Ligeti Quotes & Sayings

Gesualdo was very important to me, I wanted to do something which corresponded to him. — Gyorgy Ligeti

Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I only want to give a metaphysic for my music. — Gyorgy Ligeti

All the people with whom I was very close at one point in my life - Stockhausen, Berio, Ligeti, Nono, Bernd Alois Zimmermann - they are all gone. — Pierre Boulez

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony. — Gyorgy Ligeti

In my piano concerto I developed this polyphony to much higher complexity. — Gyorgy Ligeti

You need three or five hands to play Ligeti. — Alfred Brendel

This continuity of sound and form was something that I became really interested in from working with Ligeti. He was always going on about how form has to be continuous. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist - a painter, a decorative painter. — Gyorgy Ligeti

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided. — Gyorgy 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. I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape. — Gyorgy Ligeti

But I do not want to use Hungarian verses for British people. — Gyorgy Ligeti

New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I don't read such boring things. Life is too short. — Gyorgy Ligeti

Steinberg is great. I should like to meet him. — Gyorgy Ligeti

First of all I listen to music. I like music. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I like to stay home and listen to recordings. — Gyorgy Ligeti

Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully. — Gyorgy Ligeti

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee. — Gyorgy Ligeti

People often thought Leopold Auer was Russian because he lived in St. Petersburg so long, almost fifty years. — Gyorgy Ligeti

If you come from Paris to Budapest you think you are in Moscow. — Gyorgy Ligeti

Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music. — Gyorgy Ligeti

There is a wonderful Hungarian literature, especially in lyric poetry. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I think a composer is always interested in his last work. — Gyorgy Ligeti

It isn't false modesty when I say this, but although I am supposed to be a famous person it doesn't mean anything to me. I just sit at home and work. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists. — Gyorgy Ligeti

Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that respect. — Gyorgy Ligeti

Pianists of extraordinary talent, such as Christina Petrowska,spend a large part of their early lives perfecting technique ... Miss Petrowska,a Canadian with a phenomenal ability to play the most difficult music cleanly, gave a demonstration of her achievements at Carnegie Recital Hall. A product of the Juilliard School who studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Ligeti in Europe, Miss Petrowska built most of her program around fiercely difficult contemporary works. She has fingers that work like chrome-plated pistons, and her high-seated position let her bring pulverizing power to bear. — Donal Henahan

Perhaps the better word is emotional yes, I am an emotional man. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I listen to all kinds of music - new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything. — Gyorgy Ligeti

But if you go from Moscow to Budapest you think you are in Paris. — Gyorgy Ligeti

In January 1944 I was called up by the Forced Labor Service, but I deserted on October 10, 1944. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I write bars, for the musicians, because they have to be together. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was beginning to come about which isolated the Jewish culture. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I don't use old music. — Gyorgy Ligeti

I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind. — Gyorgy Ligeti

After working with Ligeti I began to hear Brahms and Beethoven differently. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

For the past ten years I have had no financial problems. — Gyorgy Ligeti

Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin. — Gyorgy Ligeti

If there's one thing I feel very strongly about, it's that there shouldn't be a distinction between pianists who play Ligeti and those who play Chopin. It might seem that they involve different skill sets, but I don't think that's true: whether playing Ives or Bach or Beethoven, you must bring the same imagination, the same sensitivity, and an ability to deal with same kinds of musical problems. The method behind my madness, anyway, is to keep plugging away at this idea. — Jeremy Denk