Krzysztof Penderecki Quotes

Krzysztof Penderecki

Profession : Composer

Birth : November 23, 1933

In my own works I am an obsessionist. Though I write humorous music too, much of it has been obsessed by death and the tragic.

Krzysztof Penderecki

Listen to the triple fugue in 'Magnificat' - the first subject is seven voices, the second one has 52 different voices, the third uses five; then I combine all together. Such textures you cannot call primitive.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I started music late.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I'm really just a frustrated violinist.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I studied violin since I was a boy, and my dream was to be a violinist and to play.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I always felt independent of musical fashion.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I began as a violinist, not a composer. Thus my contact with orchestral musicians, with the source of music, is very important.

Krzysztof Penderecki

There is something about performing my own music, and other people's music, that gives me pleasure. I think I learn more by doing that than I ever did studying music.

Krzysztof Penderecki

If I were reborn, if I were a teen-ager now, starting my career as a composer, I would do again what I have done.

Krzysztof Penderecki

Poland is different from the other so-called socialist countries. We have a different background. Poland belongs to the West, not the East. We belong to the Mediterranean, Latin culture, not to the Byzantine, which is very different and which you find in Bulgaria and even parts of Czechoslovakia and, of course, Romania.

Krzysztof Penderecki

That is our dilemma in Poland. We don't like to be ruled by the East.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I started to write religious music at a time when it was absolutely impossible. The first religious work I wrote was the 'Psalms of David,' when I was still a student in 1957... At that time, religious music was really forbidden.

Krzysztof Penderecki

There was this kind of dictatorship of the Darmstadt school, composers like Boulez and Stockhausen, who were very strict and orthodox. They would not allow other composers to write the music they wanted to write, and only a certain kind of music could be played.

Krzysztof Penderecki

Big forms fascinate me.

Krzysztof Penderecki

The 1960s were a time of cultural revolution in Poland. And I was a part of that revolution. For me, those years - the late 1950s and early 1960s - were the most fruitful.

Krzysztof Penderecki

My music is rather abstract and maybe even strange-sounding for some people, so maybe that's why it's been used in so many horror movies and thrillers.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I must never change my way - because of critics who may not like it - I preserve my language and my style.

Krzysztof Penderecki

Every day I write. I am not waiting for a great idea from heaven.

Krzysztof Penderecki

In summer, I like to sit and compose on the porch, where I can see people come and go.

Krzysztof Penderecki

I don't like to be alone. I like to have my family around me. They disturb me, of course, but that's OK.

Krzysztof Penderecki