In December 1956, two months after the Hungarian revolution was violently suppressed by the Soviet Army, Ligeti fled to Vienna with his ex-wife Vera Spitz. (They remarried in 1957 and had a son together.) He would not see Hungary again for fourteen years, when he was invited there to judge a competition in Budapest. On his rushed escape to Vienna, he left most of his Hungarian compositions in Budapest, some of which are now lost. He took only what he considered to be his most important pieces. He later said, "I considered my old music of no interest. I believed in twelve-tone music!" He eventually took Austrian citizenship in 1968.