Ligeti the maverick? An examination of Ligeti's ambivalent role in contemporary music.

György Ligeti, the Hungarian composer, is often described as a maverick by commentators on later twentieth century music, and this article will examine the evidence for using such a label. To what extent can Ligeti can genuinely considered as a maverick, or is this epithet perhaps an over-simplification of a more complex situation? The OED’s definition of a maverick is ‘an unorthodox or independent-minded person: a person who refuses to conform to the views of a particular group or party: an individualist.’ This definition is close to the often stated view of Ligeti when compared with his peers and colleagues, and it is also the view that Ligeti himself seems to want to project in his many interviews. When he was accused by Helmut Lachenmann in 1984 as ‘selling out’—initiated by a performance of Ligeti’s rather postmodernist-sounding Horn Trio—Ligeti suggested that he was actually composing non-atonal rather than postmodernist music. Thus suggesting that he felt he was not following the prevailing new cultural movement of postmodernism; though works such as Hungarian Rock for harpsichord seem to undermine this assertion, with its use of tonality and influences of jazz. When one compares Ligeti’s Apparitions for orchestra with Penderecki’s contemporaneous Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, it is possible to observe the similarities of approach in each of these works; thus suggesting that Ligeti was in fact part of a more general approach to composing in the 1960s, focused on texture and timbre. When one views Ligeti’s entire oeuvre, one can see that he did in fact follow various contemporary compositional trends. The analysis of Ligeti’s music will be used to construct a more nuanced evaluation of his approach, with the conclusion that the term ‘maverick’ does not do justice to the wide range of his output

Red Dog, Horses and Bogong Moths: The Memorialisation of Animals in Australia

In this article I examine ways in which animals are memorialised in Australia. By examining the narratives surrounding horses in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales, ceremonies for Bogong moths, and touching upon the stories of Red Dog, I show how the intangible can be considered a memorial and a memorial landscape conceived as one that is co-constructed by humans and animals. Understanding memorialisation as intangible facilitates a repositioning of animals in relation to humans and the creation of a new framework of reference for memorialising animals

Experimental studies of instabilities of laminar premixed flames

We first briefly recall the basic mechanisms controlling the hydrodynamic and thermo-diffusive stability of planar laminar premixed flames, and give the state of the theoretical analysis. We then describe some novel experiments to observe and measure the growth rate of cellular structures on initially planar flames. The first experiment concerns the observation of the temporal growth of wrinkling on a freely propagating planar flame. A second experiment concerns the spatio-temporal growth of structures of controlled wavelength on an anchored flame. The experimental observations are compared to theoretical dispersion relation. Finally, we compare observations of the non-linear evolution to saturation with the predictions of an extended Michelson-Sivashinsky equation

Does stereotyping exacerbate obesity?

Considerable evidence suggests that stereotypical stigmatisation of obesity is psychologically damaging and counter-productive to successful weight loss

Connecting place, people and animals : an historical study of environmental and cultural change in the Snowy Mountains landscape

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

The significance of timbre as a structural component in selected works by Ligeti

Gyorgy Ligeti is perhaps best known for his micropolyphonic textural music of the 1960s such as Atmospheres and Lux Aeterna, and it was during this period that he demonstrated that it was possible to compose music through purely textural means. His focus on the readily audible aspects of music rather than abstract inaudible structures might explain why his music was generally more approachable than that of many of his contemporaries. Ligeti is concerned in these works with the audible textural surface of his music, but also the timbral aspects which are equally significant. He has stated in an interview with Josef Häusler in 1968 that in relation to Atmosphères the formal transformations of sections are dependent on the changing tone-colours, he also says that 'Atmospheres is a composition in tone-colours par excellence' – he is suggesting that the structure is being controlled by the change of timbres. The exploration of timbre is a significant compositional feature in Ligeti’s music throughout his oeuvre and can be related to his early admiration of the music of Bartok and Webern. In this paper I will explore how Ligeti uses timbre as a structural component through timbral analysis of movements from his Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet (1968) and the much later Hamburg Concerto (1999 rev 2002). I aim to show that Ligeti structured some of his works through timbral means, and that this aspect of his music is as significant as his textural innovations. What makes much of Ligeti’' music so distinctive is the subtle use of specific and memorable timbres, and how these timbres gradually evolve over time

The response of premixed flames to pressure oscillations

International audienceRecent measurements of the direct response of premixed flames to acoustic pressure fluctuations have shed doubt on the validity of analytical models that use irreversible one-step chemistry, and suggest that more realistic chemical kinetic models are needed to fully describe the unsteady dynamics of premixed flames. However, in the analysis of the experimental results some doubts subsisted concerning the exact relation between the intensity of emission from the excited OH* radical, used to determine the flame response, and the unsteady reaction rate given by the theoretical analyses. Combining experimental and numerical approaches on premixed methane-air flames, we propose corrections to give more confidence in the experimental results and to confirm the need for further investigations on the dynamics of unsteady premixed flames

Experimental and numerical investigations of the relation between OH* emission, flame speed and mass consumption rate

6 PagesWe investigate the relation between the intensity of the luminous emission of the excited OH* radical and the mass consumption rate of lean planar premixed methane-air flames. The flames were maintained perfectly flat using parametric acoustic stabilization in an imposed acoustic field. The consumption rate of the flames was varied by changing both the equivalence ratio and the temperature of the unburned mixture. We also compare our experimental measurements to the results of numerical simulations, using detailed chemical kinetics. For lean flames, we find that the OH* emission intensity is linear with mass consumption rate but, not proportional. Consequently, the relative fluctuation in mass consumption rate is not linearly related to the relative fluctuation in OH* emission intensity