Ligeti, Sonata for Cello
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Very early in this series I featured a bagatelle by Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006). It was rather light, short, and humorous—what you might expect of a bagatelle. The Sonata for Cello strikes a very different mood. But I think both works exhibit two important things. First, originality—the thing that 20th-century composers seemed to prize most and often failed to achieve. And second, Ligeti’s originality remains tied to musical traditions. (The 20th century is littered with works of composers who sought originality at the expense of all else.)
The sonata has two movements, roughly equal in length, entitled Dialogo and Capriccio. Ligeti composed the first movement in 1948. He explains:
It’s a dialogue. Because it’s like two people, a man and a woman, conversing. I used the C string, the G string and the A string separately. . . . I had been writing much more “modern” music in 1946 and 1947, and then in ’48 I began to feel that I should try to be more “popular”. . . . I attempted in this piece to write a beautiful melody, with a typical Hungarian profile, but not a folksong . . . or only half, like in Bartók or in Kodály—actually, closer to Kodály.
The second movement was written five years later when a cellist asked him to compose a work for her. He decided to expand the earlier work by adding a virtuosic second movement. Again, Ligeti:
Because the second movement had the ‘ambition’ to become a sonata movement I wrote it in sonata form. It is a virtuoso piece in my later style that is closer to Bartók. I was 30 years old when I wrote it. I loved virtuosity and took the playing to the edge of virtuosity much like [Paganini].
The Communist Party censors did not approve the work, and it remained under wraps until 1979. Today, it has become a popular choice for cellists seeking attractive, yet innovative and demanding, solo works for their instruments.
