Celebrity Biographies
Krzysztof Penderecki
He contributed avant-garde pieces to titles like “The Exorcist” and “The Shining.” Polish composer and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki died on March 29, 2020, at the age of 86, in Krakow, according to the Krakow Ludwig Van Beethoven Association founded by his wife Elzbieta. “After a long and serious illness, one of the greatest Polish composers, a world authority in the field of classical music, has passed away,” the statement from the Polish Ministry of Culture explained.
Born in Debica, southeastern Poland, on November 23, 1933, Krzysztof Penderecki graduated in 1958 from the Krakow Academy of Music. Over the years he has established himself as one of the most innovative composers of recent decades, with works such as “Strophen”, “Emanationen”, “Treno a las victims de Hiroshima” and “La pasión según San Lucas”. He went on to invent percussion instruments, such as the tubaphone, designed for “The Seven Gates of Jerusalem.”
The world of cinema did not take long to resort to its services to deal with soundtracks. After several shorts, he made his feature film debut in 1965, with the score of The Manuscript Found in Zaragoza , directed by his compatriot De él Wojciech Has . Apart from working for various Polish titles, he contributed parts for William Friedkin ‘s The Exorcist . He did not meet Stanley Kubrick in person , who ordered a “special” composition from him over the phone for the moment when Jack Nicholson was wandering madly through the labyrinth.
“I’m a bit of a crazy songwriter who collected trees,” he stated in an interview. “I have my own forest of trees, the largest in Eastern Europe, with 1,700 species.” Apparently, his grandfather passed on his passion for botany to him as a child. Krzysztof Penderecki won four Grammy’s and received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2001.