György Ligeti, Friction, and the Uncertain Image

Abstract

The current succession of centenaries of members of a significant group of European composers who made their work in the second half of the twentieth century gives us cause to think again about the historical situation they faced, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and the ways in which their responses to that situation shaped both their creative output and the culture of the times. Using Anna Tsing’s notion of friction, as a productive force emanating from the unresolved co-presence of differences, this article examines the work of György Ligeti, and considers how his experience of multiple displacements, as a European Jew who experienced both Nazi and Soviet invasions, contributed to the formation of an aesthetic of mystery and irony, formulated here as the production of the uncertain image.