Gyorgy Ligeti

I like to stay home and listen to recordings.

— 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…

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that…

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did…

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began…

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— 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

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

I don't use old music.

— Gyorgy Ligeti

I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was…

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti

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

— Gyorgy Ligeti