Lukas Ligeti says of the fourth work in his cycle of ‘overpainting’ compositions, which he began in 2007: "The inspiration comes from the visual arts: the Vietnamese-American artist Dinh Q. Lê, who died in 2024, cut up and interwove photographs to create complex structures that no longer reveal a clear hierarchy of foreground and background. Lisa Corinne Davis paints city map-like patterns and covers them with layers of colour. Such concepts serve me as a starting point for a musical superimposition of different sound processes. Elements repeat themselves in interwoven sequences - a distant parallel to minimal music, but with fundamentally complex, non-tonal sound cells. Layering, deceleration and decay create a kind of acoustic granular synthesis - without electronics, using instrumental means alone. In this way, larger structures emerge that were not present in the individual components - a sonic interweaving that only unfolds when heard."
moreOn 23 May, as part of the annual Musiques Fraîches event, the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles will give the world premiere of Lukas Ligeti’s new “overpainting” composition Mémoire de l’avenir in Mons, Belgium; the work will also be performed two days later at the Maison de la Radio Flagey in Brussels.
