Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

The Musical Timespace

96

György Ligeti: Second String Quartet - Temporal patterns of regularity

and irregularity

In the third movement of his Second String Quartet (1968), György

Ligeti has composed transitions between regularity and irregularity.

This is a survey of the movement, indicated to be played "like a preci-

sion mechanism."

Ligeti: Second String Quartet, 3rd Movement

0'00-1'10 Pulse, disintegration and reintegration

At the beginning, synchronized pizzicato pulse with unchanged pitch

is heard in all four instruments. 0'05 Slight deviations, 0'11 an accele-

rating stream separates itself, 0'15 all pizzicato streams are desynchro-

nized and mingled. 0'20 Changes in pitch level clarify the separation

of voices, and several tempi are heard simultaneously; 0'28 sudden

loud pizzicato in one instrument attracts attention to one tempo, 0'31

the loud pizzicato spreads to other instruments and four tempi com-

pete with each other.

0'39 One violent pizzicato slap starts a new mid-register polyphony

of unsynchronized tempi, slowly accelerating. 0'46 The pitch heights

of the pizzicato streams begin to glide upwards and downwards in

stepless motion; 1'06 a top note and a bottom note are reached, and

the pizzicatos are resynchronized.