Signification of Parody and the Grotesque in György Ligeti'sLe Grand Macabre

Abstract

Fashioned as an “anti-opera,” Ligeti conceived the music for Le Grand Macabre as a kind of “pop art,” filled with quotations and references to opera and other preexisting musical genres. Examining the opera's thematic connections with the original play by Michel de Ghelderode and Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of grotesque realism, I suggest that Ligeti's parodic approach in this opera is governed by two narrative trajectories: the grotesque and existential irony. Drawing on writings by Robert Hatten, Linda Hutcheon, and Esti Sheinberg, this paper develops semiotic constructs of mapping, troping, and/or reversal in determining the parodic procedures invoked. I argue that, through such procedures, Ligeti engages with musical parody at two levels: the surface level at which quotation of existing music and musical styles are transformed and the global level at which an expressive opposition between ludicrousness and horror is established in articulating the grotesque trope. Furthermore, through deployment of collage and textural disintegration, Ligeti creates an aural counterpart to the allegorical depiction of chaos, destruction, and renewal found in Breughel's “Triumph of Death.”

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