The whole video, not just Ligeti's composition, but also the double woman, the double voice... It's just the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my entire... week.
I like how we tend to associate the abstractness of art, like this musical experience, with things we "know better", based in the sensation of security that our past experiences brings to us, like the sounds of nature phenomena or the stereotypes of what music should sound like.
This might be more interesting if the metronomes could be set in a semicircle around a single listener, arranged with the slower ones to the left, progressing to faster on the right, so that the listener could distinguish the different ticks coming from different places. I’d sit for such a hearing, if it took under five minutes. - Another Q: has anyone tried water drops at different speeds, over different surfaces (metal etc.)? You could vary the amount of water by electronically controlling the taps. Might sound nice.
From my point of view, this piece raise many questions like : what is music ? what is art ? Can a music instrument produce something else than music ? Is it always art ? What is a music instrument (a metronome ?) ? This piece has been written/organized by a music composer, is it sufficient to call it music ? My feeling is that this piece is art for sure. It is connected to death, maybe to the death of the universe. It is like a sound sculpture but I am not sure whether it is music or not.
What are questions? No seriously though art is the bullshit you add to time and space. The meaning is the meaning. That's why you are never wrong in an interpretation and never right either. It's all bullshit
@@NorthTexasEagle1989 Asking questions is important at least from a human perspective. So art as a way to raise good questions is important too... at least from a human perspective!
***** Hey S, You love Xenakis...I know you must love Ligeti! I'm betting this inspired Frank to play the bicycle! :) Jason Becker Gabs, this is just brilliant! Enjoy! ***** Ha! Enjoy! ;)
Change this from using metronomes to using 100 to 1000 different tone generators. Each tone generator programed to move randomly up and down a range of frequencies, playing each tone for a random period of time, with each tone generator shutting itself off at randomly selected intervals until only one pure tone remains. It would be a cacophony of sound, yet within the chaos would be delicate islands of order, wherein the myriad oscillations would at times cancel and reenforce each other.
This is not a weird but a clever rythmic excercise of composition. The maestro Ligeti bound himself to choose in detail every frequency for every Metronome thus creating one unique texture based on chaotic behavior, since obviously every metronome can't have an exact frequency, hence this uncertainty in the correlation of frequencys due to the mechanics of the apparatus, is what relates design and chaos. And all together with the sense of mechanical extinction.
Not sure if you're trolling but the only instruction Ligeti gives is "At a sign from the conductor the players wind up the metronomes. Following this, the speeds of the pendulums are set: within each group they must be different for each instrument." With group he means 10 metronomes and 1 performer. And I think this was meant as kind of a joke, although I really think it's a neat idea.
@@ramiro_echeverria For a set of sounds articulated in time to be art it has to have design in it, and it must convey intelligence. If both conditions are met, the sounds spread in time-space may carry the message which art is all about. Art is a form of comunicating something beyond the standard language of words.
"What is the point", some ask? What is the point of listening to the rain fall, or to the spin cycle of a washing machine.? Hearing pattern emerge out of apparent randomness and chaos.... is this really not interesting to you? I love how the "last metronome standing" goes on "beating" silently. And the irony of the title..... very sly.
What's the point of listening to the rain fall? Rain evokes a landscape, a day in life, melancholia, smell of wet grass... Metronomes evokes... ehm... metronomes. In fact, rain itself it's not music either. It's nice, but it's properly music only when you add it to a composition. Thus, musical work (with the sound of rain, or not) replaces your vision of the landscape, sensation of being below rain, etc. So, you can imagine what I think about "music" of metronomes (only noise, and not evocative noise).
@@TheBoinaman1 I think I relate to your comment here most then others. It would be a lot more interesting if these metronomes were used with other equipment to create, they would be put in a context where I think they could be a percussive instrument, but here they are just silly. This piece is nowhere near as clever as some people here like to think, in my opinion. It's just gimmicky that's all.
This is beautiful. Each sound serves it's own purpose. The seemingly infinite complexity of it all is astounding. All you can do is observe and listen in wonder. It's like listening to a geiger counter ticking. There is something indescribable that makes us find the beauty in nearly anything.
I have reservations concerning this piece, but the juxtaposition of multiple layers of tempi is an extraordinary subject to research. One should not forget that Ligeti was very enamored by the music of Nancarrow (a man well known for his experiments in temporal layering), and the influence of Nancarrow on his music is decidedly strong, especially in the Piano Concerto.
With just 2 metronomes set at different rates you have an interesting effect as their clicks co-incide, then drift apart and then merge again. And with just a few instruments this effect can be enhanced in a complex way. But starting with a 100 meant this effect was just drowned out and not until most had died out did it become at all of interest to my mind.
***** Ligeti was a dreamer. he knew that the human ear could not hear what he composed. is that a reason to not compose or perform music, no. we have heard and understand many beautiful pieces of music, but to see a piece of music on paper, yet not hear it when played through a rube goldberg apparatus is astounding
Long before I came across this piece I used to amuse myself with just setting two metronomes up with identical speed. Against all expectations metronomes do not keep perfect time and after 10 -15 clicks they start going out of phase with each other, the discrepancy increasing until they merge together again and the process can go on repeating ad infinitum. This is not chaos but an infinitely subtle time pattern to which I could listen with awed pleasure. This is exactly what happens in Ligeti's "Symphonic Poem" in the last 30 odd seconds. The other 7 minutes are not essential listening. Incidentally the dwindling of an orchestra from full complement to a single player who gets up and departs at the end of the piece was used by Haydn in his Farewell Symphony with great charm and wit. Is there nothing new under the sun?
@406jaciace I would disagree. The majority of his early works with few exception demonstrate an exemplary sensibilities. Listen to Gruppen, Carré, Kontakte, or Momente: very fine works written by a man who had done wonders with the serial method. Many of his later works are rather arid (the Licht-era works are mostly guilty of this), but are nonetheless worthy of research. Unsichtbäre Chöre, Samstags-Abschied, Examen, and Hoch-Zeiten are but a few of some of his best late works.
great critic to the music of his time! what I really love bout this is that, like all the music that is played, it's different all the time that it's played!
It was something new, so it must be awesome.... That's the way everybody thinks. And people who openly say they don't like it aren't educated enough -.-
The French lady said that it originally (in 1963) needed about 10 people to start the metronomes off so they were more or less synchronised. 30 years later someone who liked the piece invented this method of starting it so public performances would be easier. She also said that the first performance was met with a long silence followed by booing, protests and threats. I guess Ligeti really hit a nerve..
I know about this, but I never heard this before... for Ligeti it´s a consequent work! ... micropolyphonie.... microrhythms.... overlay... the structure makes the music... structuralism...
I can tell you that even one metronome never keeps good time when you are playing along with it. So I'm hardly surprised that at least 30 of these metronomes are rushing or dragging.
At the end the girl says that it was once played in Netherlands : the last metronome tick was followed by a long silence, then strong protestations and threats to the authors.. So yeah it made people angry ^^
@TheCoolProfessor That's the point, it's supposed to be different metronomes in different speeds started at different times. He said it's supposed to be a joke on the current Avant Garde scene.
