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.

6 – Macrotemporal listening dimensions: Movement, Pulse, Rhythm and Mellody

97

1'10-2'06 Transition from pulse to streaming sound mass

A momentary steadiness of pulse and pitch height is gradually

changed by slight differences in acceleration and gliding pitch.

1'23 One by one, the instruments change from soft pizzicato to

double-speed fingertip tapping on the strings, merging in a quiet

stream of energy-laden pit-a-pat sound.

2'06-3'03 Interactions between the time of movement and events and

the time of pulse

A sudden swift outburst of fan-like movement releases a multitude of

brief energetic tremolo entries, approaching, but not reaching a com-

mon tempo. 2'20 Slow, loud pizzicato pulses far apart in register intro-

duce a variety of competing tempi. 2'33 Soft, fast pizzicato layers are

added, approaching each others in tempo and pitch, while the loud

layers disappear; 2'47 all instruments are united in a single stream of

regular pulse ... 3'03

This quartet movement displays a variety of patterns of temporal struc-

ture. Between 0'00 and 1'10, the music develops from an initial regularity

through variable states of irregularity or competition between simul-

taneous tempo layers back to a synchronized regular pulse. Between 1'10,

another development is heard, an evolution from steady pulse

through states characterized by pulseless motion, unrelated events or

competing tempi, leading to a final synchronization of the competing

layers in a renewed regularity at the end of the movement.

This music is a music of states,

events and transformations. The flow of sound is in continuous transition

within an overall form outlined by the occurrence of regularity at the

beginning, in the middle, and at the end.

The temporal flow is characterized by transitions between pulse time,

the time of movement and events and the temporal experience of sound

masses in undirected motion, which is related to pulseless mass pheno-

mena in the natural environment such as raindrops on canvas or leaves on

a tree moving in the wind.

Perceptible temporal regularity is not a necessary precondition for music.

Music can be based on structures and patterns of irregularity as well as

structures and patterns of regularity.