Gyorgy Ligeti's Quotes

Steinberg is great. I should like to meet him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't use old music.

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

I like to stay home and listen to recordings.

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.