ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a number of different musicological approaches from the first decade of the twenty-first century and focuses on role played by individual moments within the expressive dimension of these pieces. Symbolic approach to musical meaning implicitly adopted by Joseph Straus and David Metzer is the subject of an extended critique by Carolyn Abbate. One connection that a number of commentators have seized on elsewhere in Ligeti's late music is the influence of chaos theory. Straus's approach is to be welcomed in its reintegration of expression as a central part of musical discourse, in contemporary as much as common-practice repertoire. First of the connections is with the idea of 'acoustic listening', described earlier as a stance that focuses on the sonorous present rather than on concerns of syntax or expectation. Instead, sudden turns to the 'sensuous surface' function as moments of climax or closure within a wider formal context that retains connections with established concepts of expectation and release.
