György Ligeti: hamburgisches Konzert für Horn und Kammerorchester mit 4 obligaten Naturhörnern. Aspects of a Crystalline Microtonality

Abstract

This is a study on the microtonal aspects of György Ligeti’s Hamburgisches Konzert für Horn und Kammerorchester mit 4 obligaten Naturhörnern, with special reference to its relationship with the American composer Harry Partch. The special mixture of equal temperament versus just intonation is analyzed for longer passages and adhoc chords in the concept of Ligeti. The movement “Choral” is confronted with Harry Partch’s idea of “tonality flux”. The “Hamburgisches Konzert für Horn und Kammerorchester mit 4 obligaten Naturhörnern” by György Ligeti, composed in 1998-2002, joins a long chain of exploratory forms of thought in his compositional work long years before he had pondered meloharmonics that would illuminate the great theme of tonality in a novel, personal way. In the Horn Trio (1982), melodies containing natural tones appear for the first time in the movement “Alla Marcia.” Previously, in the same work, Ligeti used the 11th harmonic as a precise quarter tone. Yet in the Horn Trio, these microtonal events are transverse to the other voices of violin and piano. Ligeti spoke of three “autists,” each living in his world of moods/tunings. In the works that followed, microtones take up an ever wider space, up to the Piano Concerto (1985-88) with 5^th, 7^th or 11^th harmonics in trumpet, horn and trombone, and then to the Violin Concerto (1990-92), where two solo satellite strings from the orchestra, violin and viola, are retuned in natural interval relationships. The Viola Solo Sonata (1991-94) contains in the first movement “Hora lungă” a sign world new to Ligeti for natural thirds, natural sevenths and the 11^th natural tone. He adopts these signs for the Hamburgisches Konzert, on which we will now focus.