''Continuum'' for
harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...
is a
musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...
by
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" ...
composed in 1968, and dedicated to the contemporary harpsichordist,
Antoinette Vischer. The composer describes the conception and result of its technique:
Amy Bauer (2004, p. 130) describes the piece as ''
trompe-l'œil
''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...
'', creating "a sense of
stasis
Stasis (from Greek στάσις "a standing still") may refer to:
* A state in stability theory, in which all forces are equal and opposing, therefore they cancel out each other
* Stasis (political history), a period of civil war within an ancient ...
through extremely rapid activity." She compares it to a patient's description of the
schizophrenic
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
experience of, "an intense
cerebral activity in which inner experiences took place at greatly increased speed, so that much more than usual happened per minute of external time. The result was to give an effect of
slow motion
Slow motion (commonly abbreviated as slo-mo or slow-mo) is an effect in film-making whereby time appears to be slowed down. It was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger in the early 20th century. This can be accomplished through the use o ...
." (Sass 1992)
This piece has also been arranged for
barrel organ
A barrel organ (also called roller organ or crank organ) is a French mechanical musical instrument consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated. The basic principle is the sa ...
and for two
player piano
A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern i ...
s by the composer.
The piece has also been compared by classical music reviewers to the magnetic fluctuations of comet
67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (abbreviated as 67P or 67P/C–G) is a Jupiter-family comet, originally from the Kuiper belt, with a current orbital period of 6.45 years, a rotation period of approximately 12.4 hours and a maximum velocity of . Chu ...
as detected by the space probe
Philae
; ar, فيلة; cop, ⲡⲓⲗⲁⲕ
, alternate_name =
, image = File:File, Asuán, Egipto, 2022-04-01, DD 93.jpg
, alt =
, caption = The temple of Isis from Philae at its current location on Agilkia Island in Lake Nasse ...
after the fluctuations were artistically sonificated by a German composer and sound designer to make them audible.
Tim Edwards, "Music emitted rom Comet 67P sounds an awful lot like 20th-century harpsichord masterpiece", classic fm, 14 November 2014
/ref>
References
Sources
*Bauer, Amy (2004). "'Tone-Color, Movement, Changing Harmonic Planes': Cognition, Constraints and Conceptual Blends", ''The Pleasure of Modernist Music''. University of Rochester Press. .
* ''Ligeti in Conversation''. Cited in Bauer.
*Sass (1992). ''Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought''. New York: Basic Books. Cited in Bauer.
*Amazon.com (2007
Amazon.com: Ligeti: Mechanical Music: Music: Gyorgy Ligeti, Pierre Charial, Jürgen Hocker, Françoise Terrioux
(accessed April 14, 2007)
*Ligeti, György, Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, and Claude Samuel
Claude Samuel (23 June 1931 – 14 June 2020) was a French music critic and radio personality.
Biography
Born in Paris, after medical studies and graduating as a dental surgeon, Samuel chose to devote himself to classical music journalism. He ...
. György Ligeti in Conversation with Péter Várnai, Josef Häusler, Claude Samuel, and Himself. London: Eulenburg, 1983.
*"Jede zeitliche Folge von Tönen, Klängen, musikalischen Gestalten" hat Rhythmus. Über die Rhythmik in Ligetis Cembalostück Continuum von Peter Petersen, 2008, PDF on: www.saitenspiel.org
Compositions by György Ligeti
1968 compositions
{{classical-composition-stub