Celebrity Biographies
Wojciech Kilar
The Polish Wojcieh Kilar, composer of soundtracks for films such as “The Pianist” or “Dracula, by Bram Stoker”, has died this Sunday, December 29, in Katowice, in the south of his country, as a result of a long illness. This has been announced by Jerzy Kornowicz, president of the Association of Polish Composers. “The strength and messages of his music, as well as his noble character as a person, will remain in our memories,” Kornowicz said.
Wojciech Kilar was born on July 17, 1932 in Lviv, which until the start of World War II belonged to Poland. He began his musical training at the Krakow Academy, and later perfected his studies in Paris, where he studied composition with the renowned Nadia Boulanger.
At the beginning of his career, in the 1960s, Kilar joined the avant-garde artistic movements, along with other of his compatriots, such as Krzysztof Penderecki and Henryk Górecki. After receiving rave reviews, he debuted as a film musician with Bohdan Poreba’s Lunatycy .
From that moment he lavished himself on works for the big screen, with an average of three or four compositions a year. His scores for feature films by the most prominent filmmakers in Poland stand out, such as The Glass Structure , Illumination , Marriage Balance , The Murderer’s Mistress , The Year of the Tranquil Sun , Paradigm , The Silent Touch , Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II Biography From a Far Country , by Krysztof Zanussi , The Land of Great Promise , The Shadow Line andChronicle of Love Events , by Andrzej Wajda , and the short documentary The Night Watchman’s Point of View , by Krzysztof Kieslowski .
In 1992, Kilar burst onto the international scene after working on the ‘score’ of Bram Stoker ‘s Dracula , directed by Francis Ford Coppola , considered a true masterpiece. From that moment, he began to receive contracts for international productions, such as Death and the Maiden , The Ninth Door , and The Pianist (one of his best works) by his compatriot Roman Polanski and Portrait of a Lady , by Jane Campion . . In addition, he continued working in his country, in titles such as Pan Tadeusz, again for Wajda. On one occasion he revealed the criteria he used to accept a project, in strict order: the name of the director, the salary and the script.
He never gave up writing classical works not intended for the cinema, for example numerous pieces of sacred music for choir, such as “Èxode”, an epic piece that was used internationally in the trailer for Schindler’s List . In 2003 he completed the creation of the “September Symphony”, in memory of the victims of the tragic 9/11 attacks. In May 2012, Kilar had received the Order of the White Eagle, the highest distinction awarded by the Polish government. His wife, Barbara Pomianowska, had died in 2007.