LIGETI, György

Born in Transylvania, educated at the Budapest Music Academy, Ligeti left Hungary in 1956, reportedly walking to Cologne; within fifteen years, he was a professor at the Hamburg music school. His most successful pieces incorporate clusters of closely related sounds, aggregations literally, resembling acoustic bands more than traditional separate notes, articulated with a strong sense of instrumental texture, he says to produce acoustic motionlessness. The most familiar is the Kyrie from Requiem,...