Gyrgy Sndor Ligeti

Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described

as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the
twentieth century" also as "one of the most innovative and influential among
progressive figures of his time".
He was Born in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in Hungary before emigrating
and becoming an Austrian citizen.
Many of his very earliest works were written for chorus and included settings of
folk songs. His largest work in this period was a graduation composition for the
Budapest Academy, entitled Cantata for Youth Festival, for four vocal soloists,
chorus and orchestra. One of his earliest pieces now in the repertoire is his
Cello Sonata, a work in two contrasting movements that were written in 1948
nineteen forty eight and 1953 nineteen fifty three respectively. It was
initially banned by the Soviet-run Composer's Union and had to wait a quarter
of a century before its first public performance
Ligeti's earliest works are often an extension of the musical language of Bla
Bartk. Even his piano cycle Musica ricercata written in 1953 nineteen fifty
three), The work is based on a simple restriction: the first piece uses
exclusively one pitch A, heard in multiple octaves, and only at the end of the
piece we can hear another pitch D The second piece then uses three notes (E,
F, and G), the third piece uses four, and so on, so that in the final piece all
twelve notes of the chromatic scale are present. Shortly after its composition
Ligeti arranged six of the movements of Musica ricercata for wind quintet under
the title 'Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet'. The Bagatelles were performed first
in 1956 nineteen fifty six, but not in their entirety: the last movement was
censored by the Soviets for being too 'dangerous'
Upon arriving in Cologne he began to write electronic music alongside Karlheinz
Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig He completed only two works in this
medium, Glissandi in (1957 nineteen fifty seven) and Artikulation in (1958
nineteen fifty eight)
Another interesting piece is Aventures, like its companion piece Nouvelles
Aventures, is a composition for three singers and instrumental septet, to a text
semantically without meaning of Ligeti's own devising. Each of the singers has
five roles to play, exploring five areas of emotion, and they switch from one to
the other so quickly and abruptly that all five areas are present throughout the
piece.
From the 1970s, Ligeti turned away from total chromaticism and began to
concentrate on rhythm. Pieces such as Continuum (1968) and Clocks and
Clouds (197273) During the 1970s, he also became interested in the music of

the Banda-Linda tribe from the Central African Republic, which he heard
through the recordings of one of his students.
Ligeti 's music is very interesting for contemporary composers because Ligeti explores
different ways of making music that are not directly related to traditional standards
such as the melody or harmony