Musica ricercata
Musica ricercata is a set of eleven pieces for piano by György Ligeti. The work was composed from 1951 to 1953, shortly after the composer began lecturing at the Budapest Academy of Music. The work premiered on 18 November 1969 in Sundsvall, Sweden. Although the ricercata (or ricercar) is an established contrapuntal style (and the final movement of the work is in that form), Ligeti's title should probably be interpreted literally as "researched music" or "sought music". This work captures the essence of Ligeti's search to construct his own compositional style "ex nihilo", and as such presages many of the more radical directions Ligeti would take in the future.

In response to a request by the Jeney Quintet, six of the movements were arranged for wind quintet as Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet (1953). They are, in order: III, V, VII, VIII, IX, X.

Eight movements (I, III, IV, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI) were transcribed for bayan by Parisian accordionist Max Bonnay.
Q5994
piano
Concept
Q154331
György Ligeti
PER
Q1781
Budapest
LOC
Q26476
Sundsvall
LOC
Q34
Sweden
LOC
Q746743
ricercar
Concept
Q1139338
ex nihilo
Concept
Q1069564
wind quintet
Concept
Q804099
bayan
Concept
Q511296
Musica ricercata
ORG
1951-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1951
DATE
1953-01-01T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
1953
DATE
1969-11-18T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
18 November 1969
DATE
+1953^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
1953
NUMBER
instrumentation
composer
instrument