György Sándor [György] Ligeti (28/05/1923 - 12/06/2006), a Hungarian composer, born in Tîrnaveni. He was born in Dicsoszentmárton (today Tîrnaveni) as son of Hungarian-Jewish parents. He studied at the Klausenburg conservatory with Ferenc Farkas from 1941 to 1943, later (1945-49) at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest with Ferenc Farkas, Sándor Veress, Pál Járdányi and Lajos Bárdos. Very soon he developed the micropolyphony which later was to become one of the most significant features of his music. In his early pieces such as the a-cappella choral work Éjszaka - Reggel and his first successful work in the West, Apparitions, this style is already extremely distinctive.
In December 1956, after the Hungarian revolution, he left his home country for artistic and political reasons. During his work as a free-lancer at the West German Radio electronic studios in Cologne (1957-58) he thoroughly studied the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Mauricio Kagel and Pierre Boulez which found its musical expression in his work Artikulation (1958). Artikulation as well as the work Atmosphčres for large orchestra (created in 1961) brought György Ligeti immediate recognition in the western musical scene. Long international teaching activities finally led him to the Hamburg Musikhochschule as a professor of composition (1973 to 1989).