Top 30 György Ligeti Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “First of all I listen to music. I like music.”

— György Ligeti

2. “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.”

— György Ligeti

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3. “I like to stay home and listen to recordings.”

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

6. “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.”

— György Ligeti

7. “I listen to all kinds of music – new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything.”

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

9. “In my piano concerto I developed this polyphony to much higher complexity.”

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

11. “Perhaps the better word is emotional yes, I am an emotional man.”

— György Ligeti

12. “I don’t read such boring things. Life is too short.”

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

17. “There was a very famous musician in our family. He was a great violinist, an internationally known teacher. He was Leopold Auer.”

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

22. “When I was younger I was completely without money – when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee.”

— György Ligeti

23. “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.”

— György Ligeti

24. “I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.”

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

26. “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.”

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

28. “I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.”

— György Ligeti

29. “I don’t use old music.”

— György Ligeti

30. “People often thought Leopold Auer was Russian because he lived in St. Petersburg so long, almost fifty years.”

— György Ligeti

31. “My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist – a painter, a decorative painter.”

— György Ligeti

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

— György Ligeti

33. “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.”

— György Ligeti