The combination of new insights into Ligeti by people who knew him with new analytical approaches will make this a core publication not only for Ligeti scholars, but also for readers interested in post-war music history and in Hungarian culture. Shortlisted for the RPS Music Award 2012 for Creative Communication. György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds offers a new assessment of a composer whose constant exploration of new sound worlds- based on the musics of different cultures and ages - contributed in crucial ways to making him one of the most important musical voices of the last 50 years. The book combines texts by former students, colleagues and friends, who reflect on different and so far unknown aspects of Ligeti's persona, with new musicological interpretations of his style and several of his main works. Among the contributors are some of the most eminent Ligeti scholars, including Richard Steinitz and Paul Griffiths. Louise Duchesneau, Ligeti's assistant of over 20 years, acts not only as contributor but also as co-editor of the volume. Many of the musicological chapters are based on studies of Ligeti's sketches, which are now housed by the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basle and were made available for research only recently. Two close collaborators representing disciplines which deeply interested Ligeti - Heinz-Otto Peitgen (a mathematician who introduced Ligeti to fractal geometry, which influenced many if his works since 1985) and Simha Arom (an ethnomusicologist who acquainted Ligeti with the complex rhythmic patters of the music of Sub-saharan Africa) - also reflect on the composer for the very first time in writing. The combination of new insights into Ligeti by people who knew him with new analytical approaches will make this a core publication not only for Ligeti scholars, but also for readers interested in music of the second half of the twentieth century and in Hungarian culture. WOLFGANG MARX is Lecturer in Music, University College Dublin. LOUISE DUCHESNEAU was Ligeti's assistant for 20 years Contributors: SIMHA AROM, JONATHAN W. BERNARD, CIAR�N CRILLY, LOUISE DUCHESNEAU, BENJAMIN DWYER, TIBORC FAZEKAS, PAUL GRIFFITHS, ILDIKÓ M�NDI-FAZEKAS, WOLFGANG MARX, HEINZ-OTTO PEITGEN, FRIEDEMANN SALLIS, WOLFGANG-ANDREAS SCHULTZ, MANFRED STAHNKE, RICHARD STEINITZ

The term 'music sketch' relates to the vast variety of documents that are used by composers to work out a musical technique or idea and to prepare their work for performance or publication. These documents can often provide crucial insights into authorship, biography, editorial practice and musical analysis. This introduction provides students and scholars with the knowledge and skills they need to embark on research projects involving the study of composers' working documents. Presenting examples of the compositional process over a 400-year period, it includes a selection of detailed case studies on how sketches were created and the techniques that were used, such as transcription and the sorting of loose leaves. Numerous illustrations of manuscripts and autographs, many of which have never been published before, show how these vital documents can be used to better understand compositional processes.

This indispensable handbook, first published in 2004, explains how scholars and students should work with and think about the composer's working manuscripts. This book surveys the knowledge necessary to work efficiently in archives and libraries housing this material and with the skills and techniques specifically related to sketch studies: transcription, reconstructing sketchbooks, deciphering handwriting, dating documents. It deals with the music of important twentieth-century composers and presents visual examples of manuscripts from the collections of world-renowned institutions such as the Paul Sacher Foundation. The book aims to make the work of both researchers and students more efficient and rewarding.

This indispensable handbook explains how scholars and students should work with and think about the composer's working manuscripts. Over the past quarter century, the scholarly study of autograph sources has exploded and nowhere is this more true than in the field of twentieth-century music. And yet, few if any courses or seminars broach the subject of sketch studies and the skills required to examine the manuscripts. This book surveys the knowledge necessary to work efficiently in archives and libraries housing this material and with the skills and techniques specifically related to sketch studies: transcription, reconstructing sketchbooks, deciphering handwriting, dating documents. It deals with the music of important twentieth-century composers and presents visual examples of manuscripts from the collections of world renowned institutions such as the Paul Sacher Foundation. The book aims to make the work of both researchers and students more efficient and rewarding.

During the twentieth century, electronic technology enabled the explosive development of new tools for the production, performance, dissemination and conservation of music. The era of the mechanical reproduction of music has, rather ironically, opened up new perspectives, which have contributed to the revitalisation of the performer's role and the concept of music as performance. This book examines questions related to music that cannot be set in conventional notation, reporting and reflecting on current research and creative practice primarily in live electronic music. It studies compositions for which the musical text is problematic, that is, non-existent, incomplete, insufficiently precise or transmitted in a nontraditional format. Thus, at the core of this project is an absence. The objects of study lack a reliably precise graphical representation of the work as the composer or the composer/performer conceived or imagined it. How do we compose, perform and study music that cannot be set in conventional notation? The authors of this book examine this problem from the complementary perspectives of the composer, the performer, the musical assistant, the audio engineer, the computer scientist and the musicologist.

This book examines the impact place and displacement can have on the composition and interpretation of Western art music, using as its primary objects of study the work of Istvan Anhalt (1919-2012), Gyoergy Kurtag (1926-), and Sandor Veress (1907-92). Although all three composers are of Hungarian origin, their careers followed radically different paths. Whereas, Kurtag remained in Budapest for most of his career, Anhalt and Veress left: the former in 1946 and immigrated to Canada and the latter in 1948 and settled in Switzerland. All three composers have had an extraordinary impact in the cultural environments within which their work took place. In the first section, ""Place and Displacement,"" contributors examine what happens when composers and their music migrate in the culturally complex world of the late twentieth century. The past one hundred years produced record numbers of refugees, and this fact is now beginning to resonate in the study of music. As Anhalt himself forcefully asserts, however, not all composers who emigrate should be understood as exiles. The first chapters of this book explore some of the problems and questions surrounding this issue. Essays in the second section, ""Perspectives on Reception, Analysis, and Interpretation,"" look at how performing acts of interpretation on music implies bringing the time, place, and identity of the musician, the analyst, and the teacher to bear on the object of study. Like Kodaly, Kurtag considers his work to be ""naturally"" embedded in Hungarian culture, but he is also a quintessentially European artist. Much of his production - he is one of the twentieth century's most prolific composers of vocal music - involves the setting of Hungarian texts, but in the late 1970s his cultural horizons expanded to include texts in Russian, German, French, English, and ancient Greek. The book explores how musicologists' divergent cultural perspectives impinge on the interpretation of this work. The final section, ""The Presence of the Past and Memory in Contemporary Music,"" examines the impact time and memory can have on notions of place and identity in music. All living art taps into the personal and collective past in one way or another. The final four chapters look at various aspects of this relationship.

During the twentieth century, electronic technology enabled the explosive development of new tools for the production, performance, dissemination and conservation of music. The era of the mechanical reproduction of music has, rather ironically, opened up new perspectives, which have contributed to the revitalisation of the performer's role and the concept of music as performance. This book examines questions related to music that cannot be set in conventional notation, reporting and reflecting on current research and creative practice primarily in live electronic music. It studies compositions for which the musical text is problematic, that is, non-existent, incomplete, insufficiently precise or transmitted in a nontraditional format. Thus, at the core of this project is an absence. The objects of study lack a reliably precise graphical representation of the work as the composer or the composer/performer conceived or imagined it. How do we compose, perform and study music that cannot be set in conventional notation? The authors of this book examine this problem from the complementary perspectives of the composer, the performer, the musical assistant, the audio engineer, the computer scientist and the musicologist.