My friend sent me this:
Hungarian composer György Ligeti died Monday. He was 83. Ligeti passed away in Vienna, Austria, after battling a long illness and spending the last three weeks confined to a wheelchair. Best known for his work on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's cult classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ligeti was regarded as one of the world's leading 20th-century musical pioneers.
He won early critical acclaim for his 1958 electronic composition Artikulation and the orchestral Apparitions, gaining notoriety for a technique he called "micropolyphony." Ligeti spoke six languages, including his native Hungarian, German, French, and English. His former assistant and editor Stephen Ferguson, says, "He was one of the few avant-garde composers who found his way into the modern program. He reintroduced techniques of polyphony out of the tradition of Bach and Palestrina with a playful and innovative sense of sound. He developed a new sound - cluster sound - which fascinated Kubrick and propelled Ligeti to the top of the great composers of the second half of the 20th century."
