György Sándor Ligeti (pronounced "LEE-guh-tee") was a Hungarian composer who created contemporary classical music. He is known as one of the most important avant-garde composers in the second half of the twentieth century and one of the most innovative and influential composers of his time.

He was born in Romania and lived in Hungary before moving to Austria in 1956. He became an Austrian citizen in 1968. In 1973, he became a professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, where he taught until 1989. His students included Hans Abrahamsen, Unsuk Chin, and Michael Daugherty. He died in Vienna in 2006.

In Communist Hungary, his musical style was limited by the government. After moving to the West in 1956, Ligeti was able to fully express his passion for avant-garde music and develop new techniques. After working with electronic music in Cologne, Germany, his breakthrough came with orchestral works like Atmosphères, which used a technique he later called micropolyphony. After creating his "anti-anti-opera" Le Grand Macabre, Ligeti shifted from using chromaticism to using polyrhythm in his later works.

He is best known to the public through the use of his music in film soundtracks. Although he did not directly compose any film scores, parts of his music were used and adapted for films. The sound design in Stanley Kubrick's films, especially the music in 2001: A Space Odyssey, used Ligeti's work.

Biography

Ligeti was born in 1923 in Diciosânmartin (now called Dicsőszentmárton; later renamed Târnăveni in 1941) in Romania. His parents were Dr. Sándor Ligeti and Dr. Ilona Somogyi. His family was Hungarian Jewish. He was the great-grandnephew of violinist Leopold Auer and the second cousin of Hungarian philosopher Ágnes Heller. Some sources say he was Auer’s grandnephew instead of great-grandnephew.

Ligeti remembered that his first experience with languages other than Hungarian happened when he listened to a conversation between Romanian-speaking police officers. Before that, he did not know other languages existed. At age six, he moved with his family to Cluj. He did not return to his birthplace until the 1990s. In 1940, Northern Transylvania became part of Hungary after the Second Vienna Award, so Cluj became part of Hungary as well.

In 1941, Ligeti began his musical training at the conservatory in Kolozsvár (Cluj) and studied privately with Pál Kadosa in Budapest during summers. In 1944, his education was interrupted when the Horthy regime sent him to a forced labor group during the Holocaust. His brother, Gábor, age 16, was sent to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, and his parents were sent to Auschwitz. Only his mother and Ligeti survived in his immediate family.

After World War II, Ligeti returned to his studies in Budapest. He graduated in 1949 from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. He studied with Pál Kadosa, Ferenc Farkas, Zoltán Kodály, and Sándor Veress. He researched Hungarian folk music from Transylvania. After one year, he returned to the Franz Liszt Academy as a teacher of harmony, counterpoint, and musical analysis. Kodály helped him secure this position, which he held from 1950 to 1956. As a young teacher, Ligeti attended lectures by Lajos Bárdos, a conservative Christian whose group provided him with support. Ligeti acknowledged Bárdos’s help in the prefaces of his harmony textbooks (1954 and 1956). Due to communist government restrictions, communication between Hungary and the West became difficult, isolating Ligeti and other artists from developments outside the Eastern Bloc.

In December 1956, two months after the Hungarian uprising was crushed by the Soviet Army, Ligeti fled to Vienna with his ex-wife, Vera Spitz. They remarried in 1957 and had a son. He did not return to Hungary for 14 years, until he was invited to judge a competition in Budapest. During his escape, he left most of his Hungarian compositions in Budapest, some of which are now lost. He took only what he considered his most important works. He later said, “I considered my old music of no interest. I believed in twelve-tone music!” He became an Austrian citizen in 1968.

A few weeks after arriving in Vienna, Ligeti moved to Cologne. There, he met key avant-garde figures and learned modern musical styles and methods. These included composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig, who were working on groundbreaking electronic music. During the summer, he attended the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. Ligeti worked in the Cologne Electronic Music Studio with Stockhausen and Koenig, inspired by the sounds there. However, he focused on instrumental works with electronic-sounding textures rather than creating electronic music himself.

After about three years, he left the Cologne School of Electronic Music due to factional conflicts. He said, “There were a lot of political fighting because different people, like Stockhausen, like Kagel, wanted to be first. I have no ambition to be first or to be important.”

Between 1961 and 1971, Ligeti was a guest professor for composition in Stockholm. In 1972, he became composer-in-residence at Stanford University in the United States.

In 1973, Ligeti became a professor of composition at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater, retiring in 1989. While living in Hamburg, his wife, Vera, stayed in Vienna with their son, Lukas, who later became a composer.

Invited by Walter Fink, Ligeti was the first composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 1990.

Ligeti was interested in many styles of music, from Renaissance to African music. He also enjoyed literature, including works by Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka, as well as painting, architecture, science, and mathematics. He was especially fascinated by the fractal geometry of Benoit Mandelbrot and the writings of Douglas Hofstadter.

After the year 2000, Ligeti’s health worsened. He died in Vienna on June 12, 2006, at age 83. Although he had been ill for years and used a wheelchair for the last three years of his life, his family did not share details about his cause of death.

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel and Art Secretary Franz Morak both honored Ligeti. His funeral was held at Feuerhalle Simmering. A memorial concert was performed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir. His ashes were buried at Vienna Central Cemetery in a grave of honor (German: Ehrengrab).

He was survived by his wife, Vera, and son, Lukas. Lukas is a composer and percussionist living in the United States.

Music

Ligeti's earliest works were often written for chorus and included settings of folk songs. His largest work from this time was a graduation composition for the Budapest Academy, called Cantata for Youth Festival, performed by four vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra. One of his earliest pieces still performed today is his Cello Sonata, composed in two contrasting movements written in 1948 and 1953. This piece was initially banned by the Soviet-run Composer's Union and was not performed publicly for 25 years.

Ligeti's early works often used musical ideas similar to those of Béla Bartók. Even his piano cycle Musica ricercata (1953), written with a "Cartesian" approach where Ligeti said he ignored music he previously knew, was compared by a biographer to Bartók's Mikrokosmos. Musica ricercata has 11 pieces. The first piece uses only one note, A, in different octaves, and the second note, D, appears only at the end. The second piece uses three notes, the third uses four, and so on, until the final piece uses all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.

Soon after writing Musica ricercata, Ligeti arranged six of its movements for wind quintet under the title Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet. These were first performed in 1956, but the last movement was censored by the Soviets for being too "dangerous."

Because of Soviet censorship, many of Ligeti's most daring works, including Musica ricercata and his String Quartet No. 1 Métamorphoses nocturnes (1953–1954), were not performed publicly. The First String Quartet has one movement divided into 17 sections connected by shared musical ideas. This piece marked Ligeti's first work showing his personal style. It was not performed until 1958, after he left Hungary for Vienna.

In Cologne, Ligeti worked on electronic music with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig at the West German Radio (WDR) studio. He completed two electronic works—Glissandi (1957) and Artikulation (1958)—before returning to instrumental music. A third piece, originally called Atmosphères, was planned but not completed due to technical limits. It was finally completed in 1996 by Dutch composers Kees Tazelaar and Johan van Kreij.

Ligeti's later music was influenced by his electronic experiments, and many of his sounds resembled electronic textures. He created the term "micropolyphony" to describe the dense, layered sound in the second movement of Apparitions (1958–59) and Atmosphères (1961). This texture is similar to polyphony but is much denser, making individual instruments hard to hear. Ligeti said he became famous after these works.

In Volumina (1961–62, revised 1966), for solo organ, Ligeti used clusters of notes translated into blocks of sound. He used diagrams instead of traditional notation to show pitch areas, durations, and note patterns.

Poème symphonique (1962) is a piece for 100 mechanical metronomes, created during his time with the Fluxus movement.

Aventures (1962) and Nouvelles Aventures (1962–65) are for three singers and an instrumental septet. The text, written by Ligeti, has no clear meaning. Each singer plays five emotional roles, switching quickly so all five emotions are present throughout the piece.

Requiem (1963–65) is for soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, a 20-part chorus, and orchestra. Though about 30 minutes long, Ligeti set only parts of the traditional Requiem text: the "Introitus," the "Kyrie" (a chromatic, melismatic, micropolyphonic fugue), and the "Dies irae," split into "De die judicii" and "Lacrimosa."

Lux Aeterna (1966) is a 16-voice a cappella piece with text from the Latin Requiem.

Ligeti's Cello Concerto (1966), dedicated to Siegfried Palm, has two movements. The first begins with a barely audible cello that gradually shifts into tone clusters with the orchestra, building to a crescendo and then fading. The second movement is a virtuosic, dynamic atonal melody for the cello.

Lontano (1967), for full orchestra, is another example of micropolyphony, but its sound is closer to harmony, with complex textures creating a harmonious effect. It is now a standard repertoire piece.

String Quartet No. 2 (1968) has five movements with different styles. The first movement breaks up structure, like Aventures. The second moves slowly, with distant, lyrical sounds. The third movement uses pizzicato to create a mechanical, repetitive texture. The fourth is fast and tense, with all earlier ideas condensed. The fifth spreads out, with each movement returning to similar themes but changing in color or perspective.

Ramifications (1968–69), written a year before the Chamber Concerto, uses 12 string parts—seven violins, two violas, two cellos, and a double bass. The instruments are split into two groups, with one group tuned slightly higher. As they play, the higher group naturally slides toward the lower one.

In the Chamber Concerto (1969–70), multiple layers and movements occur simultaneously. Though marked "senza tempo," Ligeti maintains strict control over the texture. The structure is like a "precision mechanism." Ligeti was fascinated by malfunctioning machines and technology, often using sounds that suggest unreliable machinery. The piece includes flute (piccolo), oboe (oboe d'amore, cor anglais), clarinet, bass clarinet, horn, trombone, harpsichord (Hammond organ), piano (celesta), and a solo string quintet. He also wrote a Double Concerto for Flute, Oboe & Orchestra (1972).

Most of these works focus on timbre rather than pitch or rhythm, a practice known as sonorism.

Legacy

Ligeti is often considered one of the most creative and important figures of his time, along with composers such as Boulez, Berio, Stockhausen, and Cage. Starting around 1960, Ligeti's music became more widely recognized and respected. His most famous works were created between the pieces Apparitions and Lontano. These include Atmosphères, Volumina, Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures, Requiem, Lux Aeterna, his Cello Concerto, and his opera Le Grand Macabre. In recent years, his three books of piano études have also gained attention, and they are part of a project called Inside the Score led by pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

Ligeti's music is most familiar to people who do not know much about 20th-century classical music because of its use in three films directed by Stanley Kubrick. These films helped make his music known worldwide. The soundtrack of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey includes parts of four of his pieces: Atmosphères, Lux Aeterna, Requiem, and Aventures. Atmosphères is played during the "Star Gate" scene, with parts also heard in the Overture and Intermission. Lux Aeterna is played during a scene showing a moon bus traveling to a monolith. A section of the Kyrie from his Requiem is heard during the first three scenes involving the monolith. A modified version of Aventures, which was not listed in the film credits, is played in the final scenes. Kubrick used Ligeti's music without his permission or full copyright approval. When Ligeti learned about this, he successfully sued because his music was changed without his consent, and they reached an agreement outside of court. Kubrick later asked for permission and paid Ligeti for using his music in other films.

Lux Aeterna was also used in Peter Hyams's 1984 film 2010: The Year We Make Contact, which is a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. A later Kubrick film, The Shining, includes short parts of Lontano played by an orchestra. One musical idea from the second movement of Ligeti's Musica ricercata is used at key moments in Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut. At the German premiere of that film, which happened after Kubrick's death, Ligeti attended with Kubrick's wife.

Ligeti's music has also been used in many films by other directors. For example, Lontano was used in Martin Scorsese's 2010 film Shutter Island. The first movement of the Cello Concerto was used in the 1995 film Heat directed by Michael Mann. The Requiem was used in the 2014 film Godzilla. The Cello Concerto and the Piano Concerto were used in Yorgos Lanthimos's 2017 film The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

Ligeti's music has also been featured in television and radio programs. Lontano, Atmosphères, and the first movement of the Cello Concerto were used in Sophie Fiennes's documentary Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, which is about the German artist Anselm Kiefer. Lontano, Melodien, and Volumina were used in the radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as background music for parts of the story.

Awards

• Beethoven Prize of Bonn for Requiem (1967)
• UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers (1969)
• Berlin Art Prize (1972)
• Bach Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (1975)
• Pour le Mérite in the fields of Science and Arts (1975)
• University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition (Études for Piano) (1986)
• Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1987)
• Honorary Ring of the Vienna (1987)
• Commandeur in the Order of Arts and Letters (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 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, Hungary (2003)
• Polar Music Prize (2004)
• Frankfurter Musikpreis (2005)

• Honorary Doctorate from the University of Hamburg (1988)