Baroque Musique and Avantgarde – a contradiction?

Cathy Krier writes in her liner notes: “Does it make sense to combine the music of a French Baroque master with avant-garde works written in the 1950's? Can one place these two composers – Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) and György Ligeti (1923-2006) – side by side? Do they have anything in common, and, if so, how can such traits be viewed from the vantage points of two entirely different centuries?

If we choose to take György Ligeti‘s 'Musica Ricercata' as a point of departure, the work’s title immediately reminds us of an Early Baroque genre called ricercar, a precursor of the fugue. With this choice of title Ligeti was paying tribute to Girolamo Frescobaldi, the father of the ricercar………

As was most probably the case in Gregorian chant and in Baroque music, Ligeti sets himself in each piece an extremely strict set of rules and limitations, within which he strives to compose as freely as possible. These formal and structural limitations become the very basis of his writing. Ligeti displays a thoroughly intellectual approach to composition, always subjecting it to a certain concept. Viewed from this angle, Rameau and Ligeti have much in common….”