Renowned Hungarian composers of contemporary classical music
György Kurtág (1926, Lugos or Lugoj, current Romania –)
Kurtág originally studied piano and chamber music. As such, it might not come as a surprise that he became known for his heavily compressed music, while later in life, he also wrote several pieces where the spatial distribution of instruments plays an important role. His music is so focused that it is sometimes reduced almost to fragments, and his movements occasionally last only a couple of minutes. However, his music is still expressive and moving. With a style that draws on Bartók, Webern, and to some extent, Stravinsky, Kurtág is one of the defining post-war composers of the European avant-garde.
Kurtág often held master classes of chamber music, and appeared in concerts together with his wife, Márta Kurtág (née Kinsker), also a classical pianist and an academic piano teacher. He received several awards in Hungary and at the international level throughout his life. Between February 15 and 28, 2026, his 100th birthday is celebrated through a series of exhibitions and concerts at renowned institutions. A new documentary about his life entitled Kurtág Fragments is set to be released on his birthday, February 19.
György Ligeti (1923, Dicsőszentmárton or Diciosânmartin, current Romania – 2006, Vienna, Austria)
Ligeti is best known for micropolyphony – a term he himself coined, denoting many lines of dense canons moving at different tempos or rhythms, resulting in tone clusters. He applied the technique both to human voices and a variety of musical instruments. Think of the sound of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and you will surely have an idea of what to expect from him. Ligeti loved to experiment with various forms, including electronic music, and he was always fascinated by machines that do not work properly and by the world of technology and automation. The use of periodic mechanical noises, suggesting not-quite-reliable machinery, occurs in many of his works.
Ligeti is one of the most important avant-garde composers of the latter half of the 20th century, similar to Kurtág (who he was close friends with). His work is featured in several other cultic films, such as The Shining (1980) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) by Stanley Kubrick, Heat (1995, Michaell Mann) or Shutter Island (2010, Martin Scorsese). He received many awards in Hungary and in Austria as well as at the international level throughout his life.
Listen to Réquiem, one of his most influential pieces (that also includes Kyrie, the piece from A Space Odyssey) now.
Béla Bartók (1881, Nagyszentmiklós or Sânnicolau Mare, current Romania – 1945, New York, U.S.A.)
Bartók is regarded as one of the most important composers of Hungary alongside Franz Liszt. He was a composer, a pianist, and an ethnomusicologist. He traveled the countryside alongside Zoltán Kodály collecting and researching folk music, and he also incorporated folk music into his work, empowering subsequent generations of composers to do the same. In this sense, nationalism was a source of musical inspiration for Bartók, while he also dared break down traditional diatonic harmonies that informed composers for that previous two centuries. These two trends not only influenced his work, but also dramatically changed the sound of music in the 20th century.
His most well-known works include the opera Bluebeard’s Castle, the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, as well as Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, technically a symphony. His works are still being performed on the regular both in Hungary and abroad, and are often featured in international cinema.
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