György Ligeti (1923–2006)

György Ligeti was born to a Jewish family in Dicsöszentmárton, Transylvania (present-day Tîrnaveni, Romania). When he was six years old, the family moved to Cluj, Romania, where he began taking lessons in composition with Ferenc Parkas in 1941. Nazi Germany's invasion in World War II tore his family apart. His brother and father died in concentration camps. His mother survived Auschwitz. Ligeti was sent to forced labor and also survived. After the war, Ligeti continued his studies in composing at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary. In addition to his focus on folk music, during this period he also began to develop the concept of a micropolyphonic compositional style. Ater the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was crushed by Soviet troops, he moved to Vienna, Austria. He got to know members of the avant-garde such as Gottfried Michael Koenig and Herbert Eimert, who invited him to the studio for electronic music at the West German Radio (WDR). He worked there from 1957 to 1958. His 1961 orchestral work Atmosphères brought him international fame, as this piece, along with his Requiem and the choral piece Lux aeterna, was chosen by Stanley Kubrick for the soundtrack of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Besides composing, Ligeti also was active as an educator. He was a guest professor for composition in Stockholm, composer-in-residence at Stanford University, and taught at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg. He won numerous prizes for his compositions, including won the 1991 Praemium Imperiale, and the 1993 Ernst-von-Siemens-Musikpreis. In 2004, he was honored with the Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.