György Ligeti

Ligeti used micropolyphony in Atmosphères and the Requiem, combining closely interwoven musical lines. Born in Transylvania into a Hungarian Jewish family, he studied in Kolozsvár and then Budapest, and left Hungary for Vienna in 1956, arriving in a Western avant-garde he had until then known only at second hand. Kubrick's use of Atmosphères, Lux aeterna and the Requiem in 2001: A Space Odyssey carried the sound far beyond concert audiences. Aventures constructs an entire drama out of speech-like vocal gesture and no words at all, and Le Grand Macabre turns the end of the world into grotesque comic theatre. In the 1980s his attention turned to complex polyrhythm; the three books of Piano Études reflect this interest, and they were composed between 1985 and 2001. He died in Vienna in 2006. Born on 28 May 1923, he lost his father and his brother in concentration camps, and after wartime interruptions he studied at the Budapest Academy from 1945 to 1949; he taught at the academy there from 1950, writing music in Bartók's shadow that stood no chance of performance under socialist realism. After 1956 he encountered Stockhausen and Boulez in Cologne and participated in the Darmstadt summer courses; Apparitions was premiered in 1960 and Atmosphères in 1961; Kubrick took the latter for his film in 1968 without asking him, and drew on him again in The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. He was professor in Hamburg from 1973 until 1989.