GYÖRGY LIGETI


Of hungarian parents, although born in Romania, began to study composition in 1941. Truncated his career, and destroyed his family by the nazi invasion, Ligeti survived his internment in the Concentration Camps, and resumed his studies in Budapest after the World War II. He stayed in Hungary as a teacher until the 1956 revolution, when he escape to Vienna. It is then when truly began is real expansion and musical experimentation, with works like Artikulation (1958) and Atmosphčres (1961) which soon put him among the more important composers of the moment. An expert in poliphonic treatments, until the point to create a new style which he called micropoliphony, a dense mixture of counterpoint and musical colour. The premieres of two works of religious inspiration, Requiem (1965) and Lux Aeterna (1966) [this last one included in the music of 2001, A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick's futuristic film] delivered him, definitively, to the popular knowledge, if well his style in permanent mutation transform him in an absolutely unclassifiable author, although a basic one.

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