What the hell ever happened to classical music? The answer is obvious if I look beyond my own CD rack: most people (of all ages-- don't feel guilty, starchildren) prefer other kinds of music. It's not as if the devil's rock 'n' roll up and wiped away the repressive art music which had been holding down kids-- by the 1950s, classical musicians were already knee-deep in a perception of ivory-tower innovation and snobbish dissonance. As a result (though I suspect more as a symptom of longstanding cultural shifts), what classical music was deemed safe to appreciate fit snugly in an afternoon concert, in a hall of seats that also fit snugly for blue-haired aunts and volunteer ushers from the Boy Scouts.

The worst part about classical music's dusty old rep is that it's wildly inaccurate. Without ever speaking of modern composers, the history of this music is littered with rebellion, rage, depression, obsession, lust, mental disorders, joy, and enough contradictory insular logic to make the E6 bands drop out of therapy ("because, you know, it just seems like we're going nowhere"). Classical music's public dismissal just seems unnecessary.

Hungarian composer György Ligeti (born 1923) has actually seen both sides of the wall between popular and classical music. His onetime mentor Karlheinz Stockhausen was a prime figure for classical composers trying to shine beyond the wing of the elitist avant-garde. Where serial (and other formalist) works were the sign of an artistic community well outside the domain of popular acceptance or even understanding, composers like Stockhausen actively broke unwritten rules of accepted artistic persona. Ligeti, perhaps less affected by the "image" of a serious composer than his Western peers, was very much interested in formal innovations like micopolyphony, but still managed to produce works that appealed to many modern classical listeners on more that just intellectual grounds.

And then there was Stanley Kubrick. The late director bestowed pop-culture immortality on the humble Hungarian by choosing several of his pieces as the signature sounds to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Remember those weird choral clusters when all the monkeys discover the monolith? When Dave is traveling through time and space? Ligeti pieces such as "Atmospheres" and "Lux Aeterna" were the sound of tripping for many an impressionable hippie-- and still sound pretty spacy today.

Teldec's "Ligeti Project" series actually takes over for Sony's defunct "Edition" series from the mid-90s. Sony got through all the choral pieces, string quartets and piano music, but none of the orchestral stuff. The pieces on this set range from very early symphonic experiments with traditional Hungarian and Romanian folk dances, to the dense, ominous 1960s works that wowed Kubrick, to 1974's fiery, episodic "San Francisco Polyphony".

The earliest music dates from 1951, and is the premiere recording of Ligeti's "Concert Romanesc". According to the composer, it was very difficult to perform new music in Hungary at the time, and this piece remained obscure until now. Compared to his later works, it's actually pretty straightforward, calling to mind some of Prokofiev's lighter orchestral music, as well as the Hungarian studies of Bartok. Ha ha, had you going there, right? Anyway, it's fun, if not essential.

Apparitions (1958-1959) introduces Ligeti's famed micropolyphony, which is the concept of composing music not as a melody with harmony and rhythm, but as an endless mesh of interweaving textures where no one voice stands out, and the overall effect is not unlike hearing a giant cement mixer of strings and flutes. Ligeti brought that concept to its feverish apex with Atmospheres (1961), one of the most haunting pieces of music of the 20th Century. Kubrick used this music to invoke mystery, discovery and primal fear. 1967's Lontano (also featured by Kubrick in The Shining) is not as dense, but more overtly dissonant. It features more moments of calm, and is a nice balance of Ligeti's extreme polyphony and his relatively calmer material.

As far as I can tell, highbrow snobbery and intellectual masturbation is more often a by-product of critics discussing this stuff than it is of the actual music or musicians. Ligeti is great starting place for diving into the world of avant-garde classical: not as sprawlingly eclectic as Stockhausen, nor as single-mindedly consistent as Morton Feldman. And his music is just sitting here waiting for you.

-Dominique Leone, October 10th, 2002