Possibly old news by now... Gyorgy Ligeti dies Associated Press June 12, 2006 VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who fled Hungary after the 1956 revolution and gained fame for his opera "Le Grand Macabre" and his work on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," died today in Austria, his publisher in Germany announced. He was 83. Ligeti, celebrated as one of the world's leading 20th-century musical pioneers, died in Vienna after a long illness, said Christian Krauscheid, a spokesman for Schott Music. Born in 1923 to Hungarian parents in the predominantly ethnic Hungarian part of Romania's Transylvania region, Ligeti's father and brother later were murdered by the Nazis. He took Austrian citizenship after fleeing his ex-communist homeland and became known for "Macabre," which he wrote in 1978. He began studying music under Ferenc Farkas at the conservatory in Cluj, Romania, in 1941, and continued his studies in Budapest. But in 1943, he was arrested as a Jew and sentenced to forced labor for the rest of World War II. Copyright (c) 2006 The Associated Press Karl