Composers › György Ligeti › Programme note
Six Bagatelles for wind quintet (1963)
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
Allegro con spirito
Rubato lamentoso
Allegro grazioso
Presto ruvido
Adagio mesto
Molto vivace. Capriccioso
If Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles display nothing like the sophistication he was to cultivate after leaving Hungary at the time of the uprising in 1956, they are characteristic of the composer he was to become in their wit, their keen interest in colour and, in spite of externalpolitical pressures, their refusal to conform. They are actually arrangements of six of the eleven short piano pieces of Musica ricercata written between 1951 and 1953 when he “was experimenting,” he said, “with simple structures of rhythms and sounds in
order to evolve a new music from nothing.” They are so resourcefully written that you would scarcely notice that, for example, the cheerful Allegro con spirito has only four different notes in it and the expressive Rubato lamentoso no more than six. In the Adagio mesto Bartòk is commemorated with a generous allowance of ten and no one would miss the C natural excluded from the closing Molto vivace.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Bagatelles/w155”
Allegro con spirito
Rubato lamentoso
Allegro grazioso
Presto ruvido
Adagio mesto
Molto vivace. Capriccioso
Ligeti wrote his Six Bagatelles in 1953 when he was still working in Budapest, cut off by political restrictions from the mainstream of musical development in Western Europe and firmly under the control of the Soviet aesthetic that had been imposed on his country for several years by then. But if they display nothing like the sophistication he was to cultivate after leaving Hungary at the time of the uprising in 1956, they are characteristic of Ligeti in their wit, their keen interest in colour and, in spite of external pressures, their refusal to conform. While it is true that they are recognisably Hungarian in idiom, with clear echoes of Bartòk here and there (the Adagio mesto is dedicated to his memory), they are at the same time very discreetly experimental.
The Bagatelles are actually arrangements of six of the eleven short piano pieces of Musica ricercata written between 1951 and 1953 when Ligeti “was experimenting,” he said, “with simple structures of rhythms and sounds in
order to evolve a new music from nothing.” In this case he submitted himself to the discipline of using only two notes in the first piece, three in the second, four in the third… and so on until all twelve notes are admitted into the eleventh. The numerical symmetry is lost in the Bagatelles – which are based on the third, fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth pieces of Musica ricercata – but is replaced by the structural symmetry represented by two slow movements (Rubato lamentoso and Adagio mesto) each framed by quicker pieces. They are so resourcefully written that you would scarcely notice that, for example, the cheerful Allegro con spirito has only four different notes in it and the expressive Rubato lamentoso no more than six. In the Adagio mesto Bartòk is commemorated with a generous allowance of ten and no one would miss the C natural excluded from the closing Molto vivace.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Bagatelles/w315”