Ligeti Tour

How do you prevent the work from deviating from the compositional process you've embarked upon? That's exactly what I do. Music is a process, and composition is about watching and observing how the music itself grows and shrinks. I let it happen.

Do you have the feeling that you're measuring out the messiness or, on the contrary, that you're careful to think of your shapes in terms that are above all not chaotic? It's a natural process for things to get messy. I'm interested in the different ways in which structured things become chaotic, simply because it's impossible to find an order for everything. I don't start with chaos, it's a result.

You're often asked about your relationship with microtonality. In response, do you feel the risk of distancing yourself from it or, failing that, of abusing it even more? There are more than twelve pitches per octave. I'm not interested in old chords; I try to find new ones. The word "microtonality" isn't very precise, because my music isn't tonal, and it isn't micro. I want more and more different pitches, so maybe it's "macrotonality", but still without tonality.

Some fifteen years ago, you said, "I want to appropriate the tools and know exactly what I want to do with them, in order to produce work that is entirely my own." Are you as sure as you were then that you want your work to be "entirely yours"? Yes, of course I want to write my own music. But I don't want to write in a "style" (that would mean I'm dead and fit to be put away in a drawer). I try to write songs that are as different as possible, but at the same time as personal as possible. Since I can't change my personality, there will be elements in different pieces.

Interview by David Christofell