Ligeti and the Evolution of 'Klangfarbenmelodie'

Jennifer Iverson, University of Iowa

Schoenberg introduced the concept of Klangfarbenmelodie in the final pages of his Harmonielehre (1911) by suggesting that timbral succession may be conceived similarly to melody. This seemingly attracted fascination and confusion in equal measure, but Ligeti and his contemporaries' writings nevertheless embrace timbre as a potential structural device. In this paper, I explore how Ligeti's Lontano (1967) and Cello Concerto (1966) were shaped by the confusing, yet compelling idea of Klangfarbenmelodie. This paper traces a dual Schoenberg- Webern reception history, a bifurcated historical narrative that Ligeti propagated in his Darmstadt lectures of 1962 and 1964 and in the article "Komposition mit Klangfarben" (1965). On the one hand, Schoenberg's "Farben" Op. 16 No. 3 demonstrates a rather harmonic interpretation of Klangfarbenmelodie, one that focuses on coalescing mixtures. Schoenberg's Op. 16 No. 3 and Ligeti's Lontano both use canonic voice-leading to produce harmonic structures, revealing that polyphony and harmony are mutually interdependent. Ligeti may have learned from Adorno's Schoenberg analyses that polyphony, melody, and harmony need only be turned into the structural background to allow for new experiments with Klangfarbenmelodie to come forward. Webernian Klangfarbenmelodie suggests, in contrast, a rather melodic approach to timbre, as embodied in the pointillist micro-timbral transformations of the closing of Fünf Stücke Op. 10 No. 1. Ligeti took this much further at the beginning of the Cello Concerto, which reduces the music to timbral changes on a single pitch. Here Ligeti mobilized the reigning Darmstadt discourses around Webern's small, aphoristic pieces and pushed it to its musical limit. Ligeti was a crucial figure in disseminating and clarifying ideas about Klangfarbenmelodie, both in his teachings and to stunning musical results in his compositions.