György Ligeti, Mysteries of the Macabre

by Shayanne De Boer | March 12, 2021

György Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, arranged by Elgar Howarth in 1991, has been described as “genuinely one of the most explosive things you'll see” and incited the response, “What the hell is going on?” These reviews raise the question, what the hell is going on in this deranged and astonishing work?

Mysteries of the Macabre is an arrangement for solo soprano (or trumpet) and chamber orchestra of three arias from Ligeti’s opera Le Grand Macabre (1974–1977). The arias are performed by the character Gepopo, the chief of the secret police, who is anxiously trying to inform Prince Go-Go that a huge comet is on its way to destroy their planet of Brueghelland. Gepopo is so hysterical that his coded warning to Prince Go-Go is nearly unintelligible. Prince Go-Go must surely be asking the same question that we are: What the hell is going on?

Ligeti ingeniously causes this overwhelming sense of wonderful confusion to be laid over the audience in addition to the characters in the opera. He uses very specific performance text, extended orchestral techniques, and a precise understanding of the sounds of words to completely baffle his audience. He also uses a large collection of auxiliary percussion to reflect back the sounds of the singer’s voice, highlighting the strange noises he requires from the soprano. The piece is written in such a way that the singer’s voice is often nearly indistinguishable from the other instruments.

The fabulous Canadian soprano, Barbara Hannigan, is a frequent performer of this work. She is able to sing this rapid fire and extremely high piece of music seemingly effortlessly, all while entertaining her audience with her engaging stage presence. In her performance of the piece on April 12, 2013 with the Gothenburg Symphony, she sang as well as conducted the ensemble.

The work begins with a “psst” from the soprano which is soon after repeated by the orchestra members (replacing the opera chorus). Immediately, Ligeti establishes in his performance text that this should be “very devious” and accentuates this idea by placing an accent on every “psst” in the soprano line. In the soprano’s next line, we start to see how Ligeti is choosing to use the sounds of the words. In the word “coding” Ligeti has the soprano repeat the “co-” of coding eleven times before the word is completed (mm. 5–10). Each reiteration of the sound is accented as well as staccato, accentuating the hard C consonant. This is perhaps reflecting the fear and apprehension of Gepopo and emulates stuttering. It could also be an effort to have Gepopo not be understood as the instruments around him repeat the sound that he makes. We hear a single note from the celeste, the glockenspiel, and the clarinet respectively, each lining up with a new set of “co-”s. This idea of accentuating the hard plosive sounds of the words by repetition and articulation in order to portray fear and agitation is used several times throughout the work.

Ligeti uses a similar technique later in the piece. On the word hypochondria (mm. 47), he does not repeat the hard ‘C’ sound at all and instead continuously repeats the open ‘O’ sound (/ɔ/ in IPA). I think this is so that the voice is more easily able to blend in with the cacophony of sounds coming from the instruments. The line is marked “insanely” so it stands to reason that the audience and Prince Go-Go are not meant to understand it all. With the voice blended together with the instruments, the technique is very effective. The idea is even more amplified by Ligeti’s choice to use only eighth-note rhythms in each part so that no individual instrument stands out from the rest with longer or shorter note values. (The only parts to have quarter notes are the bongos and temple blocks, both of which have little to no extended ring and will sound like eighth notes anyway.) The harmonic and melodic structure of the section allows the voice to even further blend into the surrounding ensemble. Usually, one does not associate chromaticism with blending, but in this case it works. Almost every chord includes at least one semitone and it is difficult to tell if there is any regular harmonic structure at all. As for melodic structure, this is not a melody that is even slightly predictable, and no part moves in the same way. Though often parts move in the same general direction, very few parts move the same interval at the same time. This allows for the “insane” voice part to completely disappear into the cacophony of sound surrounding it.

For a moment I would like to draw your attention to an instance in the piece that seems nearly lucid. (That is, compared to the rest of piece.) The soprano exclaims “March!” in a very regular march-like pattern. Upon observing the score (mm. 62), one quickly comes to realize this is not in fact a regular march pattern. The section is written in 11/8 time and not 2/4 at all. Ligeti creates this aura of a march by placing each exclamation of march at (nearly) regular intervals accompanied by mandolin and interjected by staccato eighths from the clarinet and bass. Adding Hannigan’s very declamatory way of singing the word “march” to this, we are left feeling like soldiers being yelled at by a sergeant. For this short moment, the audience gets a real sense of a march despite the time signature of 11/8 and the surrounding insanity of the work.

One of the things that makes this piece so incredible is the use of different styles in the voice and irregular sounds. The work includes stage whispers from both the ensemble and the soloist, yelling, screams, and rhythmic sounds. At m. 58 we find the syllable “rrsh” on a half-note on B. How is one supposed to sing a word without any vowels? This is unlike the voiceless, spoken “psst” that occurs at the beginning of the work and unlike the voiceless “ch”, “choo”, “chee”, “cha” and “too” from the ensemble (first occurring at m. 24 and found elsewhere throughout in the strings’ parts). The soprano is also required to sing ‘mysteriously’ several times (mm. 10, 14, 23, 78, and 104), ‘shrilly’ no fewer than three times (mm. 44, 82, 114), and twice like a ‘cock-crow’ (mm. 82 and 105). This raises the question, how does one approach such a work that requires as many noises as notes? Barbara Hannigan, in an interview with Sarah Willis of Sarah’s Horn Hangouts, said this:

You know what? I learned that piece, it's a 7-minute real tour de force, and I learned it like a Mozart concert aria. Very slowly, very-very carefully, incredibly disciplined, attention to, believe it or not, making the most beautiful tone that I could with the most disciplined technique that I could. And I'm so glad I did because I can wake up any morning, more or less, and sing that piece. It's in my body, it's in my head, it's... it's completely incorporated. In what I think is the most healthy way to perform it. [...] I think all the repertoire that I prepare, I try to do in a very disciplined way. And people often ask me, you know, is your technique different for the contemporary repertoire and the classical repertoire, and I say absolutely not. It's... it's always the same. It's bel canto is bel canto.

There are so many other things I could write about with this piece: How the repetition of ‘go’ in the word goulash could be an allusion Prince Go-Go’s name, how the shortening of the word ‘direction’ to simply ‘rection’ may have something to with character names like Spermando and Clitoria, and so much more. I hope this inspires in you a curiosity to explore more of Ligeti’s work and other similar twentieth-century operas. In Ligeti’s work there is a whole new world of sounds and styles used to create this overwhelming sense of confusion and again inciting the response: What the hell is going on?