György Ligeti

György Sándor Ligeti (May 28, 1923 – June 12, 2006) was a Romania born 20th century composer. Born to a Hungarian-speaking Jewish family, he briefly lived in Hungary before later becoming an Austria citizen. Many of his works are well known in classical music circles, but to the general public, he is best known for the various pieces featured in the Stanley Kubrick films 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut. Ligeti was born in Dicsőszentmárton (Romanian Diciosânmartin, now Târnăveni), in the Transylvania region of Romania. Dicsőszentmárton was then a mainly Hungarian town with a large Jewish population. Ligeti recalls that his first exposure to languages other than Hungarian came one day while listening to a conversation among the Romanian-speaking town police. Before that he hadn't known that other languages existed. He moved to Cluj with his family when he was 6 and he was not to return to the town of his birth until the 1990s. Ligeti received his initial musical... full article at wikipedia