György Ligeti

György Ligeti was born on 28 May 1923 in Dicsöszenmárton (Romania). From 1945 to 1949 he studied composition at the music conservatory in Budapest and taught theory at the same institution from 1950 to 1956. In 1956 he left Hungary and worked from 1957 to 1959 as an associate in the Studio for Electronic Music of the WDR in Cologne. In 1959 he settled in Vienna and took Austrian citizenship in 1967. In the 1960s Ligeti taught every year at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music and was guest lecturer at the music conservatory in Stockholm. From 1969 to 1970 Ligeti lived and worked in Berlin after having received a scholarship by the German Academic Exchange Service and in 1972 he was »composer in residence« at Stanford University, California. From 1973 to 1989 he taught composition at the music conservatory in Hamburg. With his Requiem (1963-65), among other pieces, he developed a new musical style marked by an extremely dense polyphony (»micropolyphony«) and static and shifting textures. In the course of the 70s his polyphonic writing became more transparent and melodious. He finally developed a complex polyrhythmic composition technique which he applied to his works of the 80s and 90s. György Ligeti died in Vienna on 12 June 2006 at the age of 83.

György Ligetis works are published by Edition Peters and other publishers.

https://de.gyorgy-ligeti.com