In addition to his popular compositions such as orchestral works and chamber music, György Ligeti also wrote vocal music, among them numerous and demanding a cappella choral works. These, just like his canonically treated instrumental works, reflect his changes of style. With the exception of the Latin Lux aeterna (1966) and Three Fantasies after Friedrich Hölderlin (1982) Ligeti exclusively set Hungarian poetry to music, showing a marked preference for texts by Bálint Balassa (1554–1594) and Sándor Weöres (1913–1989). Ligeti wanted to set the respective contents to music programmatically but focussed especially on particular phonetic sound sequences, rhythms, intonations and accentuations of the Hungarian language. Translations of this speech music are nigh on impossible and even dispensable as you do not have to understand the words in order to experience the choral works as music that is rich in tone colours, rhythmically concise and extremely expressive.

The SWR Vokalensemble is one of the top international ensembles on the professional choir scene. Ever since the ensemble was founded almost 75 years ago it has devoted its passion and extraordinary vocal competence to exemplary performances and the further development of vocal music. Award-winning Yuval Weinberg has been the chief conductor of the SWR Vokalensemble since the beginning of the season 2020/2021.