today I would like to talk to you about
a piece that has been hidden from the
public we
held from the public and even banned in
three different occasions delaying its
first performance for more than 25 years
this piece is the sonata for cello solo
by delegatee Ligety is one of the most
famous and well-known composers of the
20th century he became really widely
known after Stanley Kubrick used his
music and his movie 2001 a Space Odyssey
I should probably mention though that
this happened without Liggett his
knowledge or permission so he actually
sued Kubrick for violating his
Ligety was a student at the Franz Liszt
Academy in Budapest where he saw a young
cellist girl on of Iran who was a fellow
student idealistic Academy he secretly
fell in love with her and decided to
write a piece for her as a love letter
now when he handed over the piece to be
Rani
she was completely unaware of the reason
behind legatees generosity so she merely
thanked him and but never performed the
piece so this music would have been lost
but five years later danish vera who was
a living cellist
at the time commissioned a piece from
Ligety and Ligety decided to use this
material from the piece hero to Iranian
hush and that became the first movement
of the piece what we now call the sonata
for cello solo and Ligety composed a
contrasting movement to it for Danish
para so this piece unfortunately had to
be submitted to a committee because this
happened in 1953 and
Hungary was Angela under the rule of a
Stalinist regime and every composition
was evaluated by this committee of the
Hungarian composers Union now
unfortunately this committee decided
that the piece was too modern and
therefore banned it
so once more the cellists and the
audience couldn’t enjoy this piece of
music now we fast forward in time in
1956 there was an uprising against the
communist regime in Hungary and negative
fled to the west there he became
familiar with the contemporaneous
composition techniques like twelve-tone
music surrealism electric acoustic music
and so on and Ligety decided that the
music he composed previously back in
Hungary was of no interest anymore and
he withheld all earlier compositions so
this time it was actually the composer
himself who prevented the public from
getting to know this piece 25 years had
to pass before Ligety finally changed
his mind in the early 80s when modernism
was slowly giving slowly declining and
postmodern was was coming up- finally
decided that his earlier music could be
published and so there was a new first
form first performance of the cello
sonata now I wouldn’t like to tell you
how successful or unsuccessful this
piece has become ever since instead I
would like to play it for you and so you
could decide whether you like it or not
because in my opinion it is not
committees and neither the composer’s
job to decide whether a piece should be
out there it’s us
musicians and the audience’s job to
listen to it and have an opinion about
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]
[Laughter]
you [Applause]
a piece that has been hidden from the
public we
held from the public and even banned in
three different occasions delaying its
first performance for more than 25 years
this piece is the sonata for cello solo
by delegatee Ligety is one of the most
famous and well-known composers of the
20th century he became really widely
known after Stanley Kubrick used his
music and his movie 2001 a Space Odyssey
I should probably mention though that
this happened without Liggett his
knowledge or permission so he actually
sued Kubrick for violating his
Ligety was a student at the Franz Liszt
Academy in Budapest where he saw a young
cellist girl on of Iran who was a fellow
student idealistic Academy he secretly
fell in love with her and decided to
write a piece for her as a love letter
now when he handed over the piece to be
Rani
she was completely unaware of the reason
behind legatees generosity so she merely
thanked him and but never performed the
piece so this music would have been lost
but five years later danish vera who was
a living cellist
at the time commissioned a piece from
Ligety and Ligety decided to use this
material from the piece hero to Iranian
hush and that became the first movement
of the piece what we now call the sonata
for cello solo and Ligety composed a
contrasting movement to it for Danish
para so this piece unfortunately had to
be submitted to a committee because this
happened in 1953 and
Hungary was Angela under the rule of a
Stalinist regime and every composition
was evaluated by this committee of the
Hungarian composers Union now
unfortunately this committee decided
that the piece was too modern and
therefore banned it
so once more the cellists and the
audience couldn’t enjoy this piece of
music now we fast forward in time in
1956 there was an uprising against the
communist regime in Hungary and negative
fled to the west there he became
familiar with the contemporaneous
composition techniques like twelve-tone
music surrealism electric acoustic music
and so on and Ligety decided that the
music he composed previously back in
Hungary was of no interest anymore and
he withheld all earlier compositions so
this time it was actually the composer
himself who prevented the public from
getting to know this piece 25 years had
to pass before Ligety finally changed
his mind in the early 80s when modernism
was slowly giving slowly declining and
postmodern was was coming up- finally
decided that his earlier music could be
published and so there was a new first
form first performance of the cello
sonata now I wouldn’t like to tell you
how successful or unsuccessful this
piece has become ever since instead I
would like to play it for you and so you
could decide whether you like it or not
because in my opinion it is not
committees and neither the composer’s
job to decide whether a piece should be
out there it’s us
musicians and the audience’s job to
listen to it and have an opinion about
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]
[Laughter]
you [Applause]
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