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György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important
avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...
composers in the latter half of the twentieth century" and "one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time". Born in
Transylvania Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the A ...
,
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
, he lived in the Hungarian People's Republic before emigrating to
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
in 1956. He became an Austrian citizen in 1968. In 1973 he became professor of composition at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater, where he worked until retiring in 1989. He died in Vienna in 2006. Restricted in his musical style by the authorities of Communist Hungary, only when he reached the West in 1956 could Ligeti fully realise his passion for
avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...
music and develop new compositional techniques. After experimenting with
electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electro ...
in Cologne, Germany, his breakthrough came with orchestral works such as ''
Atmosphères ''Atmosphères'' is a piece for 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 h ...
'', for which he used a technique he later dubbed
micropolyphony Micropolyphony is a kind of polyphonic musical texture developed by György Ligeti which consists of many lines of dense canons moving at different tempos or rhythms, thus resulting in tone clusters vertically. According to David Cope, "micropoly ...
. After writing his "anti-anti-opera" '' Le Grand Macabre'', Ligeti shifted away from
chromaticism Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. In simple terms, within each octave, diatonic music uses only seven different notes, rather than the tw ...
and towards polyrhythm for his later works. He is best known by the public through the use of his music in film soundtracks. Although he did not directly compose any film scores, excerpts of pieces composed by him were taken and adapted for film use. The sound design of Stanley Kubrick's films, particularly the music of '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', drew from Ligeti's work and also contained pieces by other classical composers.


Biography


Early life

Ligeti was born in 1923 at Diciosânmartin (''Dicsőszentmárton''; renamed to
Târnăveni Târnăveni (, historically Diciosânmartin; Hungarian: ''Dicsőszentmárton'', ; German: ''Sankt Martin'', earlier ''Marteskirch'') is a city in Mureș County, central Romania. It lies on the Târnava Mică River in central Transylvania. The c ...
in 1941),
Transylvania Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the A ...
,
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
, to Dr. Sándor Ligeti and Dr. Ilona Somogyi. His family was
Hungarian Jewish The history of the Jews in Hungary dates back to at least the Kingdom of Hungary, with some records even predating the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived i ...
. He was the great-grandnephew of violinist Leopold Auer and second cousin of Hungarian philosopher Ágnes Heller. Some sources say he was Auer's grandnephew, rather than great-grandnephew. Ligeti recalled that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation between Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he didn't know that other languages existed. He moved to
Cluj ; hu, kincses város) , official_name=Cluj-Napoca , native_name= , image_skyline= , subdivision_type1 = County , subdivision_name1 = Cluj County , subdivision_type2 = Status , subdivision_name2 = County seat , settlement_type = City , ...
with his family when he was six years old. He did not return to the town of his birth until the 1990s. In 1940, Northern Transylvania became part of Hungary following the Second Vienna Award, thus Cluj became part of Hungary as well. In 1941 Ligeti received his initial musical training at the conservatory in Kolozsvár (Cluj), and during the summers privately with Pál Kadosa in
Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...
. In 1944, Ligeti's education was interrupted when he was sent to a forced labor brigade by the Horthy regime during events of the Holocaust. His brother Gábor, age 16, was deported to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and both of his parents were sent to Auschwitz. His mother was the only person to survive in his immediate family. Following
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, Ligeti returned to his studies in Budapest, graduating in 1949 from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. He studied under Pál Kadosa, Ferenc Farkas, Zoltán Kodály and Sándor Veress. He conducted
ethnomusicological Ethnomusicology is the study of music from the cultural and social aspects of the people who make it. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dim ...
research into the Hungarian folk music of Transylvania. However, after a year he returned to Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, this time as a teacher of harmony, counterpoint and musical analysis. He had secured this position with the help of Kodály, and held it from 1950 to 1956. As a young teacher, Ligeti took the unusual step of regularly attending the lectures of an older colleague, the conductor and musicologist Lajos Bárdos. He was a conservative Christian whose circle represented a safe haven for Ligeti. The composer acknowledged Bárdos's help and advice in the prefaces to his two harmony textbooks (1954 and 1956). Due to the restrictions of the communist government, communications between Hungary and the West by then had become difficult, and Ligeti and other artists were effectively cut off from recent developments outside the Eastern Bloc.


After leaving Hungary

In December 1956, two months after the Hungarian revolution was violently suppressed by the Soviet Army, Ligeti fled to Vienna with his ex-wife Vera Spitz. (They remarried in 1957 and had a son together.) He would not see Hungary again for fourteen years, when he was invited there to judge a competition in Budapest. On his rushed escape to Vienna, he left most of his Hungarian compositions in Budapest, some of which are now lost. He took only what he considered to be his most important pieces. He later said, "I considered my old music of no interest. I believed in twelve-tone music!" He eventually took Austrian citizenship in 1968. A few weeks after arriving in Vienna, Ligeti left for Cologne. There he met several key
avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...
figures and learned more contemporary musical styles and methods. These people included the composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig, both then working on groundbreaking
electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electro ...
. During the summer, he attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt. Ligeti worked in the Cologne Electronic Music Studio with Stockhausen and Koenig and was inspired by the sounds he heard there. However, he produced little electronic music of his own, instead concentrating on instrumental works which often contain electronic-sounding textures. After about three years' working with them, he fell out with the Cologne School of Electronic Music, because there was much factional in-fighting: "there were a lot of political fighting because different people, like Stockhausen, like Kagel wanted to be first. And I, personally, have no ambition to be first or to be important." Between 1961 and 1971 he was guest professor for composition in Stockholm. In 1972 he became composer-in-residence at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
in the United States. In 1973 Ligeti became professor of composition at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater, eventually retiring in 1989. While he was living in Hamburg, his wife Vera remained in Vienna with their son,
Lukas Lukas is a form of the Latin name Lucas. Popularity In 2013 it was the ninth most popular name for boys in Australia. Meaning and different spellings * Amharic - Luqas (ሉቃስ) * Arabic - Luqa (لوقا) / Luqas (لوكاس) * Armenian - Ղ� ...
, who later also became a composer. Invited by
Walter Fink Walter Fink (16 August 1930 – 13 April 2018) was a German entrepreneur and a patron of contemporary classical music. He is known for being a founding member, executive committee member and sponsor of the Rheingau Musik Festival, where he initi ...
, Ligeti was the first composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 1990. Apart from his far-reaching interest in different styles of music, from Renaissance to African music, Ligeti was also interested in literature (including the writers Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges, and
Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...
), painting, architecture, science, and mathematics. He was especially fascinated by the fractal geometry of Benoit Mandelbrot and the writings of Douglas Hofstadter.


Death

Ligeti's health deteriorated after the turn of the millennium; he died in Vienna on 12 June 2006, at the age of 83. Although it was known that he had been ill for several years and had used a wheelchair for the last three years of his life, his family declined to release details of the cause of his death. Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel and Art Secretary both paid tribute to Ligeti. His funeral was held at
Feuerhalle Simmering Feuerhalle Simmering is a crematorium with attached urn burial ground in the Simmering district of Vienna, Austria. It lies at the end of an alley, directly opposite Vienna Central Cemetery's main gate. Description Opened on 17 December 1922 by ...
. The memorial concert was performed by
Pierre-Laurent Aimard Pierre-Laurent Aimard (born 9 September 1957) is a French pianist. Biography Aimard was born in Lyon, where he entered the conservatory. Later he studied with Yvonne Loriod and with Maria Curcio. In 1973, he was awarded the chamber music priz ...
and the
Arnold Schoenberg Choir The Arnold Schoenberg Choir (german: Arnold Schoenberg Chor) is a Viennese/Austrian choir which was founded 1972 by Erwin Ortner, who is still its artistic director. The choir has a high reputation both among conductors and among critics and the ...
. His ashes were buried at Vienna Central Cemetery in a ''grave of honor'' (german: Ehrengrab, link=no). He is buried next to his brother. He was survived by his wife Vera and son
Lukas Lukas is a form of the Latin name Lucas. Popularity In 2013 it was the ninth most popular name for boys in Australia. Meaning and different spellings * Amharic - Luqas (ሉቃስ) * Arabic - Luqa (لوقا) / Luqas (لوكاس) * Armenian - Ղ� ...
. The latter is a composer and percussionist based in the United States.


Music


Compositions in Hungary

Many of Ligeti's earliest works were written for chorus and included settings of folk songs. His largest work in this period was a graduation composition for the Budapest Academy, entitled ''Cantata for Youth Festival'', for four vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra. One of his earliest pieces now in the repertoire is his ''Cello Sonata'', a work in two contrasting movements that were written in 1948 and 1953. It was initially banned by the Soviet-run Composer's Union and was not performed publicly for a quarter of a century. Ligeti's earliest works are often an extension of the musical language of Béla Bartók. Even his piano cycle '' Musica ricercata'' (1953), though written according to Ligeti with a "Cartesian" approach, in which he "regarded all the music I knew and loved as being... irrelevant", the piece has been described by one biographer as from a world very close to Bartók's set of piano works, '' Mikrokosmos''. Ligeti's set comprises eleven pieces in all. The work is based on a simple restriction: the first piece uses exclusively one pitch A, heard in multiple octaves, and only at the very end of the piece is a second note, D, heard. The second piece uses three notes (E, F, and G), the third piece uses four, and so on, so that in the final piece all twelve notes of the chromatic scale are present. Shortly after its composition, Ligeti arranged six of the movements of ''Musica ricercata'' for wind quintet under the title 'Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet'. The Bagatelles were performed first in 1956, but not in their entirety: the last movement was censored by the Soviets for being too 'dangerous'. Because of Soviet censorship, his most daring works from this period, including ''Musica ricercata'' and his String Quartet No. 1 ''Métamorphoses nocturnes'' (1953–1954), were written for the 'bottom drawer'. Composed of a single movement divided into seventeen contrasting sections linked motivically, the First String Quartet is Ligeti's first work to suggest a personal style of composition. The string quartet was not performed until 1958, after he had fled Hungary for Vienna.


From 1956 to ''Le Grand Macabre''

Upon arriving in Cologne, Ligeti began to write electronic music alongside Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig at the electronic studio of West German Radio (WDR). He completed only two works in this medium, however—the pieces ''Glissandi'' (1957) and '' Artikulation'' (1958)—before returning to instrumental music. A third work, originally entitled ''Atmosphères'' but later known as ''Pièce électronique Nr. 3'', was planned, but the technical limitations of the time prevented Ligeti from realizing it completely. It was finally realised in 1996 by the Dutch composers Kees Tazelaar and Johan van Kreij of the Institute of Sonology. Ligeti's music appears to have been subsequently influenced by his electronic experiments, and many of the sounds he created resembled electronic textures. Ligeti coined the term "
micropolyphony Micropolyphony is a kind of polyphonic musical texture developed by György Ligeti which consists of many lines of dense canons moving at different tempos or rhythms, thus resulting in tone clusters vertically. According to David Cope, "micropoly ...
" to describe the texture of the second movement of ''Apparitions'' (1958–59) and ''
Atmosphères ''Atmosphères'' is a piece for 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 h ...
'' (1961). This texture is a similar to that of polyphony, except that the polyphony is obscured in a dense and rich stack of pitches. Micropolyphony can be used to create the nearly static but slowly evolving works such as ''Atmosphères'' in which the individual instruments become hidden in a complex web of sound. According to Ligeti, after ''Apparitions'' and ''Atmosphères'', he "became famous". With ''Volumina'' (1961–62, revised 1966) for solo organ, Ligeti continued with clusters of notes, translated into blocks of sound. In this piece, Ligeti abandoned conventional music notation, instead using diagrams to represent general pitch areas, duration, and flurries of notes. '' Poème symphonique'' (1962) is a work for one hundred mechanical metronomes during his brief acquaintance with Fluxus movement. ''Aventures'' (1962), like its companion piece ''Nouvelles Aventures'' (1962–65), is a composition for three singers and instrumental septet, to a text (of Ligeti's own devising) that is without semantic meaning. In these pieces, each singer has five roles to play, exploring five areas of emotion, and they switch from one to the other so quickly and abruptly that all five areas are present throughout the piece. '' Requiem'' (1963–65) is a work for soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, twenty-part chorus (four each of soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), and orchestra. Though, at about half an hour, it is the longest piece he had composed up to that point, Ligeti sets only about half of the Requiem's traditional text: the " Introitus", the " Kyrie" (a completely chromatic quasi- fugue, where the parts are a montage of
melismatic Melisma ( grc-gre, μέλισμα, , ; from grc, , melos, song, melody, label=none, plural: ''melismata'') is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is ref ...
, skipping micropolyphony), and the " Dies irae"—dividing the latter sequence into two parts, "De die judicii" and " Lacrimosa". '' Lux Aeterna'' (1966) is a 16-voice ''a cappella'' piece whose text is also associated with the Latin Requiem. Ligeti's
Cello Concerto A cello concerto (sometimes called a violoncello concerto) is a concerto for solo cello with orchestra or, very occasionally, smaller groups of instruments. These pieces have been written since the Baroque era if not earlier. However, unlike instr ...
(1966), which is dedicated to Siegfried Palm, is composed of two movements: the first begins with an almost imperceptible cello which slowly shifts into static tone clusters with the orchestra before reaching a crescendo and slowly decaying, while the second is a virtuoso piece of dynamic atonal melody on the part of the cello. ''Lontano'' (1967), for full orchestra, is another example of micropolyphony, but the overall effect is closer to harmony, with complex woven textures and opacity of the sound giving rise to a harmonious effect. It has become a standard repertoire piece. String Quartet No. 2 (1968) consists of five movements. They differ widely from each other in their types of motion. In the first, the structure is largely broken up, as in ''Aventures''. In the second, everything is reduced to very slow motion, and the music seems to be coming from a distance, with great lyricism. The '' pizzicato'' third movement is a machine-like studies, hard and mechanical, whereby the parts playing repeated notes create a "granulated" continuum. In the fourth, which is fast and threatening, everything that happened before is crammed together. Lastly, in strong contrast, the fifth movement spreads itself out. In each movement, the same basic configurations return, but each time their colouring or viewpoint is different, so that the overall form only really emerges when one listens to all five movements in context. '' Ramifications'' (1968–69), completed a year before the Chamber Concerto, is scored for an ensemble of strings in twelve parts—seven violins, two violas, two cellos and a double bass—each of which may be taken by one player or several. The twelve are divided into two numerically equal groups but with the instruments in the first group tuned approximately a quarter-tone higher (four violins, a viola and a cello). As the group play, the one tuned higher inevitably tends to slide down toward the other, and both get nearer each other in pitch. In the ''Chamber Concerto'' (1969–70), several layers, processes and kinds of movement can take place on different planes simultaneously. In spite of frequent markings of "senza tempo", the instrumentalists are not given linear freedom; Ligeti insists on keeping his texture under strict control at any given moment. The form is like a "precision mechanism". Ligeti was always fascinated by machines that do not work properly and by the world of technology and automation. The use of periodic mechanical noises, suggesting not-quite-reliable machinery, occurs in many of his works. The scoring is for flute (doubling piccolo), oboe (doubling oboe d'amore and cor anglais), clarinet, bass clarinet (doubling second clarinet), horn, trombone, harpsichord (doubling Hammond organ), piano (doubling celesta), and solo string quintet. Most of these compositions establish timbre, rather than the traditionally-favored dimensions of pitch and rhythm, as their principal formal parameter, a practice that has come to be known as sonorism. From the 1970s, Ligeti turned away from sonorism and began to concentrate on rhythm. Pieces such as '' Continuum'' (1968) and ''Clocks and Clouds'' (1972–73) were written before he heard the music of Steve Reich and Terry Riley in 1972. But the second of his ''Three Pieces for Two Pianos'' (1976), entitled "Self-portrait with Reich and Riley (and Chopin in the background)", commemorates this affirmation and influence. During the 1970s, he also became interested in the polyphonic pipe music of the
Banda Banda may refer to: People * Banda (surname) * Banda Prakash (born 1954), Indian politician * Banda Kanakalingeshwara Rao (1907–1968), Indian actor * Banda Karthika Reddy (born 1977), Indian politician *Banda Singh Bahadur (1670–1716), Sikh ...
-Linda tribe from the Central African Republic, which he heard through the recordings of one of his students. In 1977, Ligeti completed his only opera, '' Le Grand Macabre'', thirteen years after its initial commission. Loosely based on Michel de Ghelderode's 1934 play, ''La balade du grand macabre'', it is a work of
Absurd theatre The Theatre of the Absurd (french: théâtre de l'absurde ) is a post– World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style o ...
—Ligeti called it an "anti-anti-opera"—in which Death (Nekrotzar) arrives in the fictional city of Breughelland and announces that the end of the world will occur at midnight. Musically, ''Le Grand Macabre'' draws on techniques not associated with Ligeti's previous work, including
quotation A quotation is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is introduced by ...
s and pseudo-quotations of other works and the use of
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
thirds and sixths. After ''Le Grand Macabre'', Ligeti would abandon the use of pastiche, but would increasingly incorporate consonant harmonies (even major and
minor triad In music theory, a minor chord is a chord that has a root, a minor third, and a perfect fifth. When a chord comprises only these three notes, it is called a minor triad. For example, the minor triad built on C, called a C minor triad, has pitc ...
s) into his work, albeit not in a diatonic context.


After ''Le Grand Macabre''

After ''Le Grand Macabre'', Ligeti struggled for some time to find a new style. Besides two short pieces for harpsichord, he did not complete another major work until the Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano in 1982, over four years after the opera. His music of the 1980s and 1990s continued to emphasise complex mechanical rhythms, often in a less densely chromatic idiom, tending to favour displaced major and minor triads and polymodal structures. During this time, Ligeti also began to explore alternate tuning systems through the use of natural harmonics for horns (as in the Horn Trio and Piano Concerto) and
scordatura Scordatura (; literally, Italian for "discord", or "mistuning") is a tuning of a string instrument that is different from the normal, standard tuning. It typically attempts to allow special effects or unusual chords or timbre, or to make certain p ...
for strings (as in the Violin Concerto). Additionally, most of his works in this period are multi-movement works, rather than the extended single movements of ''Atmosphères'' and ''San Francisco Polyphony''. From 1985 to 2001, Ligeti completed three books of
Études Études is French for "studies". It is used as a name for several music or dance works, including: * ''Études'' (Chopin), three sets of studies for the piano by Frédéric Chopin, composed between 1829 and 1839 * ''Études'' (Debussy), a set of 1 ...
for piano (Book I, 1985; Book II, 1988–94; Book III, 1995–2001). Comprising eighteen compositions in all, the Études draw from a diverse range of sources, including gamelan, African polyrhythms, Béla Bartók, Conlon Nancarrow, Thelonious Monk, and Bill Evans. Book I was written as preparation for the Piano Concerto, which contains a number of similar motivic and melodic elements. Ligeti's music from the last two decades of his life is unmistakable for its rhythmic complexity. Writing about his first book of Piano Études, the composer claims this rhythmic complexity stems from two vastly different sources of inspiration: the Romantic-era piano music of Chopin and Schumann and the indigenous music of sub-Saharan Africa. The difference between the earlier and later pieces lies in a new conception of pulse. In the earlier works, the pulse is something to be divided into two, three and so on. The effect of these different subdivisions, especially when they occur simultaneously, is to blur the aural landscape, creating the micropolyphonic effect of Ligeti's music. On the other hand, the later music—and a few earlier pieces such as '' Continuum''—treats the pulse as a musical atom, a common denominator, a basic unit, which cannot be divided further. Different rhythms appear through multiplications of the basic pulse, rather than divisions: this is the principle of African music seized on by Ligeti. It also appears in the music of Philip Glass, Steve Reich and others; and significantly it shares much in common with the additive rhythms of Balkan folk music, the music of Ligeti's youth. He described the music of Conlon Nancarrow, with its extremely complex explorations of polyrhythmic complexity, as "the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives... something great and important for all music history! His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed, but at the same time emotional... for me it's the best music of any composer living today." In 1988, Ligeti completed his Piano Concerto, writing that "I present my artistic credo in the ''Piano Concerto'': I demonstrate my independence from criteria of the traditional avantgarde, as well as the fashionable postmodernism." Initial sketches of the Concerto began in 1980, but it was not until 1985 that he found a way forward and the work proceeded more quickly. The Concerto explores many of the ideas worked out in the Études but in an orchestral context. In 1993, Ligeti completed his Violin Concerto after four years of work. Like the Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto uses the wide range of techniques he had developed up until that point as well as the new ideas he was working out at the moment. Among other techniques, it uses a passacaglia, " microtonality, rapidly changing textures, comic juxtapositions... Hungarian folk melodies, Bulgarian dance rhythms, references to Medieval and Renaissance music and solo violin writing that ranges from the slow-paced and sweet-toned to the angular and fiery." Other notable works from this period are the Viola Sonata (1994) and the ''Nonsense Madrigals'' (1988–93), a set of six a cappella compositions that set English texts from William Brighty Rands, Lewis Carroll, and Heinrich Hoffman. The third Madrigal is a setting of the English
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
. Ligeti's last works were the '' Hamburg Concerto'' for solo horn, four natural horns and chamber orchestra (1998–99, revised 2003, dedicated to Marie-Luise Neunecker), the song cycle '' Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedűvel'' ("With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles", 2000), and the eighteenth piano étude "Canon" (2001). Additionally, after ''Le Grand Macabre'', Ligeti planned to write a second opera, first to be based on
Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
's '' The Tempest'' and later on Carroll's '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'', but neither came to fruition.


Legacy

Ligeti has been described as "together with
Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mon ...
, Berio, Stockhausen, and Cage as one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time". From about 1960, Ligeti's work became better known and respected. His best-known work was written during the period from ''Apparitions'' to ''Lontano'', which includes ''Atmosphères'', ''Volumina'', ''Aventures'' and ''Nouvelles Aventures'', ''Requiem'', ''Lux Aeterna'', and his Cello Concerto; as well as his opera ''Le Grand Macabre''. In recent years, his three books of piano études have also become well known and are the subject of the ''Inside the Score'' project of pianist
Pierre-Laurent Aimard Pierre-Laurent Aimard (born 9 September 1957) is a French pianist. Biography Aimard was born in Lyon, where he entered the conservatory. Later he studied with Yvonne Loriod and with Maria Curcio. In 1973, he was awarded the chamber music priz ...
.


Music in the films of Stanley Kubrick

Ligeti's music is best known to the public not acquainted with 20th century classical music for its use in three films of Stanley Kubrick's, which gained him a world-wide audience. The
soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrac ...
to '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' includes excerpts from four of his pieces: ''Atmosphères'', ''Lux Aeterna'', ''Requiem'' and ''Aventures''. ''Atmosphères'' is heard during the "Star Gate" sequence, with portions also heard in the Overture and Intermission. ''Lux Aeterna'' is heard in the moon-bus scene en route to the Tycho monolith. The ''Kyrie'' sequence of his ''Requiem'' is heard over the first three monolith encounters. An electronically altered version of ''Aventures'', unlisted in the film credits, is heard in the cryptic final scenes. The music was used, and in some cases modified, without Ligeti's knowledge, and without full copyright clearance. When he learned about the use of his music in the film, he "successfully sued for having had his music distorted", but settled out of court. Kubrick in return sought permission and compensated Ligeti for use of his music in later films. ''Lux Aeterna'' was used again in Peter Hyams's 1984 sequel to ''2001'', '' 2010''. A later Kubrick film, '' The Shining'', uses small portions of ''Lontano'' for orchestra. One motif from the second movement of Ligeti's ''Musica ricercata'' is used at pivotal moments in Kubrick's ''
Eyes Wide Shut ''Eyes Wide Shut'' is a 1999 erotic mystery psychological drama film directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. It is based on the 1926 novella '' Traumnovelle'' (''Dream Story'') by Arthur Schnitzler, transferring the story's set ...
''. At the German premiere of that film, by which time Kubrick had died, his widow was escorted by Ligeti himself.


Music in other films and media

Ligeti's work has also been used in numerous films by other directors. ''Lontano'' was also used in
Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor. Scorsese emerged as one of the major figures of the New Hollywood era. He is the recipient of many major accolades, incl ...
's 2010 psychological thriller film '' Shutter Island''. The first movement of the Cello Concerto was used in the Michael Mann 1995 crime film ''
Heat In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the form of energy crossing the boundary of a thermodynamic system by virtue of a temperature difference across the boundary. A thermodynamic system does not ''contain'' heat. Nevertheless, the term is ...
''. The ''Requiem'' was used in the 2014 film ''Godzilla''. The Cello Concerto and the Piano Concerto were used in Yorgos Lanthimos' 2017 film ''
The Killing of a Sacred Deer ''The Killing of a Sacred Deer'' is a 2017 psychological horror thriller film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone, and Bill Camp. The screen ...
''. His music has also been used in television and radio. ''Lontano'', ''Atmosphères'', and the first movement of the Cello Concerto were used in Sophie Fiennes's documentary ''
Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow ''Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow'' is a 2010 Sophie Fiennes documentary about the German industrial artist Anselm Kiefer's creation of a 40 hectare work in progress at an abandoned factory complex outside Barjac, France. Kiefer moved to the ...
'', about the German post-war artist Anselm Kiefer. ''Lontano'', ''Melodien'', and ''Volumina'' were used in Fit the First, Fit the Fifth, and of '' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' as background music to sections of narrative from the Guide.


Awards

* Beethoven Prize of Bonn for ''Requiem'' (1967) *
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
International Rostrum of Composers (1969) * Berlin Art Prize (1972) * Bach Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (1975) *
Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts Pour may refer to these people: * Kour Pour (born 1987), British artist of part-Iranian descent * Mehdi Niyayesh Pour (born 1992), Iranian footballer * Mojtaba Mobini Pour (born 1991), Iranian footballer * Pouya Jalili Pour (born 1976), Iranian si ...
(1975) * University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition (Etudes for Piano) (1986) * Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1987) * Honorary Ring of the Vienna (1987) * Commandeur dans l' Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1988) * Prix de composition musicale de la Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco (1988) * Léonie Sonning Music Prize (Denmark, 1990) * Grand Austrian State Prize for Music (1990) * Praemium Imperiale (1991) * Balzan Prize (1991) * Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, London (1992) * Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, Germany (1993) * Rolf Schock Prize for Musical Arts (1995) * Music Award of the UNESCO (1996) * Wolf Prize in Arts, Israel (1996) * Wihuri Sibelius Prize, Finland (2000) * Kyoto Prize (2001) * Medal of Arts and Sciences of the City of Hamburg (2003) * Theodor W. Adorno Award (2003) *
Kossuth Prize The Kossuth Prize ( hu, Kossuth-díj) is a state-sponsored award in Hungary, named after the Hungarian politician and revolutionist Lajos Kossuth. The Prize was established in 1948 (on occasion of the centenary of the March 15th revolution, the ...
, Hungary (2003) * Polar Music Prize (2004) * Frankfurt Music Prize (2005)


Honorary doctorates

* Honorary doctor from the
Universität Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vo ...
(1988)


Notable students


Writings

* Ligeti, György. 1957. "Zur III. Klaviersonate von Boulez" '' Die Reihe'' 5: "Berichte—Analyse": 38–40. English as "Some Remarks on Boulez' 3rd Piano Sonata", translated by Leo Black. ''Die Reihe'' nglish edition5: "Reports—Analyses" (1961): 56–58. * Ligeti, György. 1958. "Pierre Boulez. Entscheidung und Automatik in der ''Structure 1a ''". ''Die Reihe'' 4: "Junge Komponisten": 38–63. English as "Pierre Boulez: Decision and Automaticism in ''Structure 1a''", translated by Leo Black. ''Die Reihe'' nglish edition4: "Young Composers" (1960): 36–62. * Ligeti, György. 1960. "Wandlungen der musikalischen Form" Band 7: "Form—Raum": 5–17. English as "Metamorphoses of Musical Form", translated by Cornelius Cardew. ''Die Reihe'' nglish edition7 "Form—Space" (1964): 5–19. * Ligeti, György. 1960. "Zustände, Ereignisse, Wandlungen: Bemerkungen zu meinem Orchesterstück ''Apparitions''". ''Bilder und Blätter'' 11. Reprinted as "Zustände, Ereignisse, Wandlungen". ''Melos'' 34 (1967): 165–169. English as "States, Events, Transformations", translated by Jonathan W. Bernard. '' Perspectives of New Music'' 31, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 164–171. * Ligeti, György. 1978. "On Music and Politics", translated by Wes Blomster. ''Perspectives of New Music'' 16, no. 2 (Spring–Summer): 19–24. Originally published in German, in the ''Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik'' 13 (1973): 42–46. * Ligeti, György. 1987. "A Viennese Exponent of Understatement: Personal Reflections on Friedrich Cerha", translated by Inge Goodwin. '' Tempo'', New Series, no. 161/162: "...An Austrian Quodlibet..." (June–September): 3–5. * Ligeti, György. 1988. "On My Piano Concerto", translated by Robert Cogan. '' Sonus: A Journal of Investigations into Global Musical Possibilities'' 9, no. 1 (Fall): 8–13. * Ligeti, György, and Peter Sellars. "''Le Grand Macabre'': An Opera in Two Acts (Four Scenes) 1974–1977". '' Grand Street'', no. 59: "Time" (Winter): 206–214. * Ligeti, György. 2001. ''Neuf essais sur la musique'', translated by Catherine Fourcassié. Geneva: Contrechamps.


References


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Boston: Northeastern University Press. . * * * *


Further reading

* Anon. n.d.(b)
György Ligeti (1923–2006)
. Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music website (Accessed 22 October 2013). * Bauer, Amy. 2011. ''Ligeti's Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism, and the Absolute.'' Aldershot: Ashagte. . * Bauer, Amy, and Márton Kerékfy, eds. 2017. ''György Ligeti's Cultural Identities''. Routledge, 2017. * Cuciurean, John. 2000. "A Theory of Pitch, Rhythm, and Intertextual Allusion for the Late Music of György Ligeti", Ph.D. dissertation. State University of New York at Buffalo. * Cuciurean, John. 2012. "Aspects of Harmonic Structure, Voice-Leading and Aesthetic Function in György Ligeti's ''In zart fliessender Bewegung''." ''Contemporary Music Review'' 31/2–3: 221–238. * Drott, Eric. 2011. "Lines, Masses, Micropolyphony: Ligeti's Kyrie and the 'Crisis of the Figure'". '' Perspectives of New Music'' 49, no. 1 (Winter):4–46. * Edwards, Peter. 2016. ''György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre: Postmodernism, Musico-Dramatic Form and the Grotesque''. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. * Floros, Constantin. 2014. ''György Ligeti: Beyond Avant-Garde and Postmodernism'', translated by Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. * Griffiths, Paul. 1997. ''György Ligeti''. London: Robson Books. * Levy, Benjamin R. 2017. ''Metamorphosis in Music: The Compositions of György Ligeti in the 1950s and 1960s''. Oxford University Press. * Lobanova. Marina. 2002. ''György Ligeti: Style, Ideas, Poetics''. Studia Slavica Musicologica 29. Berlin: Verlag Ernst Kuhn. . * Petersen, Peter, and Albrecht Schneider. 2003. "György Ligetis Zehn Stücke für Bläserquintett (1968)." ''Musiktheorie'' 18, no. 3:195–222. * * Trask, Simon. "The Pioneer". 1990. ''Music Technology'' 4, no. 6 (May): 54. , * Wihuri Foundation. n.d.
Wihuri Foundation for International Prizes
. ( Accessed 5 March 2010).


External links

Obituaries and remembrances
The BBC obituary


Plaistow, Stephen. ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'', 14 June 2006, Retrieved 14 June 2006. Other * (in German)
György Ligeti
at karsten witt musik management gmbh
www.gyoergy-ligeti.de/
page from Ligeti's publisher Schott, with non-proprietary audio files

requires proprietary realmedia player
György Ligeti's Musical Odyssey
focusing on music used in ''2001: A Space Odyssey''
The Late Works of György Ligeti
from Second Inversion and Michael Schell
CompositionToday – Ligeti article and review of worksCollection of research on Ligeti's music and links to recordings.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ligeti, Gyorgy 1923 births 2006 deaths 20th-century classical composers Austrian classical composers Austrian Jews Austrian people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Composers for cello Composers for piano Composers for pipe organ Composers for violin Franz Liszt Academy of Music alumni Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg faculty Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society Hungarian classical composers Hungarian male classical composers Austrian male classical composers Romanian emigrants to Hungary Hungarian emigrants to Austria Hungarian Jews Deutsche Grammophon artists Jewish classical composers Jewish classical musicians Kyoto laureates in Arts and Philosophy Members of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts Naturalised citizens of Austria People from Târnăveni Pupils of Zoltán Kodály Rolf Schock Prize laureates Recipients of the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art Recipients of the Grand Austrian State Prize Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Transylvanian Jews Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Wolf Prize in Arts laureates Recipients of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize International Rostrum of Composers prize-winners Jewish classical pianists Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winners Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Hungarian World War II forced labourers 20th-century Hungarian male musicians Burials at the Vienna Central Cemetery Members of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts