Micropolyphony
Encyclopedia
Micropolyphony is a type of 20th century musical texture involving the use of sustained dissonant
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...

 chord
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...

s that shift slowly over time. According to David Cope
David Cope
David Cope is an American author, composer, scientist, and professor emeritus of music at the University of California, Santa Cruz...

, "a simultaneity
Simultaneity
Simultaneity is the property of two events happening at the same time in at least one frame of reference. The word derives from the Latin simul, at the same time plus the suffix -taneous, abstracted from spontaneous .The noun simult means a supernatural coincidence, two or more divinely...

 of different lines, rhythms, and timbres" (Cope 1997, 101). Developed by György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...

, "Micropolyphony resembles cluster chords, but differs in its use of moving rather than static lines" (Cope 1997, 101).

The earliest example of micropolyphony in Ligeti's work occurs in the second movement of his orchestral composition Apparitions (Steinitz 2003, p. 103). His next work, Atmosphères
Atmosphères
Atmosphères is a piece for full orchestra, composed by György Ligeti in 1961. It is noted for eschewing conventional melody and metre in favor of dense sound textures...

for orchestra, and the first movement of his later Requiem, for soprano, mezzo-soprano, mixed choir, and orchestra, also use the technique. Micropolyphony is easier with larger ensembles or polyphonic instruments such as the piano (Cope 1997, 101), though the Poème symphonique
Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes
The Hungarian composer György Ligeti composed Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes in 1962, during his brief acquaintance with the Fluxus movement....

for a hundred metronomes creates "micropolyphony of unparallelled complexity" (Griffiths 2001). Many of Ligeti's piano pieces are examples of micropolyphony applied to complex "minimalist" Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

 and Pygmy music
Pygmy music
The Pygmies are a broad group of people who live in Central Africa, especially in the Congo, the Central African Republic and Cameroon. Music is an important part of Pygmy life, and casual performances take place during many of the day's events...

 derived rhythmic schemes.

In a later introduction to Apparitions, Ligeti recounted a horrific childhood dream whose image of a "web" he would associate with the "web of sound" created by micropolyphony:

Sources

  • Cope, David (1997). Techniques of the Contemporary Composer. New York, New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-864737-8.
  • Griffiths, Paul (2001). "Ligeti, György (Sándor)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music.
  • Steinitz, Richard. 2003. György Ligeti: Music of the Imagination. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-17631-3; Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1555535518.
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