Essay Archive - Review of Gyorgi Ligeti's Danse Macarbei
Review of Gyorgi Ligeti's Danse Macarbei
This piece is a lesson in polytonality, dissonance, and complexity. The
first thing heard is an imitation of a car horn that seems designed to grab hold
of the listener. If I were inattentive before this piece, I certainly was wide
awake when it was over. Ligeti seems to have sculpted a piece together from bits
and pieces of other musical styles: a sort of modern-art approach to music. The
violins tuning without a care in the first few moments, the slow mock continuo
of the highly dissonant basso....
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