- Micropolyphony
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Micropolyphony is a type of 20th century musical texture involving the use of sustained dissonant chords that shift slowly over time. According to David Cope, "a simultaneity of different lines, rhythms, and timbres" (Cope 1997, 101). Developed by György Ligeti, "Micropolyphony resembles cluster chords, but differs in its use of moving rather than static lines" (Cope 1997, 101).
The earliest example of micropolyphony in Ligeti's work occurs in the second movement of his orchestral composition Apparitions (Steinitz 2003, p. 103). His next work, Atmosphères for orchestra, and the first movement of his later Requiem, for soprano, mezzo-soprano, mixed choir, and orchestra, also use the technique. Micropolyphony is easier with larger ensembles or polyphonic instruments such as the piano (Cope 1997, 101), though the Poème symphonique for a hundred metronomes creates "micropolyphony of unparallelled complexity" (Griffiths 2001). Many of Ligeti's piano pieces are examples of micropolyphony applied to complex "minimalist" Steve Reich and Pygmy music derived rhythmic schemes.
In a later introduction to Apparitions, Ligeti recounted a horrific childhood dream whose image of a "web" he would associate with the "web of sound" created by micropolyphony:
As a small child I once had a dream that I could not get to my cot, to my safe haven, because the whole room was filled with a dense confused tangle of fine filaments. It looked like the web I had seen silkworms fill their box with as they change into pupas. I was caught up in the immense web together with both living things and objects of various kinds—huge moths, a variety of beetles—which tried to get to the flickering flame of the candle in the room; enormous dirty pillows were suspended in this substance, their rotten stuffing hanging out through the slits in the torn covers. There were blobs of fresh mucus, balls of dry mucus, remnants of food all gone cold and other such revolting rubbish. Every time a beetle or a moth moved, the entire web started shaking so that the big, heavy pillows were swinging about, which, in turn, made the web rock harder. Sometimes the different kinds of movements reinforced one another and the shaking became so hard that the web tore in places and a few insects suddenly found themselves free. But their freedom was short-lived, they were soon caught up again in the rocking tangle of filaments, and their buzzing, loud at first, grew weaker and weaker. The succession of these sudden, unexpected events gradually brought about a change in the internal structure, in the texture of the web. In places knots formed, thickening into an almost solid mass, caverns opened up where shreds of the original web were floating about like gossamer. All these changes seemed like an irreversible process, never returning to earlier states again. An indescribable sadness hung over these shifting forms and structure, the hopelessness of passing time and the melancholy of unalterable past events. (Steinitz 2003, 7)Sources
- Cope, David (1997). Techniques of the Contemporary Composer. New York, New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-864737-8.
- Griffiths, Paul (2001). "Ligeti, György (Sándor)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music.
- Steinitz, Richard. 2003. György Ligeti: Music of the Imagination. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-17631-3; Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1555535518.
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