This article explores how a composer’s working materials can contribute to the analysis of musical meaning. Using examples of Ligeti’s sketches for his late works, I demonstrate how they can support familiar interpretations as well as catalyzing novel understandings. In particular, Ligeti’s prose notes, or “jottings” provide a jumping off point for hermeneutic analysis. Although the sheer amount of information provided in the jottings can be paralyzing, I explore how the material can nevertheless, when used cautiously, contribute insights.
I draw upon Foucault’s distinction between author-function and historical figure to frame two possible roles for the sketch materials. In my first two case studies, I frame the sketches as reflecting the author-function by amplifying a grotesque aesthetic associated with Ligeti’s late works. Examining manipulations of a hunt topic in the sketches for the Hamburg Concerto and of a specific Hungarian folk melody across the two versions of the Violin Concerto, I show how the composer consciously distorted conventional musical topics to produce a distanced or ironic effect. In my third and fourth case studies, I explore the sketches as records of the historical figure of Ligeti. I outline two problematic cases in which his preliminary notes or jottings are at odds with his public pronouncements: the opening of “Spectra” from Ligeti’s Hamburg Concerto, and passages of the Piano Concerto. Tensions between sketch evidence and published remarks lead me to explore the underlying ideologies of Ligeti’s avant-garde aesthetic.
University of California Press