ABSTRACT
Gyorgy Ligeti was not alone in his fascination with lament as a vital contemporary discourse; composers from Ades to Xenakis have composed works that might be considered part of this tradition. The publication of Arianna's lament in the forms of opera solo, polyphonic madrigal, and contrafactum acknowledged the ubiquity and integrity of lament as a form and genre. At the opposite pole of the lament tradition stood Claudio Monteverdi'sLament della ninfa from the eighth book of madrigals, whose descending tetrachordal ostinato bass became a universal symbol for lament in Western music. As Richard Steinitz notes, the Piano Concerto is much more homogenous than the Trio; each movement is entirely distinct yet shares the lament motive, along with particular formal elements. Like the Piano concerto, the Violin Concerto began life as three movements that Ligeti expanded and reworked, folding two of the three original movements into a five-movement structure.
