Études (Ligeti)

They are considered one of the major creative achievements of his last decades, and one of the most significant sets of piano studies of the 20th century, combining virtuoso technical problems with expressive content, following in the line of the études of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy, and Alexander Scriabin but addressing new technical ideas as a compendium of the concepts Ligeti had worked out in his other works since the 1950s.

Pianist Jeremy Denk wrote that they "are a crowning achievement of his career and of the piano literature; though still new, they are already classics.".

14A: „Coloana fără sfârşit“ (Column without End) was the first version of Etude 14 but was judged too physically demanding for a human player, so Ligeti recomposed it, changing the harmonic structure as he reduced the number of pitches in each hand.

Subsequently the original form was arranged as a separate étude for player-piano by Jürgen Hocker, but some pianists have in fact played it.

[11] The single piano piece L'arrache-coeur (1994) was apparently originally intended to be Étude No.