Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

The Musical Timespace

130

Flow, expansion and emotion

Continuum - An expanding flow of timbral-harmonic colors

In

Ligeti's Continuum for harpsichord (1968), the soundspace is gradually

filled with streams of pulsating timbre, vibrating and rotating in transitory

rhythmic and melodic patterns, leading to an wide expansion of the

range of the soundspace.

Continuum is recorded by Elisabeth Chojnacka on a Wergo CD. This is a

description of the evolution of the music;

Ligeti: Continuum

0'00 A sharply attacked trill on a minor third suddenly emerges, 0'11

color is added, 0'20 the trill grows into a pulsating tone web, 0'33

changes color in rotating motion, 0'39 gradually receding in a simple

trill...

0'55 Distinct pulse and harmonic color is added, 1'04 arpeggio patterns

are set in motion, 1'11 the arpeggio spreads, rotates and adopts more

complex colors while irregular rhytmic patterns emerge...

1'32 A clear harmony stands out, pulsates, 1'37 develops into a

gradually thickening web, 1'52 is divided in two rotating streams, one

rising, the other one falling, spreading wide apart, 2'09 the sounds-

treams are set in energetic oscillation, 2'19 erupting in large and violent

space-filling vibration, 2'26 again dividing in a high and a low stream,

spreading apart...

2'45 The low stream stops, leaving reverberation, the high stream conti-

nues in a trill, 2'51 rises, 2'54 thickens, 3'14 ascends higher and higher,

slightly accelerating, 3'32 is concentrated in a thin line of vibrating

energy, 3'39 is focused in one frenetically repeated high tone accompa-

nied by pulsating keyboard noise, 3'54 stops, reverberates, 3'56 disap-

pears.

This music is a flow of sound in continuous transformation. The fast, inces-

sant stream of even notes creates auditory illusions of emerging rhythmic

patterns, transient melodic lines and fluctuating timbral-harmonic colors.

Fig. 7.4 shows the first page of the notated music, corresponding to 0'00-

0'28 in the recording. Ligeti gives this instruction to the performer;

7 – Density, Extension and Color of the Soundspace

131

Prestissimo = extremely fast, so that the individual tones can hardly

be perceived, but rather merge into a continuum. Play very evenly,

without articulation of any sort. The correct tempo has been reached

when the piece lasts less than 4 minutes (not counting the long

fermata at the end). The vertical broken lines are not bar lines - there

is neither beat nor metre in this piece - but serve merely as a means

of orientation.

Fig. 7.4. Continuum, First page