In the late 1950s, Ligeti worked at the Studio for Electronic Music of the West German Radio in Cologne. He had the chance to immerse himself in the techniques of the avant-garde, including the unusual uses of the human voice being championed by composers like John Cage and Luciano Berio. One concept that particularly interested him was the replacement, in vocal works, of conventional texts by nonsense syllables and sounds. Ligeti went on to use such texts in several works, notably in Aventures and its sequel Nouvelles Aventures. Aventures was given its first performance under Friedrich Cerha's direction in Hamburg on April 4, 1963, and was later championed and recorded by composer-conductor Bruno Maderna. A portion of the work, as well as other Ligeti music, appeared memorably in the score for Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Aventures is scored for soprano, contralto, and baritone soloists, accompanied by an ensemble of flute, French horn, cello, bass, percussion, piano, and harpsichord. Although it isn't readily apparent in the listening, Ligeti has written that the three singers are each playing five roles simultaneously, acting out a scenario involving five emotional states—humorous, ghostly-horrific, sentimental, mystical-funereal, and erotic. The singers are called on at different points to shriek, grunt, laugh, breathe loudly, whisper, murmur, and otherwise create all sorts of curious sounds—including the extremely wide leaps of pitch that Ligeti has referred to as his "super-cooled expressionism"—all to a text of nonsense sounds created by the composer according to what he called a "secret formula." The instrumentalists also employ extended techniques, and their music is supplemented by the sounds of twanging elastic bands, a paper bag being inflated and popped, and wooden furniture being hit by a stick. The 12-minute work was intended to be, at least in part, humorous, although the musical surface is rather eerie and intimidating. Ligeti himself recognized that listeners might grow weary of lengthy works in this style, so he cut Aventures off after a contralto solo, and only "completed" the work with Nouvelles Aventures in 1965.

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