The Hungarian composer and conductor Peter Eötvös has died in Budapest at the age of 80 after a prolonged illness, his family announced on Sunday according to Hungarian media. Eötvös was internationally acclaimed for his contemporary music works inspired by the likes of Zoltan Kodaly, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez. His preoccupation with space from an early age is said to have informed his works, and his Opus No. 1, the piano piece “Cosmos”, was meant to evoke the first journey into space made by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961. This was later followed by 10 operas and orchestr…