye on the performance of his works and, as Walter Levin, the primarius of the LaSalle Quartet, writes, could become “very unpleasant” in the process. Who were Ligeti's interpreters, some of them highly prominent, and what was his relationship to them?

Ligeti's performance aesthetic. Ligeti attached such importance to accompanying the rehearsals of his works and to conveying his conception and view to the interpreters that one might think he had a very specific performance aesthetic. What did this look like, not least regarding the always precarious relationship between textual accuracy and expressivity?

History of the interpretation of Ligeti's works. Many of Ligeti's works are still widely performed and recorded today, both by interpreters from the new music field and by those who otherwise tend to cultivate the classical-romantic repertoire. What can be said about the extensive history of interpretation of Ligeti's works, which now spans many decades?

A workshop with renowned Ligeti interpreters who have not only played and recorded several of his works but have also rehearsed or rehearsed them with the composer, will provide the opportunity to experience first and second-hand ideas about the interpretation of the works as well as to observe how today's young interpreters react to them.

Regarding the space, the following aspects will be addressed: In which works and in what way did Ligeti make compositional use of real spatial arrangements, or why did he largely disregard this creative device that was widely used by his contemporaries? What role do imaginary sound or tonal spaces, spatially associated formal arrangements (“notched space”) and historical and geographical spaces play in the interpretation and analysis of Ligeti's works? With all the focus on the performative side of space and interpretation, the international research community should also be stimulated to new approaches to these aspects as compositional categories, as well as to reflections on the interpenetration of compositional and performance-related categories.

Further information:
simpk.de

Dates

February 14 – 15, 2023
Musikinstrumenten-Museum Berlin, Curt-Sachs-Saal