Ligeti: Mechanical Music
Although Gyorgy Ligeti is best known for his eerie, tonally ambiguous  choral and orchestral writing (immortalized in2001: A Space Odyssey),  this collection of works for musical automata--player piano, barrel organ, and  metronomes--includes some of his most astonishing music. The player piano pieces  are an exhilarating, intensely physical roller-coaster ride through superhuman  tempi and dynamic extremes--an intriguing marriage of artifice and human  invention. While clearly indebted to the influence of Nancarrow, Ligeti's player  piano works are more approachable than Nancarrow's rigorous etudes, revealing  the sense of humor that distinguishes Ligeti from his more ponderous  contemporaries. Likewise, the controversial prank pieceMetronomesforeshadows the phasing experiments of Reich with its intricate cross-rhythms  created by metronomes marking time simultaneously at different speeds. Perhaps  most fascinating of all are Ligeti's compositions for computer-modified barrel  organ--a hand-cranked, calliope-like instrument popular with itinerant musicians  in the 1700s.--Dennis Rea