Ricercare per organo – Omaggio a Girolamo Frescobaldi (1951/53)

György Ligeti is undoubtedly one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, creating in his works a distinctive musical world full of strange beauty, acoustic illusions, reflections and refractions, partly playful, partly macabre humour, but also full of frightening visions. Although his extensive oeuvre contains only four original organ pieces, these (especially the graphically notated „Volumina“ from 1962) revolutionised 20th-century organ music.

Born in 1923 as the son of assimilated Jews in Diciosânmartin (now Târnăveni) in Romania, Ligeti initially studied music theory and organ at the conservatory in Cluj in the early 1940s. However, he later moved to Budapest and, due to interruptions caused by the war, was only able to complete his studies in 1949. The composer, whose father and brother were murdered by the Nazis in concentration camps while his mother narrowly escaped death in Auschwitz, observed the increasing totalitarianism of the communist regime in his Hungarian homeland with extreme concern; after the violent suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, he fled to Vienna. A year later, he moved to Cologne, where he sought contact with important protagonists of New Music such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, studied serial composition techniques and worked at the Studio for Electronic Music of West German Radio.

The experiences he gained there also influenced his instrumental music, for example in his groundbreaking orchestral piece "Atmosphères" (1960), in which meticulous structural organisation (micropolyphony) leads to iridescent, and slowly changing "Klangflächen" (sound surfaces). Later, despite his fascination with serialism, he also recognised the danger of its dogmatisation and integrated compositional techniques from other styles and cultures into his music, such as minimal music, Harry Partch's microtonality and Eastern European and African folk music traditions.

Ligeti died in Vienna in 2006.