György Ligeti (1923 – 2006), the avant-garde Hungarian composer, celebrates his 100th anniversary this year. He was one of the most unique composers of the 1950s and 60s, and then kept pushing his musical language so that in the 1990s he was still one of the most radical composers working.
His music education was interrupted by the Holocaust: he was Jewish and he was sent to a forced labour brigade whilst his brother and parents were sent to Mathausen-Gusen and Auschwitz. His mother was the only family member to survive. Despite the darkness he experienced, his music became more complex and beautiful, developing a sound he called “micropolyphony” – a precise series of musical lines that change slowly, blurring together like clouds moving across the sky.
We hear from Dr Amy Bauer, Professor in the Music Department at the University of California Irvine. Her writing on Ligeti includes the monograph Ligeti’s Laments and co-editing Ligeti’s Cultural Identities.
And from The Music Show archives, Ligeti’s late biographer Richard Toop, and conductors Clark Rundell and Elgar Howarth.