Gyorgy Ligeti Quotes

• 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, Escaping

  "Ligeti" by Alex Ross, www.therestisnoise.com. June 12, 2000.

  66 Copy quote

• Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Mother, Used, Stravinsky

  49 Copy quote

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Travel, War, Years

  45 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• First of all I listen to music. I like music.

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Firsts, Listening To Music

  8 Copy quote

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Music, Want, Fractals

  87 Copy quote

• I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Giving, Want

  9 Copy quote

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Writing, Knows, Decided

  7 Copy quote

• I write bars, for the musicians, because they have to be together.

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Writing, Together, Musician

  9 Copy quote

• I don't read such boring things. Life is too short.

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Life, Boring, Too Short

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• 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, Years, Play

  53 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Thinking, Paris, Moscow

  92 Copy quote

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Men, Emotional

  7 Copy quote

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Thinking, Lasts, Composer

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Kind, Colleagues, New Music

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• 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

  64 Copy quote

• 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

  86 Copy quote

• I don't use old music.

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Use, Old Music

  4 Copy quote

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Book, Wonderland, London

  4 Copy quote

• But I do not want to use Hungarian verses for British people.

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  People, Use, Want

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Piano, Complexity, Polyphony

  8 Copy quote

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

  Gyorgy Ligeti

  Dream, New York, Rocks

  4 Copy quote

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