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Xenakis with his sound-clouds and his stochastic procedures, Penderecki with his ``sonism'' as exemplified in his Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima have, at approximately the same years, realized similar experimentations and composed works which can be thought of as analogous to Atmosphères.
However the similarities are only apparent and the structural compositional subtleties are not close to Ligeti's work.
In the case of Xenakis, the individual structures composing the ``clouds'' are actually not structures but ``events'' whose significances are of a limited extend. They have been ``calculated'' and ``created'' to fill the sound-space according to the rules given by the composer. The overall structure is a structure in the real sense but it is not made, nor it was meant to be made, by micro-structures. The result is a static ``cloud''. Because there are no micro-structures there is no evolution of them.
A similar appreciation can be made for Penderecki's sonic ``entities''. They are actually entities but they also lack of an evolutionary aspect.
Micro-structures are what makes Ligeti's work apart.
Another important conclusion is the uncanny and extremely creative way in which Ligeti has used his electronic-music studio experiments.
It is well known that the work done in the WDR, RAI and ORTF music research studios have been immensely important in the evolution of the present day's music language. While some composers like Boulez, Messiaen, have altogether abandoned working in the electro-acoustic field, others like Berio, Nono, Stockhausen always had ``one foot in the studio''.
However none, among those who ``left'' or those who ``partially left'' have so brilliantly took advantage of the electronic experiments to widen the instrumental and orchestral resources as Ligeti did.
Micropolyphony is only one of the techniques experimented on or discovered in the electronic-music studio and then ``adapted'' to orchestral writing. In many of his choral pieces, for instance Lux Æterna or in the Requiem the way he handled part entrances and exits is yet another such application. Parts are fading in and out as if manipulated by a mixing desk. Gradual shifts of tone-color is yet another adaptation of the electronic music studio techniques. This is an application of the band-pass/reject filters.