118 Notes, September 2019 (along with their adaption in the twen- He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást tieth century), and ethnomusicologists change: exploring how the gamelan was em- Praíse hím. braced in North America, along with (Hopkins, “Pied Beauty,” stanza 2) other related cultural hybrids, can prof- John MacInnis itably reference this book. Dordt College This is a comprehensive life-and- works biography that belongs in acade- Metamorphosis in Music: The mic libraries. It is not hagiography. The Compositions of György Ligeti in the reader learns of Harrison’s destructive 1950s and 1960s. By Benjamin R. Levy. temper, his unhappy and unstable years Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. in New York, and how he sometimes [x, 292 p. ISBN 9780199381999 (hard- emotionally manipulated those who cover), $74; ISBN 9780199392019 loved him. Alves and Campbell recount (Oxford Scholarly Online), ISBN that Harrison’s outstanding regret was 9780199392002 (updf), ISBN how he treated people, and they share 9780190857394 (e-book), prices vary.] both the ups and downs of his life. Illustrations, music examples, bibliog- A reader of this book will note raphy, index. Harrison’s boldness in investing him- self completely in the art that inter- Long a devotee of György Ligeti’s ested him, without preoccupation with compositional theories, aesthetics, and a career trajectory or getting ahead. His practices, Benjamin Levy has published willingness to engage fully with ideas a book that tells the story of the com- off the beaten path made him a catalyst poser’s development up to about 1970. in the development of twentieth- What makes Levy’s efforts stand out is century American music. For example, his detailed and comprehensive study it was Harrison who shared I Ching of Ligeti’s sketches. By arranging the with Cage, and Harrison’s champi- composer’s works chronologically, Levy oning of Ives’s Symphony no. 3 (“The narrates the evolution—or, as he puts Camp Meeting”) led to Ives receiving it, “stylistic transformation” (p. 6)—of the Pulitzer Prize for the work. Ligeti’s compositional techniques from One might rightly conclude that his student days in Hungary to the full Harrison (along with his mentor flourishing of his career as an interna- Cowell) offers an excellent example for tionally recognized artist. musicians today of how they can benefit Levy argues for the necessity of by approaching all music (whatever its studying Ligeti’s sketches, because the provenance) openheartedly, to the theoretical systems he employed are ends of integration, synthesis, and, complex and cannot be entirely appre- then, new creativity to share with oth- ciated or understood in isolation. ers. As with other instances of rich and During many visits to the Paul Sacher beautiful variety alive in the world, ap- Foundation in Switzerland, Levy parent to poets and composers alike, consulted a trove of information perti- Harrison’s works stand ready to inspire, nent to his subject and had access now and into the future. Gerard to additional sketches that have only Manley Hopkins was right: recently been made available. Ligeti was secretive about his working All things counter, original, spáre, strange; methods, making this approach even Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows more important. Along with his ency- how?) clopedic knowledge of the published With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, literature—in English, Hungarian, and dím; German—Levy inspires a high level of Book Reviews 119 confidence throughout. The few prob- only a few months for Ligeti to absorb a lems that surface with this book do not staggering amount of new information have anything to do with accuracy or in his new home. This is clear from his diligence but rather with a lack of con- first piece in the West: Glissandi (1957). text, as we shall see. Levy argues that the piece—for all its In his early Hungarian years, Ligeti shortcomings—provides important had to cope with increasingly difficult context for the composer’s later devel- conditions as a composer. The official opment. Ligeti quickly withdrew this musician’s union approved all music electronic “finger exercise” (p. 52), re- for public performance, and these deci- leasing it only in 1976 when his career sions were made arbitrarily. In this pe- was secure. Levy explains that the sec- riod, Ligeti faced further difficulty ond half contains the exact same mate- working in the shadow of Béla Bartók, a rial as the first half, combined with its much-revered composer whose more retrograde; but in an interesting twist, a radical compositions symbolized a spirit large amount of sound is filtered out, of dissent for Ligeti’s young comrades. making the texture less dense in the Even though Ligeti’s early composi- second half (p. 60). In Stockhausen’s tions, such as Musica ricercata and the Gesang der Jünglinge, completed only a String Quartet no. 1, owe some of their year earlier, part D of the structure is technical and expressive techniques to an exact retrograde of three tracks Bartók and Alban Berg, Levy points out from part B, with a few added elements many novel elements that contain seeds (Pascal Decroupet and Elena Unge - of Ligeti’s later style. For example, heuer, “Through the Sensory Looking- Ligeti derived material from folk Glass: The Aesthetic and Serial Founda- sources, hybridized sonata form with tions of Gesang der Jünglinge,” trans. “arch” form (p. 24), and evoked “noc- Jerome Kohl, Perspectives of New Music turnal” topics; yet, these approaches 36, no. 1 [Winter 1998]: 116). More - never seem so overtly imitative that they over, Stockhausen was also thinking in are overly derivative. Levy persuasively terms of windowing and filling in struc- argues that Ligeti’s early techniques of tural gaps; in the case of Gesang, he interval expansion, his complex devel- used impulse structures in sections B opmental procedures, and his individ- and D to thicken the texture (Decrou - ual reaction to Schoenberg’s twelve- pet and Ungeheur, 133). Although tone technique via Hanns Jelinek’s these associations do not take away book are all remarkable for so young a from Ligeti’s impressive early achieve- composer (Hanns Jelinek, Anleitung zur ment, they may help explain why the Zwölftonkomposition, 2 vols. [Vienna: composer thought of Glissandi more Universal Edition, 1952–58]). as a student work. They also suggest a Given Ligeti’s losing battle against stronger relationship between the the Hungarian censors, the tantalizing two composers’ methods than Levy tidbits of leaked information he re- acknowledges. ceived from the West, and the com- Although Ligeti developed a more poser’s correspondence with Karlheinz personal compositional language in his Stockhausen, his legendary 1956 flight next pieces, they still bear strong signs across the border now seems inevitable. of influence by (or reaction to) Stock - After stopping briefly in Vienna, Ligeti hausen, Pierre Boulez, and Cage—signs made Cologne his new home. Stock- that too often go unacknowledged in hausen himself put him up for several Levy’s writing. In Apparitions (1958–59), months until he worked out a more Ligeti’s approach to rhythm utilizes a permanent living situation. In such a more free, “statistical” serial method, richly stimulating environment, it took resulting in an “underlying framework 120 Notes, September 2019 rather than a strictly deterministic or- emotional categories in these pieces, dering of a set of note values” (p. 99). for which he provides fascinating docu- Likewise, Ligeti’s composition of mentation from the surviving sketch dynamics adheres to a statistical serial material. Ligeti’s ordering of emotional idea instead of strict ordering. As content in these pieces provides more Jerome Kohl abundantly documents in evidence of innovative adaptations of his recent book on Zeitmasse, Stock - serial techniques. Once again, however, hausen’s move toward statistical serial Levy fails to acknowledge the tantaliz- methods in 1957–58 were highly influ- ing connections between Stockhausen’s ential; yet nowhere does Levy acknowl- idea of moment form and Ligeti’s im- edge this pathbreaking composition plementation of episodic formal struc- (Jerome Kohl, Karlheinz Stockhausen: ture in Adventures and Nouvelles Zeitmaße [Abingdon, Oxon: Rout- Adventures. ledge, 2017]). Kohl adroitly points out Although many roots of his style can that Ligeti’s own description of his be traced to other composers, Ligeti methods in Artikulation (1958) could was truly a pathbreaking artist in many “almost be a description of Zeitmaße’s ways. Probably his most important Part Two” (Kohl, 140–41). Another gap independent contribution was his in context occurs in Levy’s analysis of flexible technique of micropolyphony. Ligeti’s Bewegungsfarbe (fluctuating Throughout the book, Levy sheds con- color) textures (p. 87). This technique— siderable light on this, from its humble in which notes occur so rapidly that beginnings in Apparitions to the full they bleed over the perceptual thresh- flowering in complex canonical struc- old between individual notes to har- tures in the Chamber Concerto (1969–70) monic effects—also operates in the ex- and Ramifications (1968–69). Levy em- tremely rapid passages of Zeitmasse. phasizes that unlike Stockhausen, Finally, Ligeti’s practice of dividing Ligeti felt free to develop quite inde- large beats into multiple subdivisions pendent approaches to handling loosely corresponds to Stockhausen’s rhythm and pitch. As detailed in his rhythmic formants in Gruppen (1955– polemical article in Die Reihe, Ligeti ar- 57). Ligeti could not possibly have been gued for the interpenetration of meth- unaware of these innovations, given his ods as an antidote to the “leveling-out” close association with the periodical Die that occurs when formal elements are Reihe and the Darmstadt school at this undifferentiated: “The total form is time. serially guided, but the individual With the great success of Atmospheres moments are, within given limits, left (1961), Ligeti gained increasing notori- to the composer’s discretion” (György ety, particularly after his brilliantly Ligeti, “Metamorphoses of Musical scandalous silent lecture at the Euro- Form,” trans.