HORA LUNGĂ (1994) FROM SONATA FOR SOLO VIOLA
György Ligeti

HORA LUNGĂ (1994) FROM SONATA FOR SOLO VIOLA

György Ligeti
(b. Dicsőszentmárton [Diciosânmartin, now Tîrnaveni], Transylvania, May 28, 1923; d. Vienna, Austria, June 12, 2006)

Composed 1994; 6 minutes

“The viola is seemingly just a big violin but tuned a fifth lower. In reality, the two instruments are worlds apart. The violin leads; the viola remains in the shade. In return, the low C-string gives the viola a unique acerbity, compact, somewhat hoarse, with the aftertaste of wood, earth and tannic acid.” (György Ligeti)

Hungarian György Ligeti was a giant among composers. A fiercely independent thinker throughout his life, his music delights in connections between other cultures, other art forms and past centuries. While composing Hora lungă (Slow dance), Ligeti pictured a Romani violinist playing a slow, dance-like piece, not an exact folk tune, but more of a folk-inspired, sung melody, nostalgic and melancholy, richly ornamented. By using only the lower C-string and imagining an even lower F-string on the viola, Ligeti plays with the resulting shimmer of overtones, producing a modal scale similar to that of the Maramures region of Romania in the northern Carpathians. He describes the scale as ’mysteriously alien’ as it progresses through a series of seven variations which, in their own way, evoke the very soul of the viola.