One of the most influential composers of contemporary music, György Ligeti left his mark with innovations such as micropolyphony, polyrhythm and the use of clusters, adding to the influence of Hungarian folklore. Born into a Jewish family of Hungarian origin in Dicsőszentmárton (now Târnăveni), then in Romania, on May 28, 1923, György Sándor Ligeti composed his first works at the age of 14 and entered the Cluj Conservatory (Kolozsvár) in 1941. His studies in the midst of the Second World War were interrupted by the Hungarian regime, which enforced anti-Semitic laws and deported him and his family, who perished in concentration camps. Ligeti survived and was liberated by the Allied forces in 1945, when he resumed his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, where his teachers included Ferenc Farkas and Zoltán Kodály. Following in the footsteps of the latter and Béla Bartók, a major influence, he took an interest in folk music and collected traditional songs, from which various works from this period were inspired, such as the cantata Et circa horam nonam (1945) and Magány (1946). Promoted to teacher at the Academy in 1949, he pursued his career as a composer in parallel, developing new writing methods based on increasing intervals and graduated chromaticism in Concert românesc (1951), the cycle of eleven serial-style piano pieces Musica ricercata (1953) or the String Quartet no. 1 "Métamorphoses nocturnes " (1954), thwarting the Communist regime's censorship by drawing inspiration from Romanian dances, and taking care not to pull out of his drawer any pieces deemed too daring. After the failure of the Budapest uprising against the Soviet regime in 1956, Ligeti and his wife Vera fled to Austria, stopping off in Vienna, where the composer discovered the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez, outlawed in the Eastern Bloc. Ligeti then moved to Cologne to work with the latter, as well as Luciano Berio and Mauricio Kagel, at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk electronic music studio. This period saw the birth of Glissandi (1957) and Artikulation (1958), a move away from serialism towards a personal approach that culminated in the micropolyphony of the orchestral works Apparitions (1959) and Atmosphères à cinquante-six voix (1961), in which tiny rhythmic shifts, glissandi or clusters, move within a moving sound mass, creating the illusion of an auditory "cloud". The technique is continued in Volumina for organ (1962), the vocal piece Aventures (1962), Requiem (1965), the a cappella choir Lux Æterna (1966), whose sixteen voices divided into canon reinforce the cosmic effect, then Lontano for orchestra (1967). In 1962, in another genre of provocative happening, Ligeti caused a scandal in Darmstadt with the premiere of Poème symphonique pour 100 métronomes désynchronisant progressivement. This micropolyphonic period also saw the premiere of String Quartet No. 2 (1968), Ramifications for strings (1969), Continuum for harpsichord (1968) and the Chamber Concerto for thirteen instruments (1970). Naturalized Austrian in 1967, he taught composition at summer universities in Darmstadt and Stockholm between 1961 and 1971, was in residence at Stanford University (USA) in 1972, and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg from 1973 until his retirement in 1989. In the 1970s, György Ligeti integrated theatrical and polyrhythmic elements inspired by African and Caribbean music. His opera Le Grand Macabre (1974-1977, revised 1996), based on a play by Michel de Ghelderode, is presented as a burlesque, absurdist "anti-opera", criticizing totalitarianism with black humor. The composer explored rhythmic phase shifts in pieces such as Clocks and Clouds (1972-1973), and created new concertos such as the Double Concerto for flute and oboe (1972), the Piano Concerto (1985-1988) and the Violin Concerto (1990-1992), incorporating pastiche, alternative intonation and polyrhythms, followed by the Horn Concerto (1998-2003). In his late period, Ligeti renews his link with tradition, incorporating diatonism, tonality and melody, while maintaining innovation. His Études for piano (three volumes published between 1985 and 2001) call for great technical mastery, where virtuosity rubs shoulders with pulsations inspired by African rhythms. He also composed choral pieces such as Trois Fantaisies d'après Hölderlin (1982). Honored with numerous prizes at the end of his life, including the Kossuth Prize (2003) and the Polar Music Prize (2004), György Ligeti passed away in Vienna on June 12, 2006 at the age of 83, leaving an important musical legacy to succeeding generations. Among his pupils were the Dane Hans Abrahamsen, the Americans Martin Bresnick and Michael Daugherty, the Korean Unsuk Chin, the Korean Junsang Bahk and the Puerto Rican Roberto Sierra. Among his greatest admirers, director Stanley Kubrick used excerpts from Atmosphères, Lux Æterna and his Requiem in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), without initial authorization but leading to an amicable settlement, then Lontano in The Shining (1980) and Musica ricercata in Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
