DESCRIPTION:
"Clocks and Clouds" for 12-part women's chorus and orchestra. Music accompanied by the video "A Space Journey" and the original video can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un5SEJ8MyPc from the user "Impermanence". It should also be noted that the idea of pairing this work with outer-space scenery is not mine. A similar video was posted a while back, but it is no longer here.

Ligeti's "Clocks and Clouds" is a relatively-short composition from 1972-1973 that takes its title from Karl Popper's 1966 philosophical essay "Of Clouds and Clocks". In this, Popper makes a compelling and easily-understood argument that scientific phenomena can be broken down into two main categories. The "clocks" are things that we can depend on such as, well, clocks. A clock can be easily measured, taken apart, and reconstructed. "Clouds", on the other hand, are things that we can only get a general, macroscopic view of -- things whose inner-workings we are unable to understand in a deterministic way. A cloud cannot be easily measured nor can it be taken apart. Furthermore, Popper argues that clouds are really made up of a cumbersome number of clocks -- so many that the whole cannot be understood completely. It isn't at all surprising that the meteorologist Edward Lorenz was making major breakthroughs in what we now tend to call "chaos theory" -- most easily defined by a sensitivity to initial conditions. Lorenz's major work in this area is known as "The Butterfly Effect" from the famous question he posed "can the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil cause a tornado in Oklahoma?"

Throughout the 1960s, Ligeti was composing in two distinct styles described perfectly by Popper's essay. The "clouds" category includes works such as "Atmospheres" (1961), Lontano (1967), and the first movement from his "Cello Concerto" (1966). Examples of pieces falling under the "clocks" description are the third movement of his "Chamber Concerto" (1969) and the third movement of his "String Quartet No. 2" (1968). This "mechanical" style can be traced back to his semi-comical 1962 "Poem Symphonique pour 100 Metronomes", in which 100 metronomes are wound-up and left to unwind at various tempos.

While compositions such as the "Chamber Concerto" and "String Quartet No. 2" do include both "clouds" and "clocks", they are presented in separate movements. It is in "Clocks and Clouds" where Ligeti seamlessly connects one to the other. Being one of his last works in this micropolyphonic style, it is a great summing up of a stylistic period.