Ligeti was born in Romania in 1923 to Hungarian parents. The heroes of his youth were Bartk and Kodály, and few young Hungarian musicians failed to fall under their mighty sway. Ligeti's Budapest education was intense and powerful. The influence of Bartk's folk music research and his withering rhythmic signature, and of Kodály's vibrant vocal work remained with the composer to the end.

In 1943, Ligeti, who was Jewish, was sent to a German forced labor camp. All of his immediate family, except his mother, were murdered by the Germans. Like all Eastern European artists, Ligeti then faced the cruel irony of witnessing one tyranny replaced by another. When he was still living in Hungary under communist rule, the traditions of his youth were his refuge. The bulk of his luminous folk material was written at this time, from 1946 to 1956, when music, as well as all other forms of expression, were severely proscribed. In this perverse world, the music of Debussy and Stravinsky were considered reactionary and strictly forbidden. Even the music of Bartk, the national hero, was largely unheard.

In 1956, after the vicious suppression of Hungary's rebellion by Russian tanks, Ligeti and his wife walked through the Iron Curtain to begin a new life in the West. For Ligeti, the totally new world of atonality and serialism was a revelation, and he delved into these forms like a child let loose in a candy store. His music immediately took on the strident profile of the Darmstadt, Germany school, as he produced spiky, dynamic material that rivaled the leader of that scene, Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Ligeti, unlike so many of his colleagues in his new world, never became a dogmatist. He developed a singular voice that was, perhaps antidotally to his dark life experiences, often buoyant, playful and filled with wonder. So much of his late music, much of it for large ensembles, wore a delightful smile. He is best known to general audiences for the music that Stanley Kubrick used for several movies, most famously, 2001: A Space Odyssey. But there is a huge, remarkably varied world beyond that; explore it.