Comparative Analysis: Metastaseis and Atmospheres
Abstract
The landscape of Western music underwent a shift in the decade following World War II. As the structures of total serialism began to reach a point of giving its superstar role to the next composition technique, a new generation of composers sought to move from the traditional primacy of melody and harmony. At the forefront of this development were Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), and György Ligeti (1923-2006) two figures who reached a new composition concept called Sound Mass in which the importance of individual pitches is minimized in preference for texture, timbre, and dynamics as primary shapers of gesture and impact, obscuring the boundary between sound and noise. This paper presents a comparative analysis of two works from Xenakis' Metastaseis (1953-54) and Ligeti's Atmospheres (1961) on how they construct sound mass differently while both works share the same goal of creating vast and immersive textures defined by density, timbre, and statistical probability without individual note and instrument timber being primary unit of musical meaning.
Link
DOI
10.17613/0tcs0-bba98