Atmosphères

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.

The piece features "shimmering rapid vibrato, multiple high glissandi, waves of string harmonics in different metres, [and] notes moving along the same path but at different speeds".

[9] Program notes provided by Ensemble Sospeso describe Atmosphères as the "first major alternative to European serialism: static masses of orchestral sound that give the simultaneous sense of immobility and motion.

[11] The sound masses in Atmosphères are seen particularly to conform to the serial precepts of Karlheinz Stockhausen's "statistical form", as exemplified in Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–56) and Gruppen (1955–57).

"[8] Likewise, Thomas May states that in his breakthrough orchestral pieces Apparitions and Atmosphères Ligeti's "new musical point of view... looked beyond the traditional basic elements of melody, harmony, and rhythm, immobilizing these in favor of the mass and texture of sound itself.

[19] Ligeti saw permeability and impermeability of groups, structures, and textures in serial music as substitutes for the form-shaping function of melodic lines, motifs, and harmonies in older styles.

[21] Consequently, Griffiths writes, "the whole piece is a study in what Ligeti's essay had called the 'permeability' of musical structures, how some will mix with a great many others, some stand always apart; it is also a demonstration of what can be achieved when all the usual regulators, being so finely tuned at the time by other composers, are left open.

The recording of Atmosphères used in the soundtrack to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey was with the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ernest Bour.

According to program notes published by the San Francisco Symphony, Ligeti was not pleased that his music occurred in a film soundtrack shared by composers Johann and Richard Strauss.

Instead of presenting these seminal modernist works as separate items, Jurowski segued seamlessly from the nothingness of the Ligeti's close into the opening bassoon solo of the Stravinsky.

[28]Edward Seckerson of UK's The Independent also described this segue as a "startling coup"[29] while Richard Morrison of the daily edition of The Times noted that "Jurowski even kept a beat going, to fool us ... so that Stravinsky's bassoon emerged out of Ligeti's wispy, endlessly drifting clouds of clusters.

[31] Belgian classical guitarist Tom Pauwels[32] wrote a reduced arrangement of Atmosphères for a small chamber orchestra of eight instruments, using a graphic score for clarinet, cello, accordion, guitar and laptop (sine tones) based on the Ligeti original.