Book Reviews 227

disciplines. Like Beethoven’s person and music, it is varied and interesting

and suggests many possibilities for future research.

Patricia Puckett Sasser

Digital Librarian, Friedheim Music Library
The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD

Amy Bauer (2011). LIGETI’S LAMENTS: NOSTALGIA, EXOTICISM AND

THE ABSOLUTE. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press. 234 pp., $99.95. ISBN
9781409400417 (hardcover).

Amy Bauer’s book Ligeti’s Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism and the Absolute is a
logical continuation of the author’s dissertation, “Compositional Process and
Parody in the Music of György Ligeti” (Yale, 1997), and the latest published
research on a much discussed and controversial composer. Earlier books
about Ligeti include Mike Searby’s Ligeti’s Stylistic Crisis: Transformation in
His Musical Style, 1974–1985 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009), Rachel
Beckles Willson’s Ligeti, Kurtág, and Hungarian Music During the Cold
War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Richard Steinitz’s
György Ligeti: Music of the Imagination (London: Faber and Faber, 2003),
and Richard Toop’s biography Gyorgy Ligeti (London: Phaidon Press, 1999).
Bauer’s book expands on topics discussed in Stephen Taylor’s dissertation,
“The Lamento Motif: Metamorphosis in Ligeti’s Late Style” (Cornell, 1994),
and his article “Passacaglia and Lament in Ligeti’s Recent Music” in Tijdschrift
voor Muziektheorie 9, no. 1 (2004).
Amy Bauer’s book is not a biography but an analytical survey. Her focus
is the subject of the lament in terms of aesthetic, philosophical, historical,
personal, musical, and formal categories, and her claim is for its continu-
ous manifestation in Ligeti’s works: “[A]s both a unifying device and formal
scheme, lament is of fundamental importance to Ligeti’s development” (p. 3).
She declares at the beginning of the book, “As a melodic trope—a repeated,
descending scale fragment, often presented within a three-part phrase—
the lament emerges in the composer’s earlier works. . . . The large scale
dramatic form known as lament-passacaglia or lament-ostinato plays a role
in every multi-movement work after 1982 (with the arguable exception of
the Hamburg Concerto, 1999, rev, 2002)” (p. 3), and through her rigorous
analyses she proves those statements.
With no doubt, Ligeti’s life experience prompted his lamenting: “My
mother tongue is Hungarian but I’m not quite authentically [echter]
Hungarian, as I’m a Jew. Yet, I’m not a member of a Jewish congregation,
therefore I’m an assimilated Jew. I’m not completely assimilated, however,
because I’m not baptized” (p. 5). Born in Dicöszentmárton in Transylvanian
228 Book Reviews

Romania, he experienced its semi-fascist regime, invasion by the Nazis, and

Stalinism. Ligeti witnessed the cold kiss of death in a Jewish forced labor
camp (1944) and later as a Soviet prisoner, and his participation in the
Hungarian Uprising of 1956 forced him to escape to Vienna (pp. 11–13).
Traumatizing, though not uniquely so, his experience resulted in feelings
of isolation. (Similarly, but with a completely different outcome, his Czech
colleague, the composer Petr Eben, who was a half-Jew and practicing
Catholic, extensively discussed his terrifying Buchenwald camp experience,
which forced him to continuously question the meanings of life/death, and
good/evil and their correlation—themes that appear as a silver strand in each
of his works. While he did not leave his country, often he felt emotionally
imprisoned there.)
The lament, or grief generally (for missed opportunities, unrealized pos-
sibilities, choices not selected due to obstacles and circumstances), is the
focal point for multilayered, extended discussions of musical works that
loosely or directly fall into the category of lament. “I therefore follow the
lament topic into pieces and genres that are not clearly branded as laments
nor easily characterized with a melancholy or despondent ethos,” writes
Bauer (p. 4), which explains the selection of compositions for inclusion in
the book. Through comparative analyses and analogies discussed to great
lengths, the author demonstrates the musical influences Ligeti experienced
and the development of his own ever-changing musical language.
Amy Bauer organizes the book in seven chapters supplemented with a
selected bibliography and index. Chapter 1, “The Cosmopolitan Exception,”
places Ligeti’s complex identity in a “historical and social context” explain-
ing the composer’s “otherness,” “loneliness,” and “disconnect” (p. 4). The
succeeding chapters observe the lament from diverse angles and identify
various factors for its existence in Ligeti’s works. Chapter 2, “Ligeti’s Ur-
Laments,” opens the discussion with early vocal works: “Siralmas nékem”
(“Lament,” 1945–1946), the first song from a cycle Far from Home for three
women’s voices, which Bauer calls “his first real lament” (p. 23), and Magány
(Loneliness) for soprano, alto, and baritone (1946). While the first work sets
a melancholic text, the second is a dream about a poet’s love with the final
stanza turning it into mourning. Pápainé (Widow Pápai, 1953), for SATB
a cappella is a setting of a Hungarian dramatic folk ballad text related to
lament. The first orchestral works, Apparitions (1958–1959) and Aventures
(1962–1963), also find a place here; Apparition’s massive spider-like web
of pre-compositional design becomes a metaphor for “the helplessness of
elapsing time” (p. 37).
Chapter 3, “Lament and the Universal Exception,” views the lament as
“a rhetorical aside,” an apostrophe, and a drive (p. 20). Here the reader
examines how the triplet and the “falling minor second” figure as a symbol
of grief in works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt, and how these
serve as models for Ligeti’s use of rhetorical figures in Musica ricercata
 Book Reviews 229

(1951–1953) for piano and Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra (1966).
Bauer discusses in great detail the “pattern-meccanico” and its nostalgic
meaning for Ligeti found in Ricercare per organo (1953) and “Monument”
from Three Pieces for Two Pianos (1976), where “the two pianists both pro-
ceed by additive cycles, but in different meters, tempi, and beat values”
(p. 80). Another “pattern-meccanico,” in the etude for piano “Desorde,”
displays “polyrhythmic/polymodal layers based on a common eight-note
pulse” (p. 84). Chapter 4, “The Transparent Tangle of History,” is a dis-
cussion of Ligeti’s large orchestral work Lontano (1967) and demonstrates
the influences of Bruckner, Wagner, and Debussy in terms of orchestration,
texture, and music language in relation to his opera Le Grand Macabre
(1974–1977), “which incorporates quotation and allusion on a dizzying
number of levels” (p. 109).
Chapter 5, “The Singular Exotic,” shows Ligeti’s integration of “exotic”
material. His fascination with Balinese gamelan finds expression in Piano
Etude No. 7 “Galamb borong” (“Melancholy Dove,” 1988–1989), with its sev-
eral overlapping rhythmic layers and whole-tone harmonies resulting in a
pulsating but static sound (pp. 143–144). Furthermore, examples of addi-
tive patterns “derived from the cross-rhythms characteristic of sub-Saharan
polyphony” (p. 150) can be observed in the first and fifth movements of
the Piano Concerto (1985–1988). Chapter 6, “Lament and the Absolute,” is
devoted to the Horn Trio (1982), a composition written after a prolonged
time of silence. The work pays respect to Beethoven, Brahms, and Bartók; its
scherzo brings together folk influences of East-Europe and Caribbean; and its
last movement “Lamento. Adagio” is a passacaglia reminiscent of Monteverdi
and Bach. Chapter 7, “Lament as Genre,” discusses Ligeti’s late works and
his interest in Baroque lament-passacaglia as a model with references to
Monteverdi and extensive analyses of the Violin Concerto (1989–1993),
Sonata for Solo Viola (1991–1994), and the Piano Concerto.
“I Hate Ideologies” (p. 15) is Ligeti’s short statement that explains
his avoidance of “belonging” and his continuous search for an individual
musical language. Discussing this development and the multiple influences
over Ligeti’s style, Bauer makes numerous references to the composer’s
own words. In the book’s brief conclusion, Bauer summarizes: “. . . Ligeti’s
laments reveal the split between the utopian fantasy of a new musical lan-
guage and the mundane truth that this language is nothing but a motley,
discordant product of other musics and other voices” (p. 203).
Amy Bauer’s book targets a well-educated audience with rich knowl-
edge of music history and theory, and I would not recommend it for the
general reader; often, omissions of simple details or chronological facts
incidental to the goal of the book demonstrate her assumption of a well-
informed reader. To understand and appreciate the depth of the analyses,
I recommend having scores and recordings in hand for additional illustration
of the narrative. All that said, this book will be an excellent asset for every
230 Book Reviews

academic library and is highly recommended for everyone interested in the

aesthetics of the twentieth century and the music of György Ligeti.

Nelly Matova, DMA

Acquisitions, University Library
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL

Director, Cappella Orpheus

Urbana, IL
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