States of Balance and Turbulence

In 1957 György Ligeti had recently immigrated to Cologne and was learning about the developments of the avant-garde while working in the electronic music studio of the WDR. His output from this period includes an unfinished work, Pièce électronique nr. 3, a fascinating, yet virtually unknown composition, originally conceived as Atmosphères – the title later used for his orchestral composition of 1961. Pièce électronique nr. 3 looks forward to the innovative texture-driven orchestral compositions for which Ligeti became famous, but also reflects the influence of serialism as practiced by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The serial electronic music composed at the WDR in the 1950s offers a unique perspective on stages of theoretical planning and their relationships to audible realizations; the extensive sketches for this piece are no exception. The piece uses a consistent series of odd numbers to generate durations and pitch material for both small and large scale structures; it also uses sine tones as the predominant type of material, arranged in a way reminiscent of Stockhausen’s structure-group-forms. Shortly after this composition, Ligeti criticized aspects of serial practice, including duration rows and serialized dynamics, and moved away from this theoretical model. Along with comments in interviews, Ligeti’s approach to dynamics in this piece illustrates a significant difference in the artistic ends which Ligeti and Stockhausen sought. The use of such non-serialized parameters as determinants of large-scale form becomes increasingly characteristic in Ligeti’s style in Apparitions and Atmosphères; moreover, the basic shape of Pièce électronique nr. 3 closely resembles the form of the first movement of Apparitions. Thus elements discovered through serial pre-planning in the electronic medium were ultimately realized in non-serial orchestral works.