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The outlines of György Ligeti's biography are by now well known in academic music circles.1 After a dangerous emigration from Hungary in December 1956 Ligeti and his wife Vera remained in Vienna for a few weeks. He then secured a small stipend through Herbert Eimert at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne and in February 1957 began an internship in electronic music. 2 Ligeti entered this new and complex world of electronic music without much preparation:
The encounter with the composers in Cologne, being suddenly relocated to the electronic studio in the basement of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, meeting Stockhausen, Koenig, Evangelisti, Helms, Kagel, and others there - this was a shock for me, perhaps the best shock of my life. 3
A six-week stay at Stockhausen's flat eased Ligeti's transition to Cologne; while there he encountered Stockhausen's compositional ideas for Gruppen, Gesang der Jünglinge, and other projects.4 Yet once they were in the electronic music studio, it was Gottfried Michael Koenig who tutored Ligeti in the workings of the new machinery, allowed him to assist in the realization of Essay (1957), and helped him realize his own ideas for electronic compositions.5 As Ligeti later recalled, 'Koenig was the best and most helpful person that one can imagine.'6
While an intern at the WDR studio Ligeti composed three electronic works. Two of these, Glissandi (1957) and Artikulation (1958), are fairly well known,7 while a third, Pièce électronique Nr. 3 (1957), remained unfinished.8 Although he valued the experience, Ligeti never returned to electronic composition after leaving the WDR studio in 1958. He explained, 'I have found myself over recent years in a state in which I am a little dissatisfied with the acoustic results that one can produce in the electronic studio, independent of which studio equipment is available; the perfection of the studio equipment is beside the point.' 9
Although Ligeti did not find the electronic studio to be the right medium for his ideas, his experience there was in fact crucial for his compositional and stylistic development.10 This article develops the idea that Ligeti's exposure to elektronische Musik and its discourses at the WDR studio spurred the development of his...