Lux aeterna

•Composer's name and birth/death dates: György Ligeti (Hungarian/Romanian/Austrian, 1923-2006) •Full title of composition: •Placement in the timeline of the composer’s career: 1966, after leaving Hungary and settling in Cologne. •Estimated duration: ca. 10 min. •Source of the text: Mass, Communion Antiphon •Instrumentation as stated by the composer: 16 voices a cappella •Author of the text and his/her dates: Catholic tradition, with reference to the Apocrypha (4 Esdras 2:35 & 34) •Language: Latin •Text Lux aeterna luceat eis Domine, cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis

The context •influences by other composers –Debussy, Bartok, French advanced choral school of Poulenc and Messiaen •contemporary cultural context (politics, economics, social forces, etc.) – post WWII avant-garde, reactions to cataclysm of WWII • contemporary professional context: in dialogue with the French and German avant-garde, Stockhausen and Boulez, attends Darmstadt. •influence of other artists and disciplines (poets, painters, philosophers, etc): Disseminated by Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001 Space Odyssey •aesthetic or technical innovations represented in this work: micropolyphony, net-structures • impact the work on future compositions by the same composer or other composers: One of the most influential composers of the 20th century •To which stylistic stream after 1900 do you think this work belongs? You may name more than one. Part of Eastern European “sonorism” or “sound-mass” composition school (with Lutoslawski and Penderecki). The composer explored other techniques in his third period.

The composer’s words: Technically speaking I have always approached musical texture through part-writing. Both Atmospheres and Lontano have a dense canonic structure. But you cannot actually hear the , the canon. You hear a kind of impenetrable texture, something like a very densely woven cobweb. I have retained melodic lines in the process of composition, they are governed by rules as strict as Palestrina's or those of the Flemish school, but the rules of this polyphony are worked out by me. The polyphonic structure does not come through, you cannot hear it; it remains hidden in a microscopic, underwater world, to us inaudible. I call it micropolyphony (such a beautiful word!).'

Musical objectives:

•To “experience immersion” in the light, (lux aeterna) rather than a description of it. Sense of spectrum of colors of light.

•Elimination of rhythmic pulsation, but the work is not static, thanks to the process of micropolyphony

•Net-structure process: through voice leading, certain harmonies come in and out of constellations inconstant motion.

•Explores the color of phonemes in the text, rather than the intelligibility of the text.

Issues in preparing the work:

1. Selecting the choir, matching the voices, and obtaining the ranges. 2. Pitch retention, or perfect pitch 3. Staying together when there is no pulsation 4. Teaching the variety of quintuplets and septuplets 5. Good strategy-teach the dux of each canon 6. Good strategy- identify the landmark harmonic constellations 7. Good strategy-keep the finger on the page.