Ligeti, György, 1923–2006, Hungarian composer. He studied music in Romania and Hungary, and was a teacher at the Budapest Academy of Music until he fled to Vienna (1956) after the Soviet invasion of Hungary. He worked (1957–58) at Cologne's electronic music studio and later taught at music schools in Darmstadt (1959), in Stockholm (1961), at Stanford (1972), and in Hamburg beginning in 1973. In the 1950s he began composing electronic music, such as Artikulation (1958), and came to worldwide attention with his orchestral Atmosphères (1961). An extremely innovative composer who became a key figure in Europe's musical avant garde, Ligeti created a distinctive and highly influential style of music that relies on the density and texture of sound masses. Some of his works also employ a satirical wit. From the 1980s on his music tended to be somewhat melodic. His compositions include orchestral works, e.g., Lontano (1967) and concertos for the violin (1989–93) and horn (1998–2001); chamber music, e.g. Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano (1982); keyboard works, e.g., Etudes for Piano (1985–90); theater pieces, e.g., Aventures (1962) and the comic opera Le Grand Macabre (1976, rev. 1997); and choral works, e.g., Lux Aeterna (1966) and Clocks and Clouds (1973).

Bibliography

See György Ligeti in Conversation (1983); biographies by P. Griffiths (1983) and R. Toop (1999); studies by F. Sallis (1996), M. Lobanova (2002), and R. Steinitz (2003); R. W. Richart, György Ligeti: A Bio-Bibliography (1991).

Ligeti, György (Sándor)

(born May 28, 1923, Diciosânmartin [now Tîrnaveni], Transylvania, Rom.—died June 12, 2006, Vienna, Austria) Hungarian Austrian composer. The son of Hungarian parents, he studied and taught music in Hungary until 1956, when he fled to Vienna. He subsequently met avant-garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and began to find his compositional path. After a brief interest in electronic music, Ligeti gained international recognition for his avant-garde pieces for instrumentalists and vocalists; these works dealt principally with shifting masses of sound and tone colours. Several of his compositions, including Atmosphères (1961), were used in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The opera Le Grand Macabre (1978, revised 1997) has been widely performed in Europe.