Now there is no taboo; everything is allowed. But one cannot simply go back to tonality, it’s not the way. We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde.
Hungarian composer (1923-2006)
His music became the sound of the void in 2001: A Space Odyssey — though he never wrote a note for film. Ligeti built textures so strange and thick that Kubrick lifted them whole, and suddenly avant-garde micropolyphony was the soundtrack to deep space.
Born in Romania in 1923, Ligeti spent his early career stifled by the Hungarian Communist authorities, who demanded music he had no interest in writing. He fled to Austria in 1956 and finally had room to work. After a stint with electronic music in Cologne, he hit his stride with Atmosphères in 1961, an orchestral piece built from what he called micropolyphony — dense clouds of sound where individual lines dissolve into texture. Le Grand Macabre, his "anti-anti-opera," came in the late seventies; after that he moved toward intricate polyrhythm. He taught composition in Hamburg from 1973 to 198…
Sourced, dated quotes from György Ligeti
Now there is no taboo; everything is allowed. But one cannot simply go back to tonality, it’s not the way. We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde.
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