Musica ricercata

György Ligeti composed his piano cycle Musica ricercata in 1953; three years later, exasperated by the repressive cultural climate of Soviet-era Hungary, he left his native country and settled in Western Europe. Although this is an early work, Musica ricercata’s 11 component pieces are strikingly inventive, and the subversive and unpredictable streak typical of Ligeti’s later music is already evident. The work’s title has a double meaning. A literal translation is “Music sought out,” reflecting the composer’s progress towards an individual style; and the cycle concludes with a tribute to the fugal ricercar form developed by the Baroque-era composer Frescobaldi. The first piece is based on just two notes (A and D), and each subsequent piece then adds an extra note, so that the final “Andante,” subtitled “Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi,” deploys all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Among the ideas and moods explored along the way are the high-speed, obsessively repeated passagework of No. 7 (“Cantabile, molto legato”), and the allusion to Hungarian folk music in No. 9 (“Béla Bartók in Memoriam”).