Monday, June 26 2006 in Vienna

Yesterday I attended the funeral and memorial concert for György Ligeti in Vienna. The numbers in attendance were unexpectedly small, but those who were there included Ligeti’s wife Vera and son Lukas, several of his former composition students, old friends, performers and publishers.

The funeral took place at the Feuerhalle Simmering, part of Vienna’s cemetery and crematorium. Ligeti’s coffin was blanketed with flowers and surrounded by large bouquets. Aside from biographer Paul Griffiths’ poignant poem which created a world literally without Ligeti (he wrote a tribute to Ligeti without allowing himself to use any letters of the composers name), the official speeches left one with the impression that this was a person who could not be described in words. György and Marta Kurtag ended the ceremony with quiet and introspective playing of Bach on the Feuerhalle’s unassuming upright piano, Ligeti’s legacy of music that raged, passionate and fierce, searing with fearsome intelligence and wit, invading the listener with sadness and hurt and pain, included Lontano, Melodien, Atmospheres, Apparition, Le Grand Macabre, and his Requiem, all of which speak with brilliant and often unsettling clarity.

It took the afternoon concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus’ Mozart Hall to bring us closer to the only Ligeti most of us could know. Pianist Pierre Laurent Aimard, the dedicatee of many of Ligeti’s piano works, walked to the piano from the back of the concert hall, ignoring the uncertain smattering of applause, and launched into three movements from the Musica Ricercata (1951-53), followed by several of the Etudes (1985-2001). Aimard perfectly balanced the combination of thunderous technique and calculation with passionate spontaneity, sometimes tackling the keys like a sportsman and at other times, creating a blurry blush of colour that left us awestruck and vulnerable. This is Ligeti: heart and mind working together in a virtuosic storm. Aimard left the stage after prolonged silence at the end of the last Etude, and left us staring at the well-worn cut and pasted sheets of music on the piano.

The Arnold Schönberg Choir sang Lux Aeterna (1966) for 16 part choir, a piece in which Ligeti’s paintbrush guided the listener to points of light and darkness, with brief moments of calm surrounded by moving rays of light, as if the notes were sunlight, moving through a prism.

The final piece on the program was Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique for 100 Metronomes (1962). It was one hundred heartbeats of various speeds and lifetimes, only rarely finding a common rhythm, slowly dying away until the very last metronome was beating alone, leading finally to a standing ovation of silence.