Atmospheres

Atmosphères is a piece for full orchestra, composed by György Ligeti in 1961. It is noted for eschewing conventional melody and metre in favor of dense sound textures. After Apparitions, it was the second piece Ligeti wrote to exploit what he called a "micropolyphonic" texture. It gained further exposure after being used in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Atmosphères was commissioned in 1961 by the Southwest German Radio and had its world premiere on 22 October 1961 by Hans Rosbaud conducting the SWF Symphony Orchestra at the Donaueschingen Festival. The SWF recorded this performance for broadcast, and this recording has been released commercially on CD several times. Paul Griffiths writes that this performance made Ligeti a "talking point". Ligeti says that after this and his earlier piece Apparitions, he "became famous".

Leonard Bernstein conducted the New York premiere in 1964, though the American premiere had occurred earlier at a San Fernando Valley State College concert organized by Cuban composer Aurelio de la Vega. Bernstein later conducted it with the New York Philharmonic and recorded it with them at the Manhattan Center in New York on 6 January 1964 for Columbia Masterworks, reissued in 1968 on Columbia Records, and in 1999 on a Sony Classical CD.

Atmosphères is scored for 4 flutes (all double piccolo), 4 oboes, 4 clarinets (4th also E♭ clarinet), 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, piano (played by 2 percussionists), and strings (14 first violins, 14 second violins, 10 violas, 10 cellos, 8 double basses).

Atmosphères eschews conventional melody, harmony, and rhythm, in favor of "sound masses" with sliding and merging orchestral clusters that suggest timbre is the central focus of the piece. It exemplifies Ligeti's notion of "static, self-contained music without either development or traditional rhythmic configurations." Harold Kaufman has written that Ligeti's music collapses foreground and background elements of musical structure into a "magma of evolving sound".

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