Dissonant Qualities of Form: The Music of Ligeti, Messiaen, Strauss and Arvo Pärt

Reflection on the essence of music can take many forms. From reflection on the nature of particular musical forms, formal interpretations of composition, and the experience of listening to music, writing about music can enlighten us by presenting varied aspects of this human art form.

Let us consider aesthetic form from a philosophical perspective. This perspective explores several aspects of composition and the essences that serves as the foundation of musical creation. Philosophical reflection on the nature of music, beginning with Pythagoras, is an ontological task that seeks the essences responsible for the creation of music. In aesthetics, these essences are encountered as inspiration.

Pythagoras’s ideas on order (logos) and form are still relevant to the broader picture regarding the nature of music: the ontological structure of aesthetics. The importance of form and its sensual embodiment in space and time remain a valid concern, for music is the physical expression of form; we must aim to understand the logos of form in music. However, this does not warrant an ad nauseam theoretical and analytical approach that exhausts the joy of listening to music.

The danger of over-intellectualizing music is no different than splitting hairs in other aspects of human existence: it robs aesthetics of its vital essence. There is a marked difference between the lived-vitality of listening to music, as an existential experience, and theoretical commentary on technical matters. The two must be kept separate. Our ability to be moved by music precedes our understanding of what is taking place musically. The latter is merely icing on the cake.        

György Ligeti

The static and micropolyphonic Lontano, György Ligeti’s (1923-2006) mesmerizing orchestral composition, captivates the imagination due to the sense of expectation that its lack of transition builds. 

In a sense, most of Ligeti’s compositions can be viewed as musical negations. That is, as a refusal to construct traditional tonal music. In this regard, Ligeti’s work might also be called ‘pre-musical.’ Because a large number of his atonal, asymmetrical, and discordant compositions are not organized into movements, anticipation becomes dictated by dissonance. Ligeti’s work reflects a pre-musical grasp of silence – a form of silence that is appropriated existentially. Like in Arvo Pärt’s music, silence is meant to be felt.

Ligeti’s compositions display a taciturn look at the stillness of form, and how this is pierced by ‘spaces’ replete with sound. These spaces, dispersed emotions that his music brings together, are not readily grasped prior to their provocation, as it were. The dissonant qualities of his compositions may lack a center, as he readily admits, but they are reminiscent – if not intuitive – of form.

Of particular interest are the five volumes that comprise The Ligeti Project. These are recorded by different ensembles and orchestras. They are separated into the following: Volume I contains Melodien, one of his numerous single movement pieces; Chamber Concerto; Piano Concerto and Mysteries of the Macabre, a work for solo trumpet and chamber orchestra that is part of his opera Le Grand Macabre.  

Volume II, without a doubt, contains Ligeti’s best-known pieces, including: Lontano and Atmospheres, the latter is a piece that was made widely known through its inclusion in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey; Apparitions; San Francisco Polyphony and Concert Romanesc.

Volume III consists of Cello Concerto; Clocks and Clouds, a work for twelve female voices that takes its inspiration from an essay on the philosophy of science by Karl Popper; Violin Concerto; Sippal; Dobbal and Nádihegedüvel.

Volume IV includes Hamburg Concerto (horn concerto); Double Concerto; Ramifications, which is written for twelve solo strings, and Requiem. Requiem was inspired by the apocalyptic paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch. Requiem is scored for two solo voices, soprano and mezzo-soprano.

If Ligeti’s music is considered classical avant-garde, as correct as this moniker may appear, this cannot be wholly understood without a historical disclaimer. Ligeti explains that his isolation from the West, due to his misfortune of living in a Stalinist regime (Romania), forced him to become innovative. For this reason, the avant-garde qualities of Ligeti’s music are immersed in a wider approach to classical music that may not be obvious upon first encountering his work. His reaction to Schoenberg’s ‘ordered’ atonality, known as Serialism – what is also referred to as twelve-note music – allowed Ligeti the freedom to explore what would become his highly individualistic style. This ought not to surprise us. Music, like writing and painting, is created by individual subjects not collective entities, schools or movements.

The subjective inspiration for a work of art does not have to culminate in originality. The classical avant-garde can re-direct the impulse of modernism – in this case – by creating a historical dialectic of renovation. The process becomes enmeshed in a broader historical and metaphysical perspective. For instance, Henri Bergson can enlighten us in this respect. The French philosopher contends that philosophy as a creative process cannot help but to continue to have something to say about human reality, if only because it is unendingly encountered by new human subjects. What is most important in music is existential inquietude that extends it into the future, not self-consciousness that is bent on negating the past.

Ligeti’s development as a composer was influenced by his chastisement by the Stalinist apparatchiks that banned his music. It was after this state-sponsored invective that he began to compose “music that was radically dissonant and chromatic.” Ligeti writes that under Stalin’s dictatorship, folk music was only allowed on the condition that its presentation conform to a politically correct form. He goes on to say, “It was forced into the straitjacket of the norms of socialist realism.”

Soviet formalism is a grotesque example of the over-intellectualization of music, in effect, the ‘scien-ti-fi-cation’ of the creative process. It was during1955/1956, while living in Budapest, that Ligeti began to compose what he calls ‘black music.’ He considers his compositions from this period works that were written for the ‘bottom drawer.’ He believed there was no chance they would be performed in public. As devastating as these attacks by the communist government were, they meant that he had arrived as a composer. 

One such example of this is Shostakovich’s contention that the most memorable day of his life was, when in 1936, he was denounced in the pages of Pravda for the alleged sexual connotations of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. As one would expect, Ligeti’s compositions from this dark time are not examples of a sunny musical temperament. Of this ominous period, he writes, “People living in the West cannot begin to imagine what it was like in the Soviet empire, where art and culture were strictly regulated as a matter of course – they had to conform to abstract concepts that were almost identical to the regulations of the National Socialists. Art had to be ‘healthy’ and ‘edifying’ and had to come ‘from the people.’ In short, it had to reflect Party directives.” The contradiction of attempting to forge a correspondence between ‘coming from the people’ and the reflection of ‘party directives’ seems too ambitious a coincidence.

Another central development in his compositional disposition was Ligeti’s introduction to electronic music in Vienna under the tutelage of Gottfried Michael Koenig, while studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen, while the latter composer completed Gruppen.

Ligeti’s austere individualism is a preeminent quality of his work. While the discord found in most of his static compositions appear to negate harmony, there is a profound tone in his music that seeks what can be regarded as ‘center-less’ form. His work is evocative of a subjective synesthesia, where the composer attempts to objectify his vision through diverse tones, vibrant hues that are not easily conveyed by a pre-established sense of musical harmony. Stockhausen, too, refers to his Complete Piano Music (Klavierstuck I-X) as “my drawings.”

When asked what audience he wrote for, Ligeti explains, “I did not write for anyone, but simply for the sake of the music itself, from an inner need.” This inner need can be explained as existential inquietude that begs to become manifested. This is not a concern that he had the luxury to entertain, given his residence behind the Iron Curtain. His work has the power to create visual images. Apparitions is a fine example of a static composition that develops in a starker manner than works that employ a defined sense of transition.

San Francisco Polyphony employs greater variation of contrasts, where the overall depth of the work appears symphonic in character. In some respects, Ligeti’s compositions are best appropriated as a whole, thus allowing for the different moods exhibited by respective works to come through. 

Atmospheres establishes an extreme pole of Ligeti’s work, conveying visions of sustained, ethereal motion. It seems appropriate that this composition fits in so well in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a piece well suited to depict the upheaval brought on by transition in Kubrick’s film.

In contrast to Atmospheres, Concert Romanesc is a dynamic and culturally vital work that showcases some of the most pronounced dynamics in Ligeti’s work. This piece is reminiscent of a gypsy lament, the horns remining us of the melody of Ravel’s Bolero.

Melodien is a single movement work that employs the celesta, glockenspiel and crotales. This piece is another example of a Ligeti composition that has what he calls ‘blurred transitions.’  The piece is a good representative of the inherent temper of Ligeti’s compositional style, but unlike Atmospheres, it is infused with drama, intrigue and development, before it quietly fades. 

Mysteries of the Macabre does not convey the level of grimness that its title implies. During the first four minutes of this piece, the solo trumpet and cascading orchestral accompaniment lend it a mood well-fitted to describe the chill in nighttime scenes, what can be envisioned as opera noir. This is the type of music that, under the right circumstances, a young child can easily baptize as terror music.

Cello Concerto is an attractive piece. It is a dual movement work that, unlike Ligeti’s other static works, showcases melodic transition. The Hamburg Concerto (Horn Concerto) dates from 2002. The second movement is a jazzy, melodic and rhythmic composition that seems like an anomaly in Ligeti’s oeuvre, although the somber and eerie timbre of the horns proves to be a Ligeti staple. 

Requiem depicts the Last Judgment. Ligeti utilizes segments of the Latin Mass. The chorus consists of no less than one hundred singers. The effect of these many voices, coupled with Ligeti’s characteristic orchestral humming effect, is spectacular. After an initial summing forth of the dead in the penultimate movement, the piece tapers off into a translucent fugue that quietly dissipates into, well, … silence.

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen’s (1908-1992) music sets itself apart from most other late twentieth century composers on at least two fronts: warm tonality and transcendent spiritual quality. Spanning the course of the major musical developments and trends of the twentieth century, Messiaen’s work demonstrates a divergent and varied spectrum of musical color. Having experienced all but the first and last eight years of the century, his compositions are a fine example of the variety of the twentieth century’s musical currents.

Born in Avignon, France, Messiaen first studied organ under the tutelage of Marcel Dupré, musical theory with Maurice Emmanuel and composition under Paul Dukas. In 1931 Messiaen became the organist at Paris’ La Trinité church. Soon thereafter, he became professor at the Ecole Normale de Musique and the Schola Cantorum. It was during this period, when Messiaen was in his late 20s and 30s, that he composed some of his most extraordinary and innovative organ works: “Diptyque (Essai sur la vie terrestre et l’éternité religieuse” (1929); “Apparition de l’Église éternelle (1931); L’Ascension (4 Méditations) 1933; “La Nativité du Seigneur (9 Meditations) (1935) and “Les Corps glorieux (7 Visions de la vie des ressucités”) (1939). These early works are not only commensurate with the French organ tradition, they are  indicative of musical genius that is manifested in exemplary range and quality of pathos.

Messiaen’s talent was not widely recognized until the advent of his work, Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time), a piece that was written and saw its premiere in January 1941. The piece was unveiled in Stalag VIIIA in Görlitz, Germany, while the composer was a prisoner of war during WWII.

Appropriately titled to describe Messiaen’s uncertain situation at the time, this work is a heartfelt exposition of what Messiaen describes as: “Essentially immaterial, spiritual and Catholic.” 

Listening to Quatuor pour la fin du temps on a clear, sunny day while witnessing a blue, umbrella sky does little justice to the pathos of this work and conditions where and when it germinated. Yet, the piece draws the listener “towards eternity in space or the infinite,” as Messiaen suggests. The fifth movement employs an excruciatingly slow piano that leads a somber and melodic violin. One cannot help but to be moved by Messiaen’s vision of the apocalypse. The piece is more akin to T.S. Eliot’s idea of the end of time as a whimper, than it is to the four angry horsemen of the apocalypse. 

Éclairs sur L’Au-delà, Messiaen’s last musical creation, is an interesting anomaly: an orchestral work in no less than eleven movements. Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in the summer of 1987, the work was completed in 1991, shortly before Messiaen’s death, at age 84. Éclairs sur L’Au-delà is a Dantesque journey of supernatural transcendence that culminates in temporal death and spiritual resurrection.

Another captivating aspect of this work is its mesmerizing depiction and transcription of bird-son. Messiaen employed Indian and Greek rhythms, notably in his monumental Turangalîla Symphonie (1946-1948), a ten-movement piece that makes use of the ondes martenot, an early electronic form of keyboard.

Éclairs displays a strong impressionistic imprint. An unimpeded and direct grasp of immediate reality – or aspects thereof – can only be realized through an intuitive process. In musical terms, this realization is one of the aims of impressionism. Notwithstanding Debussy’s refusal to accept ‘impressionistic’ as a description of his work, this early twentieth century musical current remains a durable example of aesthetic vision. Musical impressionism attempts to retain a momentary and fleeting view of reality. No finer example of this profound pathos is conveyed during this period than Revel’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte.” Éclairs’ many movements avoid radical shifts in tempo. Instead, the piece exhibits a measured harmonic dream-like quality.

As a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, from 1942 to1978, Messiaen taught: Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Alexander Goehr and George Benjamin. Known as something of a maverick at the school – never attending the school’s committee meetings – his presence created a lasting impression on his students.

Éclairs’ first movement, “Apparition du Christ Glorieux,” is horizontally static – displaying no abrupt changes. The piece has a subdued mood. This movement leaves us with a heightened sense of anticipation. The second movement, “La Constellation du Sagittaire,” is ethereal, the pitch becoming higher, indicative of motion.

Inquietude is the temperamental staple of the third movement, “L’Oiseau-lyre et la Ville-Fiancée.” As an avid ornithologist, this movement is a musical evocation of the typical song of the Lyrebird that excited Messiaen. The short fourth movement, “Les É’lus marques du sceau,” serves as a light interlude dominated by the bouncy quality of the Piccolo.

“Demeurer dans l’Amour…”, the long fifth movement, is a showcase for strings – its somber tempo is an example of the tonal pathos that harmony evokes in Messiaen’s work. The use of percussion in the sixth movement, “Les Sept Anges aux sept trompettes,” brings the listener out of the languor imposed by the previous movement. The rhythmic summing forth of the percussion is led by the horn section. The seventh movement is “Et Dieu essuiera tout larme de leurs yeux…” Like the fifth, it exudes a clear sense of the transcendence that the work as a whole strives for. “Les Etoiles et la Gloire,” the eighth and longest of the eleven movements, is reminiscent of a tone poem in its segmentation and description of a magical landscape, and natural phenomena, mainly, the songs of birds.

Compared with the previous long movement, the ninth “Plusieurs Oiseaux des arbres de Vie,” is brief and light in tone. This playful movement brings together the songs of diverse birds, enchanting us with songs that cannot easily be consolidated into a sustained tempo. This movement is evocative of some of the atonal experiments of the early part of the twentieth century. The tenth movement is “Le chemin de l’Invisible,” another short movement that brings together a fuller orchestral sound, especially in its use of horns. This movement ends in dramatic fashion.

The final movement, “Le Christ, lumière du Paradis,” is gentle and harmonic. Flowing strings are indicative of the sort of spiritual renewal that Messiaen describes in the linear notes. Roger Nichols, writes: “I try simply to imagine what will comes to pass, which I can sometimes perceive in “éclairs” (flashes or illuminations).” Balancing the disquietude brought about by the overabundance of atonal and avant-garde music in the second half of the twentieth century, what Messiaen returns to music is no less than a vibrant tonal quality that reminds us of the value of music as a vital undertaking of the human condition.

Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss (1864-1949), who is not related to either Johann Strauss, father or son, began to compose music at age six. He wrote his first musical composition before age ten. By sixteen Strauss had written a symphony in d minor, a string quartet by seventeen. Strauss is best known as a composer of tone poems and operas, the latter, which he began creating later in life. He was conductor of the Berlin Royal Opera from 1898 to 1918.

Strauss wrote twelve operas, beginning with Guntram, in 1894, and culminating in 1938 with Daphne; two symphonies: F Minor and Aus Italien; nine tone poems and numerous other chamber, orchestral and vocal works. His Also sprach Zarathustra (1896) is the musical equivalent of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche’s, autobiographical work of the same name that depicts individual, differentiated man via-à-vis society.

While musically Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra stands on its own as a work of genius, the extra-philosophical importance of this tone poem cannot be overlooked, given its inspiration by the German thinker. The work is divided into ten sections, Nietzsche’s book into four parts and eighty sections.

Strauss’ symphonic work skirts Nietzsche’s regard for sentiment. Essentially transcribing a work of philosophy – one of profound emotion – into a musical synesthesia, Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra is a moving and memorable depiction of the existential exaltation and travails of the solitary thinker. Strauss’ symphonic poem is evocative of a proto first-man: a phoenix that displays a will to live that resounds throughout the cosmos.

Beginning with ‘Sunrise,’ the composition opens with a prologue of ominous anticipation. The first 21 bars of this famous opening have become the staple that identifies this Straussian masterpiece. The piece was used in the opening of the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey to signify the ascent of man. The tension that the timpani, trumpets and organ create serve as counterpoint to Nietzsche’s own words about the genesis of his book. Nietzsche explains: “Looking back now, I find that exactly two months previous to this inspiration I had had an omen of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive alteration in my tastes – more particularly in music. It would even be possible to consider all ‘Zarathustra’ as a musical composition.” 

The connection between Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra: A Book for All and None and Strauss’ symphonic poem is astounding and a testament to his musical intuition and execution. This composition was a difficult task for Strauss, for he wanted to remain true to the philosophical work.

Because both Nietzsche’s book and Strauss’ composition can be considered ‘romantic’ in origin – at least judging from the period of their creation – the two works are very sonorous in makeup.

From its thunderous opening, Also sprach Zarathustra gives way to a melodious sentiment that starts with a pianissimo, which is accented by the low range of the double bass. What follows is marked by more anticipation. This section continues through a crescendo that eventually involves the entire orchestra.

The piece develops through other sections that take their inspiration from Nietzsche’s book: “O Joys and Passions,” “Of Science,” “The Convalescent,” “Dance Song and Night Song,” ending with the sad quality of “Night Wanderer’s Song.”

Arvo Pärt

The trajectory of Arvo Pärt’s career as a classical composer is interesting personally and musically. Born on September 11,1935 in the Estonian town of Paide, Pärt’s musical formation came about under the rigorously censored strong-arm of Soviet artistic control. This, as far as Pärt’s mature music is concerned, would not be concretely felt until the mid-1960s.

Pärt has come to be known as a composer of religious music. According to some vociferous critics of Pärt, he is an imitator of Bach. Pärt does not agree with the notion that all musical creativity must strive to be original.

Nick Kimberley’s sixty-seven-page essay on the Estonian composer is instructive for enthusiasts of Pärt’s music. Against the often-fanatical need for originality that some critics demand, Pärt has some sharply innovative ideas on aesthetics: “I am not sure there could be progress in art… Everyone understands what progress means in the technique of military warfare. Art presents a more complex situation…many art objects of the past appear to be more contemporary than our present art.” Kimberley’s commentary is insightful: “That is a view which put Pärt at odds with the philosophy, not only of the Communist Party, but also of modernism, which has always lived by the dictum ‘Make it new.’” 

Pärt’s ideas on aesthetics eventually proved to be prophetic. Because he asks age-old questions that date back to Plato and Aristotle’s ideas on aesthetic, Pärt is reluctant to allow his vocation as a composer to be dictated by contemporary critics. Blending his diverse musical influences: Medieval and Renaissance, early flirtation with Serialism, and his use of bells and choral music, Pärt’s compositions are marked by his individualistic pathos.  

Spanning the musical styles for which Pärt has come to be known, an amalgam of his compositions entitled Arvo Pärt: A Portrait, was released in 2005, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday.

With thirty-three selections in total, this compilation serves as an excellent sampler of Pärt’s musical creation. The first disc begins with Fur Alina, a short piano piece. This is followed by the second movement of Pärt’s Symphony No.1. Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. This composition is replete with melodic sentiment that couples harmonious strings with bells, an example of Pärt’s ‘tintinnabulation’ that, given its steady tempo, can be described as a form of musical meditation. This piece is reminiscent of a canon for its mesmerizing fluidity.

Also included in the six choral pieces: Passio (extract) ‘Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem’; Berliner Messe (Kyrie); Magnificat, Passio (extract) ‘Unde es Tu? Jesus autem responsum non dedit ei’; Berliner Messe (Credo) and Beatitudes. Pärt is known to compose variations on themes that explore the artistic twists and turns found throughout his collected work.

Of the several variations of Fratres that Pärt has composed, one appears in this collection – Fratres for cello and piano. This work is an example of his meditative ‘silences.’ Many of Pärt’s compositions allude to the inward silence of the human spirit. These are exemplary of the practice of what I refer to as musical negation: the essential qualities that inform the spaces that separate the notes.

Summa for Strings is a baroque-like, joyful piece that creates a niche for itself in the frigid musical desert of the twenty-first century. The last piece on the disc is an organ work: Annum per annum for organ.

The second disc begins with a shorter variation of Fratres – Fratres for Strings and Percussion. It is followed by Collage über B-A-C-H, a work that can be described as a baroque duel for strings. The choral pieces included in the disc are: Cantate Domino canticum novum (Psalm 95); Triodion and Passio (extract) and “Et ex illa hora accepit eam discipulus in sua.’”

Pro et Contra for Cello and Orchestra is divided into three movements. The piece begins with an explosion of sound that quickly settles into the punctured silence rendered by cello and percussion. The second movement is marked by an agitated cello. The third, an allegro that is characterized by its ever-ascending tempo.

Pärt’s Symphony No. 3 (Third Movement) is tantalizing in its depth and richness, culminating in what can simply be described as beautiful music, an old-fashion description that seems out of place in postmodernity. This work showcases the composer’s ability to synthesize sounds that tug at the listener’s emotions. Spiegel im Spiegel is a gentle piece for violin and piano that demonstrates Pärt’s staple technique of playing one note at a time, a tempo that is responsible for creating excruciating anticipation.

Tabula Rasa is one of Pärt’s most identifiable pieces. This work for strings and piano conveys the impression of movement, a stream of consciousness that is best characterized as evocative of transcendence. As the violin leads the rest of the strings, the piece becomes engulfed by a full sound that is fractured by ‘crashing’ piano that, like a dramatic hammer, appears to be conscious of keeping time. This is Pärt’s ability to incite our profoundest emotions.

Experiencing Pärt’s music, we are reminded of the heighten pathos that classical music can evoke. We are pleasantly uplifted in the realization that Pärt’s musical transmutation is taking place in the midst of postmodernism’s altar to chic noise. Admirable in his refusal to settle for new age, saccharine drivel and pretentious anti-vital minimalism, Pärt’s musical output, like all great art, promotes cultural and spiritual renewal.

* Arvo Pärt Collection (9 CDs) was released in 2021.

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