Gyorgy Ligeti famous quotes

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

#Mother #Used #Stravinsky

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

#Wall #Past #Avant Garde

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

#War #Years #Impossible

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

#Literature #Wonderful

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

#Thinking #Law #Nineteen

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

#Budapest #Study #Refugee

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

#Son #Wife #Vienna

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

#Math #Years #Mind

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

#Kind #All Kinds #Colleagues

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.
-- Gyorgy Ligeti

#Writing

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

#Giving #Want

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

#Thinking #Lasts #Composer

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

#Writing #Together #Musician

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

#Simple #Piano #Years

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

#Artist #Grandfather #Musician

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

#Years #Long #People

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

#Piano #Lessons #Composing

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

#Life #Boring #Too Short

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

#Home #Mean #Modesty

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

#Past #Years #Financial

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

#People #Use #Want

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

#Thinking #Paris #Moscow

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

#Communist #Nazi

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

#Men #Emotional

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

#Dream #New York #Rocks

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

#Book #Wonderland #London

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

#Piano #Complexity #Polyphony

There was a very famous musician in our family. He was a great violinist, an internationally known teacher. He was Leopold Auer.
-- Gyorgy Ligeti

#Teacher #Musician #Very Famous

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

#Music #Want #Fractals

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

#Home

I don't use old music.
-- Gyorgy Ligeti

#Use

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

#Firsts #Listening To Music

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

#October #January #Labor