Continuum (Ligeti)
Continuum for harpsichord is a musical composition by György Ligeti composed in 1968, and dedicated to the contemporary harpsichordist, Antoinette Vischer. The composer describes the conception and result of its technique:
I thought to myself, what about composing a piece that would be a paradoxically continuous sound, something like
sound impulses in rapid succession which create the impression of continuous sound.
Amy Bauer (2004, p. 130) describes the piece as
This piece has also been arranged for barrel organ and for two player pianos by the composer.
The piece has also been compared by classical music reviewers to the magnetic fluctuations of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko as detected by the space probe Philae after the fluctuations were artistically sonificated by a German composer and sound designer to make them audible.[1][2]
Ligeti also wrote two subsequent works for solo harpsichord: Passacaglia ungherese (1978) and Hungarian Rock (Chaconne) (1978).
References
- ^ "Behind the scenes of 'The Singing Comet'". Rosetta blog. Retrieved 18 October 2017.
- ^ Tim Edwards, "Music emitted rom Comet 67P sounds an awful lot like 20th-century harpsichord masterpiece", classic fm, 14 November 2014
Sources
- Bauer, Amy (2004). "'Tone-Color, Movement, Changing Harmonic Planes': Cognition, Constraints and Conceptual Blends", The Pleasure of Modernist Music. University of Rochester Press. ISBN 1-58046-143-3.
- Ligeti in Conversation. Cited in Bauer.
- Sass (1992). Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought. New York: Basic Books. Cited in Bauer.
- Amazon.com (2007) Amazon.com: Ligeti: Mechanical Music: Music: Gyorgy Ligeti, Pierre Charial, Jürgen Hocker, Françoise Terrioux (accessed April 14, 2007)
- Ligeti, György, Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, and Claude Samuel. György Ligeti in Conversation with Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, Claude Samuel, and Himself. London: Eulenburg, 1983.
- "Jede zeitliche Folge von Tönen, Klängen, musikalischen Gestalten" hat Rhythmus. Über die Rhythmik in Ligetis Cembalostück Continuum von Peter Petersen, 2008, PDF on: www.saitenspiel.org
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