Welcome to Krzysztof Penderecki Tribute Page
Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (Polish: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf pɛndɛˈrɛt͡skʲi]; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. Among his best known works are Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Symphony No. 3, his St. Luke Passion, Polish Requiem, Anaklasis and Utrenja. Penderecki composed:
Penderecki studied music at Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Music in Kraków. After graduating from the Academy, he became a teacher there and began his career as a composer in 1959 during the Warsaw Autumn festival. His Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra and the choral work St. Luke Passion have received popular acclaim. His first opera, The Devils of Loudun, was not immediately successful. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Penderecki's composing style changed, with his first violin concerto focusing on the semitone and the tritone. His choral work Polish Requiem was written in the 1980s and expanded in 1993 and 2005.
Penderecki won many prestigious awards, including the Prix Italia in 1967 and 1968; four Grammy Awards in 1987, 1998 (twice), and 2017; the Wolf Prize in Arts in 1987; and the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1992. In 2012, Sean Michaels of The Guardian called him "arguably Poland's greatest living composer".
Some of Penderecki's music has been adapted for film soundtracks.
features his String Quartet and Kanon For Orchestra and Tape; fragments of the Cello Concerto and The Devils of Loudun. Writing about The Exorcist, the film critic for The New Republic wrote that "even the music is faultless, most of it by Krzysztof Penderecki, who at last is where he belongs."
features six pieces of Penderecki's music: Utrenja II: Ewangelia, Utrenja II: Kanon Paschy, The Awakening of Jacob, De Natura Sonoris No. 1, De Natura Sonoris No. 2 and Polymorphia.
Rhe piece Polymorphia was once again used here for an intense plane crash scene, seen from the point of view of the passenger played by Jeff Bridges.
Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima was also used during one of the final sequences in the film. Penderecki composed music for Andrzej Wajda's 2007 Academy Award nominated film Katyń, while Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010) featured his Symphony No. 3 and Fluorescences.
Some of Penderecki's oeuvre inspired Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead to release an album, which thereafter appeared in his score for There Will Be Blood, a 2007 Paul Thomas Anderson film.
Penderecki had three children, first a daughter Beata with pianist Barbara Penderecka (née Graca; married 1954, then divorced). He then had a son Łukasz (b. 1966) and daughter Dominika (b. 1971) with his second wife, Elżbieta Penderecka (née Solecka), whom he married on 19 December 1965. He lived in the Kraków suburb of Wola Justowska.
You can easily get more information about Krzysztof Penderecki on the Internet. The first source you can use is of course Wikipedia. Feel free to read a little bit more about him and maybe to enjoy his contemporary music?