Ligeti Triads PDF

ERIC DROTT
THE ROLE OF TRIADIC HARMONY IN LIGETI'S RECENT MUSIC
I
A remarkable feature of Gyorgy Ligeti's music dating from the late 1970s is
the return of triads, seventh chords and other traditional tertian harmonies.
In the 1960s, he received acclaim for works such as Atmospheres and the
Requiem, which stressed the textural and timbral shaping of clusters at the
expense of harmony as it is traditionally understood. In contrast, his latest
compositions make frequent use of triadic sonorities, albeit placed in
unfamiliar contexts (one would be hard-pressed to describe his recent music
as neo-tonal).1 The triad, previously scorned for its recollections of tonal
practice, is now tolerated. Manifestations of this tendency can be seen in
works such as Hungarian Rock, Passacaglia ungarese, the piano etudes Arc-
en-ciel and Cordes a vide, and the Horn Trio. Perhaps the clearest instance of
his new approach to harmony occurs in the opening section of his fourth
etude, Fanfares (shown in Ex. 1).2
The harmonies in phrase 1 of Fanfares are a result of the coincidence of the
ostinato in the left hand and the more melodic dyads in the right hand. The
ostinato (which runs throughout the entire piece) is composed of a diatonic
tetrachord and its transposition by a tritone the first tetrachord begins on c
(c, d, e, f), the second on f] (f], g], a], b). This simple bipartite structure
conflicts with the asymmetric metre, which divides the bar into three uneven
beats of 3+2+3 quavers (these units are brought out by accents in the
ostinato), accenting the notes c, f and g]. The right hand's dyads coincide with
these accented ostinato notes. From the perspective of set theory, the resultant
simultaneities are trichords of set-class 311. Later, the addition of a fourth
note to the texture expands the harmonic palette to include 427 tetrachords in
phrase 3, 310 trichords in phrase 4 and 420 tetrachords in phrase 5. From the
perspective of traditional harmonic practice, these chords are nothing other
than a series of triads and seventh chords major triads in phrase 1, minor
triads in phrase 2. In phrase 3, the addition of an extra note to various chords
(placed a third below the root of the triads) introduces minor seventh chords.
In phrase 4, diminished triads first appear. And in the final phrase in this
section (phrase 5), major seventh chords enter.
Although these verticals may be identified easily enough, it is more difficult
to determine how they function in the present context. Reference to tonal
Music Analysis, 22/iii (2003) 283

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284 ERIC DROTT
Ex. 1 Fanfares, bars 117
C F D A E F B A
D A F B A F E G
d f a b c a c
f g a b f a g f d c c
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practice is oblique at best. Fanfares engages with, as Mike Searby writes, `the
vocabulary but not the syntax of tonal music'.3 What is retained of this
`vocabulary' is the constitution of the harmonies themselves. They are all
tertian sonorities; or, as the excerpt from Fanfares indicates, they are all chords
built upon the foundation of the triad. This is evident in the expansion of the
major triads of phrase 1 into minor seventh chords in phrase 3. In phrase 1,
when the dyads are situated above the ostinato, the resulting triads are
exclusively major (C, F, D[, A[, etc.); in phrase 2, when the dyads are below
the ostinato, the resulting triads are exclusively minor (D, F, A, B[, etc.). In
phrase 3, the dyads return to the upper register, and the chords are major once
again at least until the entry of the C minor seventh chord in bar 23. The
conceptual origin of this simultaneity is clear: the C minor seventh is the
product of an E[ major triad plus c.
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TRIADIC HARMONY IN LIGETI'S RECENT MUSIC 285
Further complicating the role of the triads and seventh chords in Fanfares is
the consistent stratification of the texture into two seemingly independent
layers. The contrast in character and function between the two parts is
apparent: the rigid and unvarying ostinato sets off the more fluid, apparently
improvisatory succession of dyads. The simultaneities produced from the
conjunction of these two parts are not pronounced; the fact that they only come
into being by straddling two separate textural strands weakens their sense of
cohesion. Nevertheless, there is a covert relationship established early in the
piece between the two parts, which delimits the fund of harmonies available at
any given moment. Since the dyads coincide with accented ostinato notes, and
since the ostinato is (by definition) not subject to alteration, only a handful of
harmonies is feasible. According to this constraint, the dyad falling on the
downbeat of the notated bar in phrase 1 may harmonise with the c in the
ostinato in three ways, forming a C major, an A[ major or an F major triad. In
phrase 2, the same note in the ostinato yields a C minor, an A minor or an F
minor triad. Beyond this, there are no hard-and-fast rules that determine
which particular harmony `should' or `should not' be used. (The only
succession that Ligeti consistently avoids is direct repetition of a chord. Even
though the ostinato's c and f can both be harmonised with an F major triad,
there is no occasion when both notes are harmonised with the same chord
consecutively.) This method of arranging the harmonies ensures not only that
the music will avoid clear-cut tonal progressions, but also that the musical
surface, taken as a whole, will be more or less chromatic.
One way of accounting for the incongruity between diatonic harmonies and
the overall chromatic pitch space they occupy not to mention the incongruity
between the presence of triads (the quintessential markers of tonal music) and
their resolutely non-tonal setting would be to place Ligeti's late music under
the rubric of the postmodern. Certainly, these works represent a renunciation
of the (late) modernist concern for stylistic consistency and purity, leaning
instead towards a more inclusive musical language. Yet this way of under-
standing his recent music may turn out to be trivial, if postmodernism is taken
as a periodising term; by this measure, everything written in the past twenty-
five to thirty years is, in one way or another, postmodern. Furthermore, it is
vital not to use the term `postmodern' simply as shorthand for musical
syncretism that is, it is vital not to efface what is distinctive about this
restorative gesture.4 Saying that the use of triadic harmony is postmodern does
not say much, given the breadth and vagueness of this term. To do Ligeti's
harmonic practice justice, one needs to situate it more precisely. For, as
Frederic Jameson has pointed out, there are às many different forms of
postmodernisms as there were high modernisms in place, since the former are
. . . specific and local reactions against these models'.5 Jameson's observation
suggests that the best way to approach Ligeti's `rediscovery' of triadic harmony
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286 ERIC DROTT
is to read it through the lens of the specific, local modernisms to which it

responds. And this in turn suggests that there is not a single exclusionary logic
that explains the prohibition of triadic harmony during the ascendancy of
atonal and serial music in the 1950s, but that there are a number of logics,
which must be explored in their own particularity. To this end, I will begin by
discussing two arguments against the use of the triad in modern music those
posited by Pierre Boulez and Theodor Adorno before returning to Fanfares
to see how it may counter such arguments.6
But two disclaimers are in order one terminological, the other historical.
Firstly, I will use the term `triadic harmony' throughout this article to refer to
the entire range of tertian sonorities that have their conceptual basis in the
triad. In many cases, this usage reflects the actual processes at work in Ligeti's
later music, where seventh and ninth chords are the products of adding notes
onto a triadic substrate (such is the case in Fanfares). Furthermore, I will use
this term in a deliberately loose manner, since the harmonies he employs are as
much symbolic entities as they are generative or syntactic ones. His late works
may allude to functional harmony, without invoking functions as such: they are
empty referents. But although clear-cut tonal function may be lacking, these
chords play upon (and against) an essential quality shared by triads and
seventh chords their relative harmoniousness. As Boulez's and Adorno's
comments on triadic harmony will demonstrate, the problem posed by triads
(and, by extension, seventh chords) is not simply their potential to invoke tonal
convention, but their ability to fuse individual pitches into a single,
supervenient entity. It is the ease with which triads and seventh chords are
able to `coalesce', to come together as single perceptual units relative to non-
tertian sonorities, that is at issue in Ligeti's later works an ease that is as much
the product of the acculturated familiarity of these harmonies as of psycho-
acoustical factors.
Secondly, it should be noted that Ligeti's belated response to the positions
staked out by Boulez and Adorno is indirect in nature. His reaction to the
modernist aesthetic typified by these two authors takes shape as a reaction to
the modernist impulse found in his own works of the 1950s and 1960s. By
subjecting his own compositional past to a form of self-reflexive critique, he is
able not only to create a new compositional style, but also to sever his lingering
association with Darmstadt. In an essay written in the 1980s, he muses on the
àging' of modern music: `the modernism and the experimental avant-garde of
the fifties and sixties, don't they seem to be passe, part of history, part of the
academy as well?'7 He then qualifies this thinly veiled attack on what has
become a safely canonical modernism by applying the same critique to his own
former style. He recognises that if the avant-gardism of the 1950s and 1960s
has become senescent, then his own music must be rejuvenated as well to avoid
the same fate. Rather than repeating proven formulae, he declares himself in

favour of à modernism of today': `For me, this signifies in the first place a
distancing vis-a-vis the total chromaticism and the dense polyphonic tissues
that had characterized my music at the end of the fifties and the beginning of
the sixties.'8
Ligeti's attempt to transcend modernism can be read as an attempt to
transcend his own prior domination by modernism's various taboos, and
thereby to assert his independence as a composer. But to achieve this
independence, he is compelled to distance himself in turn from what he
considers to be the empty fashion of postmodernism (which he, like many
German critics, tends to equate with neo-romanticism in music):9
We live in a period of artistic pluralism. While modernism and even the
experimental avant-garde still exist, `post-modern' artistic movements are
increasingly manifest. `Pre-modern' would, however, be a more accurate way of
describing these movements, for the artists who take part in them are interested
in restoring historic elements and forms: naturalism in painting, columns,
cupolas and tympana in architecture, and, in music, the recovery of both
tonality and rhythmic-melodic figures impregnated with expressionistic pathos.
The syntax of the nineteenth century is present in all the arts.10
This disdain for the postmodern the notion that it represents a callow
restoration of the past explains in part Ligeti's desire to institute a
`modernism of today' (even though his stark opposition of the modern and
postmodern betrays a continuing loyalty to the sort of binary logic that
postmodern thought allegedly replaces). It is my contention that Ligeti's use of
the triad in his music dating from the late 1970s onwards exemplifies this
desire, a desire to negotiate a position between what he sees as the totalising
(and thus reductive) claims of modernism and postmodernism a position
between a blind affirmation or an equally blind negation of convention.
II
In his lectures on composition given at Darmstadt in 1960, Boulez accounted
for the exclusion of triads in serialism over the course of an extended
digression. The reason for avoiding such harmonies, he argued, has little to do
with their stylistic or structural inconsistency within an atonal context. Rather,
Boulez's primary justification for excluding the triad has to do with its
potential to interfere with the perception of serial structures. He begins by
describing the problem posed by octaves:
. . . octaves create a weakening or hole in the succession of sound relationships by
way of reinstating a principle of identity denied by the other sounds, so that
they are at variance with the principle of structural organization in the world in
which they appear; . . . octaves must be completely avoided, at the risk of
structural nonsense.11

288 ERIC DROTT
In other words, he claims that the identity of pitch-class in octaves is so strong

that it conflicts with the serial ordering in which the octaves are embedded.
The relative salience of the octave sets it apart from the rest of the texture,
which undermines the intended serial groupings. Thus, octaves create simple
relationships that cut through the complex pitch structures of serial music.
Boulez continues by including triads in his list of proscribed sonorities:
. . . the same applies to common triads, not only when they appear in their own
vertical dimension but also if they are the products of the superposition of
several horizontal structures. As with octaves, they reinstate the principle of
identity denied by all the other sounds . . .12
He gives an excerpt from Webern's String Quartet, Op. 28, to illustrate this
point, without providing any commentary. Ex. 2 is a reproduction of this
excerpt. Based on his discussion, it appears that his dissatisfaction with the
passage stems from the two chords he marks (F] major and D major), which
ostensibly distract the listener from the work's motivic structure. The
pertinent ìnformation' contained in this passage, for him, resides in its
motivic structure; the triads are nothing but noise.
Adorno's treatment of the triad charts similar territory, but in a more
nuanced way. In his early writings, he is open to the idea that conventional
musical language might still be employed in a critical fashion by ironising or
subverting it. He does not exclude the residue of musical tradition a priori, but
rather deems it to be of value so long as it is defamiliarised by the composer and
thus turned into a vehicle for social and musical critique. Thus, in his essay,
Òn the Social Situation of Music', he views the music of a composer such as
Weill in a generally positive light.13 By the time Adorno had written Philosophy
Ex. 2 Excerpt from Webern, String Quartet, Op. 28 (taken from Pierre
Boulez, Boulez on Music Today, Ex. 10)
[013] poco rit.
( pizz. ) arco pizz.
Violin I
[013]
( pizz. )
Violin II
[013]
( pizz. ) arco
Viola
[013]
[013]
Cello
F major D major

of Modern Music, however, his position had become more rigid. Here he treats
the triad as particularly susceptible to ideological distortion, arguing that the
sense of accord intrinsic to this sonority, while tempting, presents a specious
image of reconciliation to listeners. In a thoroughly antagonistic society, one
that not only promotes but also feeds upon alienation and social fragmentation,
such an audible token of social harmony becomes false. Furthermore, the
absorption of discrete notes into a single, fused harmony suggests that the
sense of accord manifest by the triad is grounded in a regressive form of
domination. This latter point hinges upon his striking phenomenological
reading of the sonority:
The more dissonant a chord, the more sounds contained . . . the more
`polyphonic' is this chord . . . The predominance of dissonance seems to
destroy rational, `logical' relationships. Dissonance is nevertheless still more
rational than consonance, insofar as it articulates with great clarity the
relationship of the sounds occurring within [the chord] no matter how complex
instead of achieving a dubious unity through the destruction of those partial
moments . . . through `homogeneous' sound.14
Like Boulez, Adorno notes that the triad possesses a force of attraction, but he
goes further in claiming that the cohesion of the triad effectively effaces its
constituent pitches. The audible unity of the triad is purchased at the expense
of the individual note. Hence, the image of social harmony that the triad
projects is reactionary in character, a throwback to a historical situation where
the unity of the social organism was vouchsafed by a transparent form of
domination (feudalism). Instead of a progressive surpassing of alienation, then,
the triad is emblematic for Adorno of a wholly regressive subordination of the
individual with respect to the totality; instead of confronting the social
antagonisms inherent in a class-based society, the embrace of the triad by
modern composers would disguise these contradictions at the aesthetic level.
In contrast, Adorno sees dissonant sonorities as symbolically resisting such a
regressive form of domination, since they do not absorb discrete notes into a
single, unified sonority. Not only is the dissonant sonority valorised for its
intrinsic `polyphony'15 i.e. its refusal to subvert the impulses of the
individual notes in favour of a single, global impulse but also because it better
reflects the social fragmentation and alienation endemic in advanced
capitalism, and in this regard is considered to be more honest to the structure
and experience of modernity.16
Let us return now to Fanfares, to evaluate it in relation to Boulez's and
Adorno's arguments. What is striking about this and other etudes is their
adamant emphasis on the horizontal, rather than the vertical, dimension.
Despite the presence of triadic harmony, whose intrinsic tendency is to fuse
these two polyphonic layers together into a single consonant sonority, the

290 ERIC DROTT
Ex. 3 Stratification in the opening of Fanfares (bars 17)
(3 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 2) (3 + 3 + 2 + 3 +
5 5
(3 + 2 + 3) etc.
3 3 3
3) (2 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 3) (3 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 2)
5 5
3 3 3 3
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layers manage to maintain a strong degree of independence from one another.

The source of this independence lies in the conflicting rhythmic organisation
of the two layers (as Ex. 3 shows). Whereas the ostinato is three `beats' long
(the `beats' being uneven groups of two and three quavers), the dyads' phrases
are five `beats' long, keeping the two parts out of alignment. As a result, the
dyads' rhythmic patterning is irregular, constantly changing with respect to the
ostinato. The dyads' first melodic unit has the rhythm 3+2+3+3+2; the
second has the rhythm 3+3+2+3+3; and the third has the rhythm
2+3+3+2+3. It is only with the fourth melodic unit that the rhythmic
patterning of the dyads begins to repeat, completing the cycle.
The two parts lack a sense of coordination at the level of the phrase, a fact
that is compounded by the repetitions of the ostinato. The lack of variation in
the ostinato reinforces the sense that the two parts proceed along separate
tracks, diminishing the salience of any vertical formed by the coincidence of
the two layers. Although the parts do come into alignment once every five bars,
the asynchronous phrase structure of the parts denies a sense of textural
coherence. In this respect, Fanfares is representative of Ligeti's later works, in
that the simplicity of its harmonies stands in contrast to the complexity of its
rhythm. Indeed, this excerpt shows how the use of triads intersects with
another preoccupation of his recent work, namely the exploration of rhythmic
and metric dissonance. The two tendencies seem to go hand in hand: harmonic
consonance offsets rhythmic/metric dissonance and vice versa. It is hardly a
coincidence that Ligeti's restoration of the triad in the late 1970s occurs at
roughly the same time as his first attempts to synthesise the dual influences of

Conlon Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano and the polyrhythmic intricacies
of sub-Saharan music.17 The result of this conjunction is that metric and
harmonic dimensions are placed in conflict with one another. The two
dimensions pull in opposite directions: the consonant harmonies tend to unify
the texture, while the multiplicity of rhythmic patterns stratifies it.
This conflict between horizontal and vertical dimensions is hardly new to
Western music; it is simply that Ligeti's works exacerbate a feature present in
all polyphonic music. Both his later music and more traditional contrapuntal
genres play off the perceptual difficulties involved in focusing one's attention
on multiple simultaneous structures. As the theorist James Wright and the
psychologist Albert Bregman have asserted, auditory processes possess the
Gestalt principle of `belongingness', which consists in `the tendency for a
particular piece of sensory evidence to be allocated to one or another perceived
object, but not to both at once'.18 The consequence of this principle is that it
sets simultaneously unfolding dimensions at odds with one another, so that our
ability to perceive coherence in one dimension curtails our ability to perceive
coherence in the other. That is to say, it is easy to hear a note as part of a line or
as part of a chord, but it is difficult to hear a note as part of both at the same
time. This sheds light on Adorno's criticism of the triad: because of its
acoustical consonance and cultural familiarity, it always threatens to outweigh
the polyphonic impulse of the individual notes. Wright and Bregman assert
that
if the factors favoring the sequential grouping of the components are stronger,
the fusion of simultaneous elements may be inhibited. Similarly, if the factors
favoring simultaneous fusion dominate, the components may be restricted from
grouping sequentially with other components that resemble them.19
Bearing this in mind, it is easy to see how Ligeti's organisation of rhythm and
harmony at the opening of Fanfares addresses the listener's inability to attend
fully to both line and chord at the same time. Both present the listener with
structured perceptual objects. The rhythmic and textural independence of the
parts is conducive to stratification, whereas the sheer familiarity of the triad is
conducive to cohesion. Since it is difficult to concentrate on both structures at
the same time, listeners will tend to focus on one more than the other: one
plane is foregrounded, and the other is `heard' (if not `listened to' as such). And
since the factors favouring auditory streaming more often than not outweigh
those favouring vertical cohesion in his recent works, it is more likely that
listeners will direct their attention towards the horizontal dimension. The
consonance of the triad is present, but it is relegated to a secondary position in
the perceptual field.
Even if Ligeti's music from the late 1970s onwards manipulates some of the
same characteristics that guide conventional polyphony, it is nonetheless clear

292 ERIC DROTT
that his music uses them for an entirely different purpose. Wright and
Bregman, whose article addresses the rules of traditional counterpoint, note
that the conflict between horizontal and vertical structures is often used as a
means of lessening the phenomenal impact of dissonance. For instance, the
stepwise preparation and resolution of dissonances in strict counterpoint
affords enough cohesion in the horizontal dimension that the discord present in
the vertical dimension tends to be weakened. From this perspective, the
continuity provided by something as simple as a passing-note helps to soften
the impact of non-harmonic notes by deflecting attention away from whatever
vertical sonorities they may incidentally form with other voices.20 In most
polyphonic compositions, this principle is extended to the formal level, so that
the relative independence of the lines within phrases is redeemed by the fact
that they come together in stable, fused sonorities at points of syntactic import,
such as cadences. These points of harmonic cohesion thus take on rhetorical
significance, in that they affirm the centripetal, unifying force of the triad over
the centrifugal force of the line. But, as the excerpt from Fanfares indicates,
Ligeti turns the same attribute of conventional polyphony on its head. Here,
the factors that favour horizontal integration do not serve as a means of
suppressing dissonance, but work instead as a means of suppressing one's
perception of the consonant sonorities themselves. From this perspective, his
use of triads can be seen as a compromise between a modernism that proscribes
conventional harmonies and a tradition that demands their presence. By
situating the triad in a context that is designed to fragment texture into
seemingly unrelated layers, he is able to undercut the triad's function as a
means of unifying the texture into a whole.
III
Rhythmic and metric conflict is perhaps the most effective way of splitting
musical texture into discrete horizontal layers. But it is not the only way. Three
additional strategies undermine the fusion of vertical sonorities in Ligeti's
recent music, dividing the texture by means of harmonic collection, melodic
process or the use of repetitive figures. In this section, I shall discuss excerpts
from three works (the tenth piano etude, Der Zauberlehrling; the Alla marcia
movement from the Horn Trio; and the second piano etude, Cordes a vide) in
order to illustrate these additional strategies.
Der Zauberlehrling
Beginning in bar 66 of Der Zauberlehrling, Ligeti uses the harmonic differen-
tiation of voices to undercut the impact of triadic harmony. Throughout this

Ex. 4 Der Zauberlehrling, bars 6478

15
64
8b sempre
8b
15
67
cresc. poco a poco

15
poco a poco tre corde

f D 7 D 7 D A (D) g A 7 A f B g [027]
8
70
15
15
(cresc.)
A f D E c D [026] d A [026] g
8
73
A g A f e E B D f c E
76 8
D 7 E A d b [026] g A B B f
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294 ERIC DROTT
passage, the chromatic aggregate is divided into two discrete collections (as
seen in Ex. 4). The right hand plays melodies based on the white-note diatonic
scale, and the left hand plays melodies based on the black-note pentatonic
scale. This partitioning of the chromatic, reminiscent of Bartok, has been a
mainstay throughout Ligeti's career, serving to dilute the neutrality of total
chromaticism by distributing it into distinct collections (see, for instance, bars
1322 of Atmospheres (1961), where he partitions the aggregate in this way in
order to lend colour to an otherwise harmonically neutral cluster). This
procedure allows him to have it both ways, as it were, reconciling the ostensible
modernity of chromaticism with the ostensible conventionality of diatonicism.
The situation is complicated in this passage by the presence of triads. Each
hand presents descending scalar fragments, their entrances staggered with
respect to one another, and these overlapping lines are arranged so that a triad
is formed at the beginning of each fragment, where a new line intersects with
the end of a line in the other hand. As in Fanfares, the perception of the triads
is weakened by the segregation of the layers on the horizontal dimension. In
Der Zauberlehrling, however, it is the staggering of the lines and, more
importantly, their organisation according to two discrete harmonic spaces that
disrupts the ability of the vertical sonorities to bridge these spaces.
The Alla Marcia from the Horn Trio

In both Fanfares and the passage from Der Zauberlehrling discussed above,
rhythm plays a vital role in stratifying the horizontal dimension. In the middle
section (bars 31103) of the Alla marcia, the third movement of the Horn
Trio,21 such rhythmic differentiation of the layers is altogether lacking (the
opening bars of this section are shown in Ex. 5). Rhythmically, this section
consists of a virtually unbroken succession of crotchets; texturally, it is
homophonic, set in two voices for the most part, breaking into a thicker texture
only towards the end of the section.
There is a reason for this general lack of rhythmic and textural variation. As
it turns out, two different ordered arrangements of the chromatic aggregate
form the harmonic framework for the section. The rhythmic and textural
uniformity ensures that each of these orderings is presented as a fixed
succession of six dyads. The first of these orderings of the aggregate (Ex. 6a)
recalls the distorted `horn-call' motif that opens the first movement of the
work, transposing the motif down a major third. Similarly, the second of these
orderings (Ex. 6b) anticipates the opening of the final movement, transposing
the first three dyads of the Finale down a minor second. The two orderings
thus serve as connective tissue, linking the opening and closing movements of
the work. But the two orderings also serve to parse the section into even, four-
bar groups: two statements of ordering A are followed by two statements of

Ex. 5 Horn Trio, third movement (Alla marcia), opening bars of the middle
section
Pi mosso, ohne Akzente, sehr gleichmig und flieend / without accents, very evenly and fluid
. = 76 (ganze Takte / whole bars)
31 32 33 34 35 36 37
con sord., legato, espressivo con delicatezza
Vn
(poco)
(simile)
con sord.
sempre poco in relievo
Horn in F
(poco)
dolce, espressivo con tenerezza
espressivo con delicatezza
Klv.
Pno sempre legatissimo
38 39 40 41 42 43 44
(simile)
8
simile
ordering B, which are followed by two further statements of A, and so forth.

Irregular slurring and frequent changes in timbre prevents this section from
becoming monotonous. The phrasing contradicts the articulation of the
underlying harmonic structure.
Towards the end of the section, another factor contributes to the obscuring
of the underlying pitch structure the `filling-out' of the texture with triads
and other harmonies. Extraneous pitches begin to appear during the latter half
of the section, supplementing those that comprise the two ordered aggregates.
The first of the extraneous pitches appears at the end of bar 57, with the C] in
the horn. The addition of this pitch realises the latent harmonic potential of the

296 ERIC DROTT
Ex. 6a Ordering A of the aggregate, middle section of the Alla marcia
Ex. 6b Ordering B of the aggregate, middle section of the Alla marcia

Ordering B:
3 6 8 4 6 3
Opening dyads of Horn Trio, IV:
3 6 8
dyad with which it coincides (EG]) by forming a C] minor triad. Other

structurally `superfluous' pitches surface over the next twenty bars or so,
although it is only around bar 79 that the accretion of pitches begins in earnest.
From here until the end of the section in bar 103, more and more notes
accumulate around the series of dyads that make up the alternating orderings of
the aggregate, forming at first triads, then seventh chords and then ninth
chords. Ex. 7 is a harmonic reduction of bars 7997. The remainder of the
passage (bars 99103) continues the accumulation of pitches, burying all traces
of triadic harmony beneath the welter of notes. Diatonic clusters, followed by
chromatic clusters, gradually take the place of the triads and seventh chords.
In the Alla marcia, the horizontal and vertical dimensions still compete with
one another, albeit in a manner that is altogether different from the conflict
encountered in Fanfares and Der Zauberlehrling. On the one hand, the vertical
dimension is more cohesive than in works such as Fanfares, insofar as the extra
pitches not only harmonise with the fixed succession of dyads, but also fail to
stray rhythmically from the other part. Neither rhythm nor register slice up
pitch space into discrete, horizontal layers. There is nothing in the setting, in
the arrangement of the parts, that works against the audibility of the resulting
chords. On the other hand, there is a more subtle force that serves to
distinguish the component pitches of each harmony from one another, a force
that runs counter to the cohesion of the vertical dimension. It is not the way
that the chords are presented that leads to their fragmentation, but the
harmonies themselves the pitches that comprise them that deny their simple

Ex. 7 Harmonic reduction, Alla marcia, bars 7997

ordering: A A
79
E 7 D 7 AM7 [0146] B M/m f E 7 D 7 d A 7 g g

[0347]
B B
83
B G7 E B 7 [026] F [025] f E B [016] am 7
A A
87
A 7 g 7 c 7 am7(+g ) cm7 f m7 A M7 G7 c m7(+g) f (+g) gm7 DM7(+g)
B B
91
f 7 G7 EM7 B 7 g 7 FM7 g m7 [0246] c (+d ) cm9 A9 am7
A
95
F9 G9 c m7 [0127] gm7(+c ) AM7 E 9 [012468t] [014579]
Note: All accidentals affect the note that immediately follows. The notation reflects (roughly) the score of the Trio in spacing and
in spelling of chords. For the purposes of identifying chords, the analysis assumes enharmonic equivalence where necessary
(i.e., AD EA in bar 79 is identified as an A major seventh chord, despite the unusual spelling).
cohesion. The distinction between structural and non-structural pitches,

between the notes that make up the chromatic framework of the section and the
notes that decorate this framework, is enough to subvert the chordal texture.
Indeed, the sheer repetitiveness of the two aggregates works against the fusion
of the chords, since this not only establishes but also reinforces the two
orderings in the listener's ear.23 A makeshift hierarchy is set up within the

298 ERIC DROTT
Ex. 8 Cordes a vide, bars 116

Andantino con moto, molto tenero = 120
dolce, espr.
sempre legatiss.
Piano
m.g.
(con ped.)
3 3 3
3 3
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
sempre espr. 3
sempre espr.
Horn Trio.

horizontal dimension between the invariant dyads that form the core of the
section and the mutable notes that accompany them. It is this hierarchy a
hierarchy that is not a product of a pre-existent musical syntax, but simply the
product of repetition that derogates vertical sonorities, fixing them in a
secondary position.
Cordes a vide
Like the middle section of the Alla marcia, the opening bars of Ligeti's second
piano etude, Cordes a vide,24 are homophonic (see Ex. 8).25 Up to bar 11, both
hands play even streams of quavers, although differences in phrase length,
slurring and accentuation add a degree of rhythmic tension to the passage.
(Following bar 11, the piece introduces increasingly complicated polymetric
relationships between the two voices.) But unlike the middle section of the Alla
marcia, Cordes a vide does not differentiate the horizontal layers by means of a
quasi-hierarchical distinction between structural and non-structural pitches.
Rather, stratification arises in this work out of melodic directedness: the
pattern of descending perfect fifths that gives this piece its title (open strings)
recurs with such regularity that it stresses the linear dimension over the
harmonic. This strong horizontal impulse disguises the intervallic and
harmonic relationships created by the counterpoint of the two voices namely
the series of imbricated seventh chords that are a by-product of the ubiquitous
melodic fifths. Ex. 9 labels the seventh chords present in bars 14. Like the
remainder of the section, this four-bar excerpt is rife with such intimated
harmonies, which overlap to such a degree that multiple harmonic inter-
pretations are possible.
The left hand's line, in particular, is more predictable than the looser material
presented in the right hand. Its phrases present a sequence of seven quavers, all
of which consist of a series of descending fifths, with the final quaver serving as a
link to the following phrase. There is, in addition, a regular pattern that guides
the large-scale trajectory of the left hand's groups. The accented notes that
initiate each phrase form an ascending line (as seen in Ex. 10). At first, each
Ex. 9 Harmonic progression, Cordes a vide, bars 14

B M7 E B F M7 e m7 bm7 A M7 gm7
cm
dm7 E M7 C M7 b 7 C 7 em7 DM7 [027] d7 E 7 A M7 E M7 f m7 EM7

(no 3rd)

300 ERIC DROTT
Ex. 10 Left hand's ascent, Cordes a vide, bars 113

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13
group begins a semitone above the previous one; later, when the line deviates
from the stepwise motion, there is still some attempt to fill in the gaps. The
motion from c]2 in bar 4 to d]2 in bar 5 is followed by a compensatory downward
motion to d2 in bar 6, before the ascent resumes its course. Likewise, the groups
skip over f2 at first, proceeding from e2 in bar 7 to f]2 and then g2 in bar 8, before
`correcting' the mistake by touching upon f2 in bar 9. The only truly radical
break in this gradual ascent comes at the very end of the passage, with the skip
from f2 in bar 9 to b[2 in bar 10, a skip that effectively marks the close of the
etude's opening section.
In contrast, the right hand represents the melodically free voice during this
section, presenting the perfect fifth as a mobile motivic cell. Listening to the
piece, there is little to suggest a logic guiding the choice and juxtaposition of
these fragments; there are sudden shifts in registers, motifs break off without
warning and the transposition of motifs seems arbitrary. Analysis suggests,
however, that harmonic concerns play a role in determining the path followed
by the right hand's motifs. A case in point is the repetition of the opening motif
in bar 2, which is broken off prematurely. Ex. 11a compares the first statement
of this motif with its repetition in bars 2 and 3. At the beginning of bar 3, the
music unexpectedly leaps up to c]3 instead of returning to a2, as occurs in the
Ex. 11a
1 2
Ex. 11b
2
parallel octaves

initial statement of this motif in bar 1. Had the motif continued as before, the
series of seventh chords would have been disrupted, as Ex. 11b demonstrates;
indeed, the result would have been parallel octaves between right and left
hands.
Similar harmonic considerations guide the right hand's motion elsewhere
during the first eleven bars, with sudden breaks in the melodic line acting to
preserve the succession of seventh chords formed between the two voices. But
even if latent harmonic concerns are a motivating factor in the organisation of
the right hand's motifs, the texture ensures that these harmonies occupy a
secondary position in the listener's perceptual field. By rendering the two lines
so distinct, so independent of one another, Ligeti relegates the harmonies to
the phenomenal background, concealing the influence that harmonic
considerations exercise on the right hand's line.26 Instead of determining the
course of the lines, the vertical relationships sound more like the inadvertent
result of the coincidence of the lines.
In all of these works Fanfares, Der Zauberlehrling, the Alla marcia and
Cordes a vide horizontal and vertical dimensions are set at odds with one
another. But in each, Ligeti effects this opposition differently through
conflicts in rhythm and phrase structure in Fanfares, through the
differentiation of harmonic collections in Der Zauberlehrling, through
ostinati in the Alla marcia and through melodic process in Cordes a vide.
As a result, each of the works responds in its own way to the arguments of
Boulez and Adorno. For Boulez, the triad is problematic because of its
tendency to interfere with other structures. In Fanfares and other such
works, however, the extreme polyphonic stratification reverses the situation.
It is now the horizontal forces that interfere with the perception of the triad.
For Adorno, on the other hand, it is the tendency of the triad to obscure the
particular that casts doubts on its aesthetic and ideological legitimacy.
Clearly, the textural stratification encountered in these works forestalls the
triad's ability to conjoin the various pitches into a homogeneous unit. Yet in
order to accomplish this feat in order to dissolve the force binding
simultaneous notes together it is necessary to strengthen the force binding
successive notes together. It is the use of regular metres, predictable ostinati
and contrasting harmonic collections that ensures that the cohesive force of
the lines is commensurate with that of the harmonies. In Ligeti's works,
individual notes may escape from the domination of the triad that Adorno so
abhorred, but only by being absorbed into horizontal structures instead.

302 ERIC DROTT
IV
The interdiction on the triad in Adorno's and Boulez's writings can be traced
back to Schoenberg. Yet in his writings on the subject, Schoenberg voices
fewer objections to the consonance of the triad than either Boulez or Adorno
(which is not to say that the avoidance of consonance had no role to play in his
aesthetic considerations). Nor was his objection to the use of the triad
predicated on ideological grounds (at least not explicitly). Writing in 1926,
early on in his deployment of the twelve-note technique, Schoenberg was
sensitive to the residues of tonal practice that triads possessed. Thus, his
argument against the presence of triads in post-tonal music rests as much on
the syntactical implications these harmonies would have as on their purely
sonorous or perceptual qualities. The triad, according to Schoenberg, was
more than a euphonous collection of notes; it was a token of the tonal system as
a whole, with all of its syntactical norms and expectations. To incorporate a
single triad into an otherwise non-tonal context was to run the risk of
deforming this context, as the triad brought into play an entire system of
musical relationships. For this reason, he claimed that
My formal sense (and I am immodest enough to hand over to this the exclusive
rights of distribution when I compose) tells me that to introduce even a single
tonal triad would lead to consequences, and would demand space which is not
available within my form. A tonal triad makes claims on what follows, and
retrospectively, on all that has gone before.27
Schoenberg's comments could be reformulated as follows: listeners steeped in

tonal music cannot help but hear triads as expressing tonal functions.
Composers who indulged in placing such structurally unsupported harmonies
in their works were guilty of misleading the listener, making promises they
could not keep.
One way of avoiding the problem outlined by Schoenberg would be to
expunge any trace of triadic harmony from post-tonal music. Yet Schoenberg
himself did not feel that such harmonies ought to be restricted solely to strictly
tonal compositions (a fact that is borne out in a number of his later works, such
as The Ode to Napoleon): èven standing where I do at the present time, I
believe that to use the consonant chords, too, is not out of the question, as soon
as someone has found a technical means of either satisfying or paralyzing their
formal claims'.28 He allows the possibility of including triads and other familiar
tertian chords in non-tonal contexts only if the historical and conventional
associations that these chords carry with them can be neutralised that is, if the
internal organisation of a work could somehow defuse their residual tonal
functions. In some respects, his fears seem over-inflated. One may doubt
whether the presence of a triad in a twelve-note work, say, could single-
handedly overturn its internal structure and institute a quasi-tonal hierarchy.

His fears may be accounted for in part by his perception of the historical
situation at the time he made these comments; at an early stage in the
establishment of the twelve-note technique as an alternative to tonality, he
justifiably saw the continuing sway of convention as a tremendous threat.
Besides, his fears seem more plausible when reformulated along more moderate
lines. He is surely correct to claim that triads and seventh chords are not
neutral entities, but are charged with associations that are difficult, if not
impossible, to avoid. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a method that would be
capable of severing totally the connection that listeners make between such
harmonies and tonal practice. It is more likely that some residue of their tonal
use will linger on for most listeners, even if such harmonies are arranged in a
manner that consistently disappoints habitual expectations. A single triad may
not be able to transform a twelve-note piece into a tonal one all by itself, but it
may influence how one hears its immediate musical context.
Schoenberg's comments are suggestive of the interpretation of triads and
seventh chords in Ligeti's later works. By deflecting attention away from these
chords, Ligeti effectively weakens their `formal claims'. If such harmonies are
themselves subordinated perceptually, then whatever residual tonal impulse
they possess will be subordinated as well. Yet even if these impulses are
marginalised, this does not mean that they disappear altogether. Rather, their
impact on the perceived surface of these works is indirect. Just as the triads and
sevenths, taken by themselves, are `heard' without being `listened to', so too are
the successions they form. Progressions that conform to the listener's
expectations be they the ingrained expectations of tonal syntax or those
raised by the immanent constraints of the work will give the music a
semblance of coherence; those that fail to do so will give a semblance of
unpredictability.
Once again, Fanfares will serve as the point of departure. An argument
could be made that the triads used in the opening phrase (F major, B[ major, C
major, A[ major, etc.), in addition to the trichord outlined by the accented
notes in the ostinato (C, F and G], which are enharmonically equivalent to an F
minor triad), project F as some sort of centric pitch. But the chord-to-chord
succession resists a straightforward tonal interpretation. Likewise, the presence
of harmonies that fall outside the putative tonal centre of F (such as the E
major triads in bars 3 and 7) are hard to reconcile with a tonal reading. From
this perspective the perspective of inculcated tonal expectations the
succession of resultant harmonies is unpredictable. Although listeners may not
attend to this succession as the most salient dimension of the musical fabric, it
will nonetheless colour their perception of the piece. At the same time, the
predictability of the ostinato works against this implicit sense of harmonic
unpredictability. The work may exploit one's expectations vis-a-vis tonality,
but it manages to satisfy other expectations at the same time. Despite the

304 ERIC DROTT
relative flexibility in the choice of harmonies (each accented ostinato pitch can
be harmonised with one of three triads), the simple fact that the dyads must
harmonise with C, F or G], depending on metric position, limits the fund of
chords available at any moment, as well as in the phrase as a whole (in the first
phrase, the harmonic vocabulary is limited to C, F, A[, D[, B[ and E triads).29
Lacking a conventional syntax, the music offers up an ersatz one. The result is
a succession that is both predictable and unpredictable at the same time: the
chords are predictable to the extent that they invariably harmonise with the
accented notes of the ostinato, unpredictable to the extent that the progressions
resulting from this constraint escape the residual demands of tonal syntax.
The same ambiguous situation holds in many of the other works discussed
in this article. There is an interplay between the linear impulse, which
typically guides the harmonic motion and provides it with its immanent
logic, and the inability of the resulting succession to fulfil whatever tonal
implications the triads might suggest. Consider Cordes a vide. In the opening
section (Ex. 8), the relative regularity of the descending fifths in the left hand
maps out a restricted set of possible sonorities. The intervallic consistency
and predictability of the horizontal dimension compensates for the absent
tonal syntax. Each sonority created out of the falling fifths pattern in both
hands will sound `justified' as a consequence. This offers Ligeti the
opportunity to play the expectations created by the internal structure of the
work off the residual tonal implications of the underlying harmonies. For
instance, following the d[3 that begins bar 4, the right hand's line breaks off,
its next phrase beginning some two octaves lower, on c1 (see Ex. 12). This
disruption in the right hand's line coincides with the low point of the left
hand's line, marking the moment as particularly salient. The harmonies that
ensue gain relative prominence as a result: in particular, the A[ major
seventh harmony formed by the parallel tenths between the hands comes to
the fore. Yet the registral break that occurs at this moment is mitigated by
the way it is prepared: the dyads immediately preceding the leap down to the
c1 spell out an E[ dominant seventh. It is unlikely that listeners will directly
perceive this harmony; it is more likely that this gesture will indirectly
Ex. 12 Quasi-cadential progression, Cordes a vide, bars 34
d7 E 7 A M7 E M7

influence how the salient musical features are understood. Elsewhere in

Ligeti's late works the disjunction between the presence of tertian harmony
and the absence of tonal syntax gives the music a sense of consistent
unpredictability. Here, the momentary coincidence of intrinsic expectations
(the falling fifths) and extrinsic ones work to smooth over the palpable
disjunction in the melodic line.
This passage is vital for understanding the dialogue established between
Ligeti's triadic pieces and the tonal system to which they implicitly refer.
Chords and (as is the case in this passage) brief progressions associated with
common-practice tonality are not assumed; they are generated by the systems
set up by Ligeti. For the most part, this means that the demands of tonal syntax
are partially negated. But the result of this denial of expectations is not so much
a feeling of frustration as one of defamiliarisation. The vocabulary stays the
same, along with occasional fragments of a familiar syntax; it is simply that the
harmonic substructure is arranged according to an alien logic, one that sounds
sensible in its own right, but that is strange nonetheless.
V
By way of conclusion, I should like to discuss a passage in Ligeti's sixth piano
etude, Automne a Varsovie, which epitomises the dichotomy between triadic
harmony and linear stratification that I have sketched thus far. Of the first set of
etudes, the sixth is by far the most complex, unfolding in some passages as many
as four distinct metric layers at the same time. Yet the most striking moment in
the piece comes approximately halfway through, when the proliferating lines
come to a momentary halt. At first there is a brief interlude that presents the
theme the `lamento' motif that recurs in many of Ligeti's recent works in
parallel tritones, at the registral extremes of the piano. Following this interlude,
the music returns to the simple melody plus accompaniment texture of its
opening, with the left hand performing the lamento motif while the right hand
picks up the tritone as an accompanimental motif (shown in Ex. 13). This
simplicity is short-lived, however. Almost immediately, in bar 63, the middle
voice begins to move in contrary motion to the descending lamento theme,
creating melodic wedges (as shown in Ex. 14). As the passage continues, the two-
voice polyphony in the left hand is filled out: notes begin to accumulate around
the dyads, providing harmonic support. The lower voice introduces a third note
to the lamento line in bar 68, which is eventually joined by a fourth note in bar 72.
The addition of these notes transforms the line from a succession of dyads into a
series of descending seventh chords.
In this passage, the way that the seventh chords are formed provides their
sequence with a semblance of logic. By gradually adding notes to the lamento

306 ERIC DROTT
Ex. 13 Automne a Varsovie, bars 5879

8
58
8b
62
con ped.
8b
64
66
68
dim.
Horn Trio.

70
8
sim.
72
crescendo poco a poco
74
(cresc.)
76
sotto
(cresc.)
cresc. poco a poco

78

308 ERIC DROTT
Ex. 14 Melodic wedges, Automne a Varsovie, bars 627

62
theme, the succession of chords takes advantage of the predictability of this

theme. As in Fanfares and Cordes a vide, whatever logic the series of chords has
derives from the force of the lines that comprise it. But before long, the
fragmentation that had been temporarily held at bay begins once again. In bar 73,
the top voice in the left hand's incomplete D minor seventh chord splits off to
form a new pulse stream. Whereas the left hand's succession of chords had
adhered to a pulse made up of seven semiquavers, the new line beginning with
the C presents a pulse made up of multiples of four semiquavers (the pulse is
notated by crotchets and semibreves on the score). The same phenomenon
occurs in bar 77. Here, the lowest note splits off, forming a pulse stream whose
basic unit consists of multiples of five semiquavers.
This process of fragmentation distils in a single gesture the primary
characteristics of triadic harmony in Ligeti's recent music. As with the other
works discussed thus far, in Automne a Varsovie triadic harmony ceases to
serve as an emblem of cohesion, but instead becomes radically unstable,
incapable of being held together. But unlike the other works, here the
stratification of parts is dramatised. The chords unravel before us, under
pressure from the centrifugal force of the polyphonic layers. The ability of
triadic harmony to unify the musical texture, to bridge the space separating
different polyphonic threads, dissolves. Harmonies are built up only to splinter
into independent lines.
If, for Schoenberg, the problem with using triadic harmony in post-tonal
music was the danger of awakening inappropriate expectations in the listener,
then the solution to this problem posited by Ligeti's recent works is to use the
strong linear impulse to overwhelm such expectations. If, for Boulez and
Adorno, the problem with triads lay in their tendency to cut across the musical
work, interfering with the `proper' perception of its intrinsic, autonomous
pitch structure, then Ligeti's response is to explore the possibility of reversing
this tendency, so as to cut across the triad itself. Yet the restoration of the triad
in the works discussed above, a compositional manoeuvre that opposes the
modernist desire to escape or obliterate convention, is hardly an absolute
rejection of modernism. Instead of simply affirming the tradition that gave rise
to triadic harmony, Ligeti's music reaches a similar end by pursuing an entirely
different route: it strives to negate the modernist tradition of negation.30 In

other words, his desire for a `modernism of today' can be understood as

applying the critical, exclusionary aesthetic of modernism to modernism itself
(although this way of transcending the modernist aesthetic may approach a
postmodernist ethos too much for Ligeti's liking).31 His use of the triad does
not simply depart from the serial goal of creating a self-contained musical
structure, free from the weight of tradition. Rather, what is truly distinctive in
his deployment of the triad in Fanfares, Cordes a vide, Automne a Varsovie and
other such works is that it challenges the cohesive function of triads, even in
the process of restoring them.
NOTES
1. This return of the triad may be understood as an extension of the `restoration
of interval' described by Jonathan Bernard in `Ligeti's Restoration of Interval
and Its Significance for His Later Works', Music Theory Spectrum, 21/i (1999),
pp. 131.
2. In the examples, I identify major and minor triads with upper and lower case
letters (e.g. C and c for C major and c minor triads), respectively; 7 by itself
designates dominant sevenths (e.g. B7); M7 designates major seventh chords; and
m7 designates minor seventh chords. On occasion, a harmonic designation will be
given to incomplete `chords', so that a 38 trichord may represent, for instance,
an incomplete dominant seventh. Even though this expands the range of possible
tertian sonorities considerably to the point where it may seem that the term
ceases to serve as a useful distinction it is almost always the case that such
incomplete chords will be situated in a series of unambiguous triads and sevenths.
In other words, context makes it quite clear whether a 34 actually represents an
incomplete major seventh chord, or whether it is just a 34.
3. Mike Searby, `Ligeti's ``Third Way'': ``Non-Atonal'' Elements in the Horn Trio',
Tempo, 216 (2001), p. 17. Along similar lines, Richard Steinitz remarks that the
use of triadic harmonies in a non-tonal fashion `generate[s] a less definable
``supertonality'' (Ligeti has called it ``consonant tonality'')'. See Richard Steinitz,
Gyorgy Ligeti: Music of the Imagination (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 291.
4. For discussions of Ligeti's relationship to postmodern aesthetics, see Searby,
`Ligeti the Postmodernist?', Tempo, 199 (1997), 914; Beatrice Ramaut-
Chevassus, Musique et postmodernite (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1998), pp. 9095; and John Cuciurean, À Theory of Pitch, Rhythm and
Intertextual Allusion for the Late Music of Gyorgy Ligeti' (PhD diss., SUNY
Buffalo, 2000), pp. 13982 (esp. pp. 18082). There has been a strong inclination
among writers on Ligeti's music, however, to dispute the `postmodernity' of his
late style: see, for instance, Searby, `Ligeti the Postmodernist?'; Hermann
Danuser, `Zur Kritik der musikalischen Postmoderne', in Das Projekt Moderne
und die Postmoderne, ed. Wilfried Gruhn (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag,
1989), pp. 6983; Constantin Floros, Gyorgy Ligeti: Jenseits Avantgarde und
Postmoderne (Vienna: Lafite Verlag, 1996), pp. 22931; and Steinitz, Gyorgy

310 ERIC DROTT
Ligeti, pp. 3289. Attempts to distance Ligeti from the term `postmodern' may be
a result, in large part, of his own expressions of disdain for its aesthetic (see n. 9).
5. Frederic Jameson, `Postmodernism and Consumer Society', in Hal Foster (ed.),
The Anti-Aesthetic (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, 1983), p. 112.
6. A more comprehensive survey of Ligeti's harmonic language would account for the
intermittent appearance of triads and seventh chords in his music of the late 1960s
and early 1970s. These harmonies, after being more or less suppressed in the music
he wrote immediately following his departure from Hungary in 1956, gradually
reappear in the later 1960s (following the Requiem), and usually adopt one of two
different guises. Firstly, these chords may occur as individual links within a longer
process of gradual harmonic transformation. The chords that emerge in this case are
evanescent entities; furthermore, they are typically masked by other, concurrent
sonorities. For instance, beginning in bar 110 of Melodien, the cello unfolds a D]
minor chord, at the same time as the viola unfolds a C major chord and the second
violin a G major chord. As a result of their overlap, none of these chords is audible
as such. These harmonies have a purely notational existence. (Other instances of the
same general approach occur in Melodien, bars 8891, first and second violins;
Coulee, p. 11, fourth system; and Ramifications, bars 81ff.) Secondly, triads and
seventh chords occasionally crystallise in the form of the oft-cited `Ligeti signal'
the diatonic sonorities that emerge when the massed chromatic clusters so
characteristic of his music of the 1960s disperse. Usually, such Ligeti signals
consist of some combination of major seconds and minor thirds (such as [024], [025]
or [036]). Occasionally, however, a triad or seventh will emerge. An interesting case
in point can be seen in bar 30 of Ramifications, where a B seventh chord results from
the combination of a BF] dyad (played by the second group of strings) and a DA
dyad (played by the first group of strings). Notationally, this appears to be a B
minor seventh chord. Yet because the first string group is tuned a quarter-tone
higher than the second, the resulting chord lies somewhat awkwardly between a B
minor seventh and a B major seventh. The aim, it would seem, is to defamiliarise the
chord. Other, similar `cameo' appearances by triads or seventh chords can be found
in bar 90 of Lux Aeterna (the D] minor chord in the basses) or bars 8791 of
Continuum (which features successive B major and minor triads).
7. `. . . le modernisme et l'avant-garde experimentale des annees cinquante ou encore
des annees soixante, n'appartiennent-ils pas aussi au passe, a l'histoire, a
l'`àcade mie''?' (Ligeti, `Ma position comme compositeur aujourd'hui',
Contrechamps, 12/13 (1990), p. 8).
8. `. . . je me declare pour un modernisme d'aujourd'hui. Pour ma part, cela signifie
en premier lieu une prise de distance vis-a-vis du chromatisme total et des denses
tissus micropolyphoniques qui caracterisaient ma musique vers la fin des annees
cinquante et au debut des annees soixante' (ibid.).
9. Largely absent in the early reception of postmodernism by German-language
music critics is an appreciation for what Hal Foster has termed the `post-
modernism of resistance'. Rather, in German writings on contemporary music a
suspicion is more frequently encountered that what passes for postmodernism is
aesthetically (if not ideologically) regressive. This has much to do with the

equation of postmodernism with neo-romanticism problematic from an

American perspective, but comprehensible from a German one, given the
prominence of composers such as Wolfgang Rihm, Hans-Jurgen von Bose and
Wolfgang von Schweinitz during the 1970s and 1980s. Helga de la Motte-Haber,
for instance, has noted that, in Germany, `The term ``postmodernism'' spread like
wildfire and throughout the early 1980s was more or less universally defined as a
neo-conservatism which seemed to characterize the Neo-Romantic language of a
new generation of composers' (`Postmodernism in Music: Retrospection as
Reassessment', Contemporary Music Review, 12/i (1995), p. 77). The general
scepticism towards postmodernism in German critical circles may also be a result
of the profound influence of Frankfurt School thinkers such as Adorno and
Jurgen Habermas. Adorno's defence of modern music, and Habermas's
repudiation of certain strands of postmodern thought as the work of `young
conservatives', serve to fuel whatever suspicions German-language writers on
contemporary music might bear towards the idea of the postmodern. See
Habermas, `Modernity: an Incomplete Project', in Foster (ed.), The Anti-
Aesthetic, pp. 1215.
10. `Nous vivons dans une periode artistique pluraliste. Alors que le modernisme et
meme l'avant-garde experimentale existent encore, des mouvements artistiques
``post-modernes'' se manifestent de plus en plus. ``Pre-modernes'' serait toutefois
un mot plus juste pour designer ces mouvements, car les artistes qui en font partie
s'interessent a la restauration d'elements et de formes historiques: le naturalisme
en peinture, les colonnes, coupoles et tympanons en architecture et, dans la
musique, une tonalite retrouvee ainsi que des figures rythmiques-melodiques
impregnees de pathos expressionniste. La syntaxe du XIXe siecle est presente
dans tous les arts' (Ligeti, `Ma position', p. 8). Elsewhere, he has said that `My
taste runs counter to the neo-movements. I hate neo-Expressionism and I can't
stand the neo-Mahlerite and neo-Bergian affectations, just as I can't stand post-
modern architecture' (Tunde Szitha, À Conversation with Gyorgy Ligeti',
Hungarian Music Quarterly, 3/i (1992), p. 17). See also his comments on
postmodernism in `Wohin orientiert sich die Musik? Gyorgy Ligeti im Gesprach
mit Constantin Floros', Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift, 49/i (1994), pp. 78.
11. Pierre Boulez, Boulez on Music Today, trans. Susan Bradshaw and Richard
Rodney Bennett (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), p. 46.
12. Ibid., p. 48.
13. Theodor Adorno, Òn the Social Situation of Music', in Essays on Music, selected
with introduction, commentary and notes by Richard Leppert, trans. Susan H.
Gillespie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 391436. Observe
that the only thing separating Weill's `surrealistic' music from Stravinsky's neo-
classicism in Adorno's opinion is its conscious connection of aesthetic alienation
to social alienation. Hence, already at this early stage of his work on the sociology
of music, Adorno detects a risk in the appropriation of convention for critical
ends: Ìt is beyond question that Weill's music is today the only music of genuine
social-polemic impact, which it will remain as long as it resides at the height of its
negativity; furthermore, this music has recognized itself as such and has taken its

312 ERIC DROTT
position accordingly. Its problem is the impossibility of remaining at this height

. . . The further course of events reveals another danger in ambiguity: illusion
blends into false positivity, destruction into communal art within the realm of the
status quo, and behind this mocking primitivity, conjured forth by its bitterness,
comes into view the na ve-credulous primitivism of a reaching-back . . .' (pp. 410
11). At this point, he exempts Weill from this potential backsliding (he notes that
ìt is hardly to be expected that he will fall victim to the dangers of the
undangerous'), but such comments set the stage for the later hardening of his
position vis-a-vis attempts to integrate tonal means into modern music.
14. Theodor Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and
Wesley Blomster (New York: Seabury Press, 1973), p. 59.
15. Elsewhere, Adorno opposes the stability of triadic harmony to the instability of
atonal harmony harmony that has become latently polyphonic: `With the
increasingly dissonant character of harmony, the tension in individual sonorities
also increased. No sonority was self-contained, like the old consonance, the
``resolution''. Every sonority seemed to be laden with energy, to point beyond
itself, and every one of the distinct individual notes contained within it required
an independent ``melodic'' continuation of its own, instead of there being a
succession of one synthesized overall sonority after another' (`Function of
Counterpoint', in Sound Figures, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 127).
16. By the time of his Aesthetic Theory (ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann,
trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1997)), Adorno's position had evolved further. What is remarkable in this later
work is his attempt to rescue harmony from its prior stigmatisation. This is a
twofold process. Firstly, he generalises harmony by resurrecting the classical
aesthetic idea that harmony, broadly construed, concerns the balance between
part and whole: ìnspiration, if it is to count, must gel; that tacitly presupposes an
element of organization and coherence, at least as a vanishing point' (p. 157).
Secondly, he maintains that modern art, despite the appearance of disorder and
incoherence, still possesses a faint link with this broader conception of harmony,
insofar as such art stands in a relationship of determinate negation with respect to
the classical notion of harmony. Even if there is no immanent unity in a given
work, this unity persists insofar as the active denial of harmony depends upon a
memory or trace of some antecedent notion of harmony: `What speaks for the
survival of the concept of harmony as an element is that artworks that
remonstrate against the mathematical ideal of harmony and the requirement of
symmetrical relations, striving rather for absolute asymmetry, fail to slough off all
symmetry. In terms of its artistic value, asymmetry is only to be comprehended in
its relation to symmetry' (p. 158). What proves problematic, then, is the specific
form that harmony takes in the triad, since the chord presents an imbalance in the
relationship of part to whole. It is not harmony that is to be discarded, but a
particular manifestation of harmony: `The mistake of traditional aesthetics is that
it exalts the relationship of the whole to the parts to one of entire wholeness, to
totality, and hoists it in triumph over the heterogeneous as a banner of illusory
positivity' (p. 157). The spectre of this mistake haunts the broader notion of

aesthetic harmony as well, to the extent that the attempt to coordinate the various
parts of a work risks lapsing into a form of domination: `With regard to its
elements, such aesthetic harmony is negative and stands in a dissonant relation to
them: they undergo something similar to what individual tones once underwent
in the pure consonance of a triad' (p. 157). What is intriguing here is Adorno's
claim that the aims of the whole do not accord with the aims of the elements,
which introduces a point of conceptual dissonance to the otherwise perceptual
consonance of the triad.
17. See Ligeti's comments in Òn My Etudes for Piano', Sonus, 9/i (1988), pp. 37;
``Èine unglaublich direkte Emotionalitat'': Uber Conlon Nancarrow',
MusikTexte, 73/74 (1998), pp. 614; and in his interview with Denys Bouliane,
`Stilisierte Emotion: Gyorgy Ligeti im Gesprach', MusikTexte, 28/29 (1989),
pp. 5262.
18. James K. Wright and Albert S. Bregman, Àuditory Stream Segregation and the
Control of Dissonance in Polyphonic Music', Contemporary Music Review, 2
(1987), p. 70.
19. Ibid., p. 72.
20. The preceding discussion is drawn from Wright and Bregman (ibid., p. 74).
21. A brief discussion of this section can be found in Ulrich Dibelius, `Ligetis Horn
Trio', Melos, 46/i (1984), pp. 545.
22. Ligeti's fascination with just intonation and alternative tuning systems incipient
in works like the Horn Trio and the Piano Concerto has assumed a more
prominent position in his musical output during the 1990s, in works such as the
Violin Concerto and the Hamburg Concerto. This fascination may be traced back
to a number of sources, including Harry Partch (whose music Ligeti encountered
during his sojourn in California in the early 1970s); the late works of Claude
Vivier; the music of sub-Saharan African and Balinese gamelan music (the latter
explicitly cited in the eighth etude, Fem); and, most recently, the music of the
French Spectralists (hence the title of the fifth movement of the Hamburg
Concerto `Spectra').
23. In fact, this passage can be seen as manifesting what Wright and Bregman
describe as the `principle of repetition' in auditory streaming: `. . . the obstinate
repetition of the same melodic unit, from which the `òstinato'' derives its name,
clearly contributes to the perceptual segregation of simultaneous tones in
polyphony.' They continue by asserting that the òstinato seems to have the effect
of capturing each tone into a larger linear structure, the repetitive sequence of
tones. The sequence itself seems to act as a unit, whose repetitions group
sequentially with one another, rather than with simultaneous tones' (Àuditory
Stream Segregation', p. 80).
24. In its original published form, the etude was entitled Cordes vides. However,
Ligeti changed the title in the so-called `final' edition of the etudes to Cordes a
vide. The change in title may have something to do with the latter's richer
potential for wordplay. No longer does the title simply refer to òpen strings', but

314 ERIC DROTT
it suggests in addition a movement ìnto the void'. It may even connote àvid'
strings. (My thanks to Sarah Raff for pointing out these various implications of
the new title.)
25. Observe that this etude, like the first of the set, Desordre, is dedicated to none
other than Pierre Boulez.
26. Thus Hannes Schutz observes that a `clear functional distinction between the two
hands is produced from the outset, in spite of all their similarities (continuous
motion in quavers; short, accented phrase groups)'. See `Wiedergeburt der Ars
subtilior? Eine Analyse von Gyorgy Ligetis Klavieretude Nr. 2 Cordes vides', Die
Musikforschung, 50/ii (1997), p. 208. Intervallic content abets the segregation of
the lines, as Schutz notes; the line in the right hand includes tritones and sixths in
addition to fifths, as a consequence of its freer motion, whereas the left hand is
restricted within the first section to perfect fifths and fourths and their
transpositions.
27. Arnold Schoenberg, Òpinion or Insight' (1926), in Style and Idea: Selected
Writings of Arnold Schoenberg, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984), p. 263.
28. Ibid.
29. John Cuciurean has also analysed the chord progressions in Fanfares in some
depth, extending neo-Riemannian concepts to explain some of the more unusual
progressions in the opening (À Theory of Pitch', pp. 12037).
30. Ligeti's own comments motivate my interpretation. Describing the composition
of his opera Le Grand Macabre, he remarks that his original intention of writing
an anti-opera (such as Mauricio Kagel's work Staatstheater) dissipated as he came
to the realisation that `the time of anti-operas is over. To use a witty phrase, I
called Le Grand Macabre anti-anti-opera and the double negative results in
affirmation' (Gyorgy Ligeti in Conversation with Peter Varnai, Josef Hausler,
Claude Samuel and Himself, trans. Gabor J. Schabert et al. (London: Eulenberg
Books, 1983), p. 68).
31. In his interview with Szitha, Ligeti complains that `My rejection of avant-
garde music also lays me open to attacks and accusations of being a postmodern
composer. I don't give a damn' (Szitha, À Conversation with Gyorgy Ligeti',
p. 15).

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ERIC DROTT

THE ROLE OF TRIADIC HARMONY IN LIGETI'S RECENT MUSIC

Music Analysis, 22/iii (2003) 283

Ex. 1 Fanfares, bars 117

Etudes pour Piano. Premier livre.

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Music Analysis, 22/iii (2003) Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

is to read it through the lens of the specific, local modernisms to which it

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Music Analysis, 22/iii (2003) Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

In other words, he claims that the identity of pitch-class in octaves is so strong

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Music Analysis, 22/iii (2003) Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

Ex. 3 Stratification in the opening of Fanfares (bars 17)

Etudes pour Piano. Premier livre.

layers manage to maintain a strong degree of independence from one another.

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Ex. 4 Der Zauberlehrling, bars 6478

cresc. poco a poco

poco a poco tre corde

Etudes pour Piano. Deuxieme livre.

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The Alla Marcia from the Horn Trio

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ordering B, which are followed by two further statements of A, and so forth.

Music Analysis, 22/iii (2003) Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

Ex. 6a Ordering A of the aggregate, middle section of the Alla marcia

Ex. 6b Ordering B of the aggregate, middle section of the Alla marcia

Opening dyads of Horn Trio, IV:

dyad with which it coincides (EG]) by forming a C] minor triad. Other

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Ex. 7 Harmonic reduction, Alla marcia, bars 7997

E 7 D 7 AM7 [0146] B M/m f E 7 D 7 d A 7 g g

B G7 E B 7 [026] F [025] f E B [016] am 7

A 7 g 7 c 7 am7(+g ) cm7 f m7 A M7 G7 c m7(+g) f (+g) gm7 DM7(+g)

f 7 G7 EM7 B 7 g 7 FM7 g m7 [0246] c (+d ) cm9 A9 am7

F9 G9 c m7 [0127] gm7(+c ) AM7 E 9 [012468t] [014579]

cohesion. The distinction between structural and non-structural pitches,

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Ex. 8 Cordes a vide, bars 116

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Ex. 9 Harmonic progression, Cordes a vide, bars 14

dm7 E M7 C M7 b 7 C 7 em7 DM7 [027] d7 E 7 A M7 E M7 f m7 EM7

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Ex. 10 Left hand's ascent, Cordes a vide, bars 113

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Music Analysis, 22/iii (2003) Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

Schoenberg's comments could be reformulated as follows: listeners steeped in

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Music Analysis, 22/iii (2003) Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003

Ex. 12 Quasi-cadential progression, Cordes a vide, bars 34

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influence how the salient musical features are understood. Elsewhere in

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Ex. 13 Automne a Varsovie, bars 5879

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crescendo poco a poco

cresc. poco a poco

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Ex. 14 Melodic wedges, Automne a Varsovie, bars 627

theme, the succession of chords takes advantage of the predictability of this