Low Imprisonment Threshold

I heard Ligeti lecture at Cornell in 1993, and he used a much more apt metaphor than the "two walls" that has been quoted recently. He said at the time that he was constantly trying to steer between the two poles of what he saw as the great musical pitfalls of our time, neo-romanticism and doctrinaire serialism. I guess somewhere along the way those poles became walls. He struck me as allergic to dogma of any sort.

"...escaping from a room with only two walls..." is considerably more difficult if they are cylindrical, one within the other. Not sure this is relevant to Ligeti or music. Just thought I'd make your escape more challenging.

Maybe Ligeti just meant that he felt like he was "stuck between a rock and a hard place."

[insert groan]

There is a solution. It's called microtonality.
"It will take the efforst of many people for many years to fully explore the musical resources of xenharmonics." -- Ivor Darreg, "New Moods," 1975

Come join us in the new edge on the xenharmonic frontier!

KG replies: That's certainly one of the most obvious responses.