Krzysztof Penderecki Quotes

Krzysztof Penderecki

Profession : Composer

Birth : November 23, 1933

Listening to classical music is like reading philosophy books. Not everybody has to do it.

Krzysztof Penderecki

When Kubrick called me about 'The Shining,' it was very strange. He first asked me to write music for his film, but I instead gave him suggestions about some of my pieces. I told him about 'The Awakening of Jacob,' which he did use in 'The Shining.'

Krzysztof Penderecki

You can only learn orchestration if you have the possibility of using an orchestra.

Krzysztof Penderecki

If I would be born in New Zealand, maybe, I would never write the Polish Requiem or pieces which were connected with the history of war. But this was my childhood. War was the main subject, and also in our family.

Krzysztof Penderecki

Chopin is a great composer who influenced many, many important composers. He was a great innovator, especially in harmony.

Krzysztof Penderecki

With Orff it is text, text, text - the music always subordinate. Not so with me. In 'Magnificat,' the text is important, but in some places I'm writing just music and not caring about text. Sometimes I'm using extremely complicated polyphony where the text is completely buried. So no, I am not another Orff, and I'm not primitive.

Krzysztof Penderecki

Our house was in the middle of town; behind it was the ghetto, from which Jews were sent to concentration camps.

Krzysztof Penderecki

For years, my favorite composers had been Monteverdi and Bach. Then I began to rediscover the 19th century, see it from another perspective.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I was growing up in a communist time, especially, and the other music, the western music, was banned, so on radio half of the music was Chopin. So my colleagues and I were a little bit allergic to this music because it was everywhere - everywhere!

Krzysztof Penderecki

Traveling, talking to people, and rehearsing, I'm always finding new ideas. If I stay in one place, maybe I won't have so many ideas.

Krzysztof Penderecki

There is some limit to finding, always, new things. It's rather impossible.

Krzysztof Penderecki

After so many years, I don't really think writing has to be absolutely new. No. It has to be good work.

Krzysztof Penderecki

So many new things have been discovered in the 20th century that now, at the end of the century, we need some kind of synthesis, some musical language which will allow us just to write music.

Krzysztof Penderecki

It's no longer possible to find something which will shock other people, because everything has already been done.

Krzysztof Penderecki

When writing music for the 'Kaddish,' I evoked the prayers that were sung in Eastern Galicia, Ukraine and Romania. I was advised by my late friend, Boris Carmeli... He would sing me various melodies that were sung by his grandfather, thus they had to be at least as old as the mid-19th century.

Krzysztof Penderecki

Works of art inspire me to compose.

Krzysztof Penderecki

One should live with history round one.

Krzysztof Penderecki

For me, music is pure abstraction.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I don't write political music. Political music is immediately obsolete.

Krzysztof Penderecki

My grandfather taught me trees and the Latin names of trees when I was five or six. His father was a forester, so he knew them all.

Krzysztof Penderecki