“I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.” — György Ligeti

“I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.” — György Ligeti

György Ligeti – whose birthday it is today – was a classical composer, born in Romania, who lived in Hungary as a young adult, before fleeing Stalinist oppression to Austria. As he said in an interview much later, he lived under both the Nazis and the Communists (“so many years of Hitler and Stalin”). Growing up, as he did, limited his ability to travel, isolated him musically as well, cut off from the outside world, dominated by the restriction…