It really is astonishing that Ligeti's Requiem can be utilized so many times and have such a hold on pop culture, and yet you still hear something new every time you listen to it. There’s a 50 year graveyard of pieces that try to emulate Ligeti’s micropolyphonic music, but can you imagine being the first person to write like that? There was zero precedent for music like that before Ligeti. He expressed emotions that had never been expressed before in art. It’s also astonishing that after centuries of Catholic tradition, a Transylvanian Jew came along and beat every previous composer at their own game. Ligeti wrote the greatest requiem of all time despite viewing the religious tradition behind the form as, at best, a fascination. If anything, that distance is key: Ligeti understood Catholicism as a vehicle for complex horrors, which is the perfect foundation for a work informed by his experience during the Holocaust. I don’t think a true believer could have done that as effectively.