Lux Aeterna Shines on György Ligeti

Yesterday, after a long struggle with illness, one of the giants of modern music died, Romanian-born Hungarian composer György Ligeti. Tim Page has a lengthy tribute in today's Post (Gyorgy Ligeti's Music Was a Constant Surprise, June 13), as do most of the major American and European music dailies, including Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times, Paul Griffiths in the New York Times, Nicolas Blanmont in La Libre Belgique, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Renaud Machart and Marie-Aude Roux in Le Monde. The bloggers are also weighing in, including Alex Ross, Jeremy Denk, On an Overgrown Path, Daniel Felsenfeld, Tim Rutherford-Johnson. The folks at Sequenza 21 have gotten hot under the collar, and rightly so, about all of the media connecting Ligeti's name with the Kubrick film that used some of his music, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Ligeti is a particular favorite here at Ionarts:

• György Ligeti Becomes "Blue Velvet" in the Hands of the Brentano Quartet (second string quartet, February 15, 2006)
  
• Rostropovich Cello Competition (cello sonata, August 3, 2005)
  
• Left Bank Ligeti (first string quartet, May 9, 2005)
  
• Ligeti with the Pacifica Quartet (first string quartet, April 11, 2005)
  
• Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre in San Francisco (November 12, 2004)

The carhorns and doorbells and the countertenor Prince Go-Go in Le Grand Macabre, the piano etudes with Aimard, the choral works, the Poème symphonique for a hundred metronomes, for all these being part of my sonic experience, I thank György Ligeti and honor his memory, the "alchemist of sound" (as Luca Sabbatini put it in the Tribune de Genève). All who care about contemporary music appreciate the gravity of this loss.