ABSTRACT
Ligeti, as we know, was exceptional among his contemporaries for the variety of stimuli on which he drew. Among this rich combination of attributes, I propose here to examine only one: Ligeti’s role as a ‘tunesmith’. Such a subject would never have occurred to me – nor, I imagine, to anybody else – during the 1960s when I first encountered his music. Now, however, considering his whole output in retrospect, I have come to regard Ligeti as one of the most gifted and instinctive melodists of his generation, outshining all his avant-garde contemporaries in this respect, and I suggest that the exercise of this gift gave his music not only identifiable roots and durability, but a cultural breadth and accessibility few others achieved. Whether inspired by folk models or not, as a composer he instinctively created melody from the earliest notes he put on paper to the last. Not only did Ligeti compose melodies, quote them, allude to them. He needed them, especially in later life, to identify with the historical canon from which his own music emanated, and even more to assuage a deepening nostalgia for the cultural environment on which circumstances had compelled him to turn his back.
