Born: 1923-2006
Nationality: Hungarian
Education/Training: studied composition at the conservatory in Cluj, and at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest
Best Known For: being a master of color and stillness; being one of the most important avant-garde compsers of the 20th century
Notable Compositions: Clocks and Clouds, Apparitions, Lontano and his opera Le Grand Macabre; Requiem, Atmosphères and Lux Aeterna earned popularity through their use in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey; his music is also heard in films The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut and Shutter Island
Assignments: teaching faculty at Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest after 1949; while in Cologne worked in the Cologne Electronic Music Studio with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gottfried Michael Koenig and was inspired by the sounds he heard there; in 1973 became professor of composition at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater
Curious Facts: in 1944, sent to a forced labor brigade while his brother was sent to Mauthausen concentration camp and his parents to Auschwitz; emigrated to Vienna after the Hungarian revolution and became an Austrian citizen in 1968
Quotes: "In my music one finds neither that which one might call 'scientific' nor the 'mathematical.' But rather a unification of construction with poetic, emotional imagination." -György Ligeti
