Composer Gyorgy Ligeti, 83
Posted: Monday, June 12th, 2006 10:21 am
Composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution and gained fame for his opera “Le Grand Macabre” and his work on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” died Monday. He was 83.
Ligeti, celebrated as one of the world’s leading 20th-century musical pioneers, died in Vienna after a long illness, said Christiane Krauscheid, a spokeswoman for his publisher, Germany-based Schott Music. Details were unavailable, but Austrian media said he spent the last three years in a wheelchair.
Ligeti was born in 1923 to Hungarian parents in the predominantly ethnic Hungarian part of Romania’s Transylvania region. His father and brother later were murdered by the Nazis. He took Austrian citizenship after fleeing his ex-communist homeland and became known for “Macabre,” which he wrote in 1978. … Read full obituary
