György Ligeti

About

György Sándor Ligeti (Hungarian: Ligeti György Sándor, ; May 28, 1923 – June 12, 2006) was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in Transylvania, Romania, he lived in Hungary before emigrating and becoming an Austrian citizen. Early life : Ligeti was born in Dicsőszentmárton, which was renamed Târnăveni in 1945, in Transylvania to a Hungarian Jewish family. Ligeti recalls that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation among the Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he hadn't known that other languages existed. He moved to Cluj (Kolozsvár) with his family when he was 6, and he was not to return to the town of his birth until the 1990s. Ligeti received his initial musical training at the conservatory in Cluj, and during the summers privately with Pál Kadosa in Budapest. In 1940, Northern Transylvania was occupied by Hungary following the Second Vienna Award. In 1944, Ligeti's education was interrupted when he was sent to a forced labor brigade by the Horthy regime. His brother, age 16, was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, and both of his parents were sent to Auschwitz. His mother was the only othe…