Ligeti: String Quartet #2 - "Boop Smee Music"

1/12/11 String Quartet #2 - György Ligeti

Now there is no taboo; everything is allowed. But one cannot simply go back to tonality, it’s not the way. We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde. I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.

- György Ligeti

            A word of advice to any potential brides out there – if hire a string quartet for your wedding reception, don’t ask them to play Ligeti’s String Quartet #2.  If you do, two things will happen: a) you will get your money’s worth, as they will play their asses off, and b) all of your guests will leave.  Either that or cower in the corners and under the tables, sucking on their thumbs in terror and panic.  Let’s just say there is a reason Stanley Kubrick chose to feature Ligeti’s music in 2001: A Space Oddesey, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut.  It’s amazing music, but it’s also freakin’ weird stuff – pretty far outside of the “Common Practice Period” box.  Of course, if that’s what you’re going for at the reception…

Justin Locke, bassist with the BSO and Boston Pops is quoted as referring to this type of music as “boop smee” music, as it often begins with a fortissimo short low note (the ‘boop’) followed by an equally loud sustained high tone (the ‘smee.’)  Particularly difficult on stringed instruments, this gesture is somewhat cliché in contemporary classical music, and true to form this quartet begins with a “plunk screech…” an aggressive,  low plucked pizzicato followed by an ethereal, barely perceptible whining, extremely high harmonic in the violins.  Like the terraced dynamics of the classical period taken to an extreme, there is blaringly loud, and there is squint-with-your-ears soft, and very little in between.

Ligeti’s treats tonality as a tool to be used sparingly and when deemed appropriate, but not as the norm.  Likewise, his writing is not metrically based, but rather moves along at its own pace and not as dictated my beats or any regular pulse in time.  As Ligeti himself wrote about the non-metered nature of his music, “I write bars, for the musicians (only,) because they have to be together.” Instead, he seems to base the framework of his music around textures, accented by sharp dynamic contrasts as noted above.

The musical gesture then, the general shape and contour of the musical phrase rather than the individual notes contained therein, is elevated and contains the substance of the music.  If music of the common practice era were prose or Shakespere, this “gesture based music” would be abstract poetry – the grammar is wrong, the spelling inconsistent, and some of the words are most likely made up, but the beauty and/or emotional content the poet wished to express is found not in the individual words, but in the lyricism, shape, and phrasing of the sounds and the juxtaposition thereof.  Normally, because the language doesn’t contain what the poet is looking for.

To be honest, a fair amount of this piece, in particular the 4^th movement, sounds like four rowdy schoolchildren sawing away furiously at the strings of someone else’s instruments.  Some of the softer harmonics sound like the tones that give beginning violin students a bad rap and make the dogs whimper.  This isn’t to say there isn’t more to it than that; I’m sure Jackson Pollock is more than an indiscriminate fraud throwing paint at the wall, too, but you get the idea.  And I’ve gotten similar reactions from my own compositions as well.  I remember being told by a flautist when I handed her an original piece of mine, “So basically you’re telling me to do all those things and make all those sounds that my flute teachers for years have been telling me not to do…” and the short answer was indeed, “yes.”

The difference being this is in a controlled environment, where the composer is intentionally working outside the vocabulary of the vernacular to give the audience an experience beyond (or at least apart from) what they are used to.  Yes, it can seem like chaos.  But it’s intentional chaos.  (The only trouble is, if you don’t take my advice and go ahead and request Ligeti at your wedding reception, because that’s the sick kind of individual you are, that string quartet you hired could more likely than not pull the wool over your eyes pretty easily and no one would be the wiser…)

Up next – Ken Burns Jazz: Count Basie

Next week - Violin Sonata (John Corigliano)