Musikologische Sprachrohre Harald Kaufmann und Ove Nordwall im Dialog mit György Ligeti

Abstract

This article proceeds from the notions that composers need advocates and that in postwar new music, they commented more than ever before on their own work. It deals specifically with György Ligeti and focusses on the years between his flight from Hungary in 1956 and his appointment as a professor in Hamburg in 1973. A detailed examination of sources from the composer’s archive in the Paul Sacher Foundation shows how Harald Kaufmann and Ove Nordwall promoted his music and thinking. Ligeti’s own position reveals a rift between his public success and the deeprooted self-consciousness of an immigrant sensitive to all kinds of discrimination. Nevertheless, Ligeti, with his extraordinary clearness, had considerable influence on musical discourse and succeeded in defining an individual profile. An appendix includes six hitherto unpublished letters from Kaufmann to Ligeti.