Even in death, he's an influential force . . . believe me. Not only did he change the history of film with his 1968 science fiction classic and propel the opening of Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra to the eternal kingdom of "cool", he also cemented the career of a contemporary Hungarian composer by the name of Gyorgy Sandor Ligeti, whose compositional legacy is soon to be commemorated in Dublin in a 'Remembering Ligeti' festival.

That Ligeti's name is synonymous with Space Odyssey 2001 is, as I've hinted at, a complete accident, since Kubrick, and rather controversially so by anyone's standards, used three works for the score without Ligeti's permission. The effect of the enigmatic monoliths and moon buses was enormously heightened by the music of the recently-emerged Hungarian composer, who, luckily for Kubrick, rather than take offence at the slight, actually went on to admit that the exposure was an invaluable boon to him. Kubrick employed Ligeti's music again in The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut.

Ligeti was born in Dicsoszentmarton, a Hungarian town in the Transylvanian region of Romania (now Tarnaveni).

The family moved to Cluj six years after Gyorgy's birth, where he began his musical instruction, but, as a Jewish family, tragedy struck in 1943. Each member was sent to a Nazi labour camp, his parents to Auschwitz. Only he and his mother survived. In later life, Ligeti penned his famous Requiem for voices and orchestra, a stirring and evocative reflection on the horrors of his Holocaust experience.

In 1956, after the Hungarian revolution, Ligeti fled Budapest to Vienna and took Austrian citizenship. No longer could the Iron Curtain censor his work. No longer was the revolutionary composer cut off from the other revolutions and the technical and electronic revelations taking place in Western Europe. He absorbed the kaleidoscope of musical and academic influences now available to him; electronic music, Reich and Riley minimalism, African music, eschatology, the literature of Lewis Carroll and mathematics.

The 'Remembering Ligeti' festival (9-11 November), at the hands of its artistic director, Benjamin Dwyer, is set to illustrate the map of the composer's life and work, combining the showing of the three Kubrick films with three lecture conferences on the composer and four recitals of his music. Of particular excitement will be the performances by the Arditti string quartet, long established contemporary music specialists, and the UK pianist Ian Pace, another celebrated pioneer of contemporary performance, who will perform the complete Etudes.

The newly refurbished Liberty Hall theatre, in the Siptu building on Eden Quay, will host the jampacked first two days of the festival and the all-important launch, (9 November, 1pm) the highlight of which will be the Irish premiere of Ligeti's classic, Poeme Symphonique, a work for 100 metronomes. A 3.15pm lecture and recital in the National Concert Hall will bring the final curtain down on the weekend's tireless endeavours.

It is only 18 months since Ligeti passed away, a sad loss that escaped the consciousness of most of the world.

If this festival serves to compensate for that negligence and pay homage to a truly great composer, it will have served a deserving purpose.