Memoria e soggettività? Tra lamento e passacaglia nella produzione di György Ligeti

Why in the middle of the experimentation in twentieth century does a form tied to the past as the passacaglia act as a support to several compositions by György Ligeti? In the four years of silence between the opera Le Grand Macabre (1978) and the Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano (1982), the passacaglia seems to have been a good expedient for a more detailed and articulated compositional technique. Not only that: at the intersection of time and space, form and structure, and in a deep sense of history, the mechanism of repetition in the passacaglia’s ostinato provi- des the composer with an ideal model, a meeting point of innovation, historicity of form and creation of a frozen time. But the combination of the ostinato with the lamento topos in the fourth movement of the Trio – derived from the initial chords of the score, rich in cultural heritage – will bring into play factors such as memory, past, subjectivity. In this way the analytical and hermeneutic overview, in works fol- lowing the Trio, will present the passacaglia in perhaps an unexpected perspective, not only as a form, but also as the creative principle able to shape the works from within, whilst synthesising the author’s personal path “from the origin to origin”.