György Ligeti - RIP

[cecilia]

My friend sent me this:

Hungarian composer György Ligeti died Monday. He was  83. Ligeti passed away in Vienna, Austria, after  battling a long illness and spending the last three weeks confined to a wheelchair. Best known for his work on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's cult classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ligeti was regarded as one of the world's leading 20th-century musical pioneers.

He won early critical acclaim for his 1958 electronic composition Artikulation and the orchestral Apparitions, gaining notoriety for a technique he called "micropolyphony." Ligeti spoke six languages, including his native Hungarian, German, French, and English. His former assistant and editor Stephen Ferguson, says, "He was one of the few avant-garde composers who found his way into the modern program. He reintroduced techniques of polyphony out of the  tradition of Bach and Palestrina with a playful and  innovative sense of sound. He developed a new sound -  cluster sound - which fascinated Kubrick and propelled  Ligeti to the top of the great composers of the second  half of the 20th century."

[Wain]

:cry:

I spent the better part of last year analyzing his concerto for 13 instrumentalists.


I love his work, it's absolutely fascinating.

His "Poeme Symphonique" (for 100 metronomes) is hilarious and awesome!

Micropolphonic techniques have been a big influence on my more atonal work.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

[Hyperspeed]

2001: A Space Odyssey... now there's a boring film, no wonder the monkeys were killing each other. I thought the music from that was Vivaldi or Gustav Holst.

If you ask me, John Williams will be classed as a genius to future generations. Not very 'arty farty' but his music always seems to make a difference to a film - gives it that air of urgency, magic, gentleness and wonder.

[Wain]

Scoring for film is radically different from composing for concert...and while John Williams music is absolutely fabulous for what it is, it is also extremely unimpressive in many cases....too much similarity between his themes is the most common complaint.  This is not to say I do not admire him, the man is one hell of a tunesmith, and his ability to play the subtext of a scene is outstanding, but he's incomparable to Ligeti in terms of their respective contributions to modern compositional techniques.  Regardless, you are quite correct in your assertion that Williams will be immortalized as a composer (he in fact, already is), film scoring is the only major compositional art form where you get to be famous before you're dead...lol

Film scoring is a very interesting work in itself, and the current people who are on top (Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, John Williams, etc...) are extremely good at their jobs.  I just met Hans on Friday at the first Film Composers expo in Hollywood, he's absolutely hilarious.

I really want to hear Alex North's (I think it was North, I could be remembering it wrong) original score for 2001...North was king of the film composers for quite awhile at one point.

I do have to say that I like the irony in you thinking the Ligeti may have been Holst, while you praise Williams...I'm sure you are aware of this, but for people who don't know, much of the thematic content from star wars is liberally borrowed from/inspired by Holst's Planets Suite.  Especially in the way the orchestration is arranged.

[countzero]

what about basil poledouris ? I really adore his work at Conan soundtracks.

[Hyperspeed]

When I listen to orchestral music it oftens bores the living daylights out of me. However I do visualise how each section of the piece could be applied to a particular scene in a movie and suddenly everything becomes interesting.

Maybe this is what John Williams likes to do, maybe everyone does this - inspiration is a great way to lead.

I must say Requiem is rather beyond my imagination.

I have attended performances of Karl Jenkins' work (a modern British composer), his 'The Armed Man' with it's 9/11 sequence is quite rousing. He's done a lot of tunes for commercials (people in the UK would recognise the little boy diving for pearls on the insurance advert) and has sold Platinum.

Get a few tunes of his, it's somewhere between classical and modern reference music.

Oddly, I like Celtic music like Enya's stuff too.