Gradual Disintegrations in Etude 16, Pour Irina

Abstract

Among the etudes of Book 3 it is the second one, Pour Irina (“For Irina”), that is perhaps the most reflective of the techniques Ligeti adapted from chaos theory in mathematics and often deployed in his music—namely, the introduction of a slight disturbances in a system that cause it to eventually spiral out of control. While this chaos principle is a primarily rhythmic one in his earlier work, in Etude 16 Ligeti applies it to scale area as well as tempo in a novel manner that makes the piece perhaps the greatest outlier among all of the 18 etudes. The central claim of this chapter is that Pour Irina is primarily a study in departure from the framework with which it opens; there is never a return home, but rather an arrival at a distant destination. This is effected by a number of processes through the etude, and each section approaches this question of disintegration in unique ways.