Gyorgy Ligeti Quotes

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like to stay home and listen to recordings.

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

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

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

I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.

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

I don't use old music.

If you come from Paris to Budapest you think you are in Moscow.

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

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

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.

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