ABSTRACT
This study aims to recover the Romanian dimension of Ligeti’s oeuvre and to illuminate the long-lasting impact which the folk music of this country had on his compositions. Although Ligeti’s links with his Romanian folk heritage remain unexplored – largely because this influence is not immediately apparent in his pieces – an inspection of the documents held in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel offers a whole new perspective on this topic; the manuscripts provide a panoramic view of Ligeti’s enduring relationship with Romanian music, from the early years of his youth spent in Cluj and, briefly, in Bucharest to the very end of his creative activity.
As a Transylvanian-born composer, Ligeti was witness to a cultural melting pot of Romanian, Hungarian, German, Slovak, Jewish, and other ethnic influences. He therefore became familiar with the rich music of the region, becoming a musical ‘polyglot’ at a very early age. At the Bucharest Folklore Institute he studied folk music from across the entire Romanian territory, which had palpable consequences during the first stage of his career as a composer, during which he wrote folkloric music that – in a few pieces – showed a strong relationship with his Romanian folk heritage. In the later stages, Ligeti engaged with cross-cultural influences between Eastern European and extra-European music, leading to a highly original interplay of musical cultures. The multiple influences are filtered, and the folkloric idioms deconstructed, giving way to a unique manner of toying with traditions and musical geographies, in which Romania remains as central a landmark as Hungary.
The abundant references found in his late manuscripts kept in the Paul Sacher Foundation often include unexpected yet relevant annotations of the rich aural source of folk music from Romania: ‘căluşari’ (a traditional dance from the Oltenia region), ‘sound of Romanian folk instruments,’ ‘bocet’ (lament), ‘bucium’ (Romanian alphorn), ‘Hora lungă,’ ‘Mociriţa’ (a song from the Maramureş region), ‘Romanian folk wedding songs’. An examination of his Transylvanian spiritual roots as an organic part of the complex fusion of cultures in his artistic DNA can be seen as an affirmation of the composer’s identification with his native territory.
