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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I was looking up his name to make sure I was pronouncing it right and I saw he'd died a few days ago.
I guess the death of a European composer wasn't item #1 on the Canadian news, what with Covid19 and everything.
It seems a little silly, somehow, to feel sad about the death of someone you don't know. But - I don't know. The last time I looked him up, he was alive.
Anyway: Krzysztof Penderecki (pronounced something like Kshishtof Penderetski), Polish composer, 23 November 1933 - 29 March 2020.
It seems he composed a lot of his scarier music by accident: he composed things, other people thought they were scary, and he just went with it.
Oversimplification? Yes.
But he did come up with the idea of titling his famous 1960s piece Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima after he wrote it. He wasn't going into it thinking, "OK, atomic bomb, mind-chilling terror, describe here." If I didn't know the title...well, I can't un-know it, but I thiiink it'd still sound eerie. It's the one that has a moment when all the string instruments sound like they're screaming.
And then his music got used to create fear or suspense in movies, from the more mainstream (The Shining) to the more avant-garde (Inland Empire).
The article I read about him today (I'll link it below) said he had a pretty calm and prosperous life. He lived through World War 2 as a kid, which sounds pretty un-calm (his part of the country was under Nazi occupation) but the oppressive government that followed didn't oppress him much personally. Still, he was willing to call them out, at least in music: "The Polish Requiem, for example, began with a single piece, the Lacrimosa, written for the unveiling of a statue at the Gdansk shipyard to honor those killed in the anti-government riots in 1970."
Oh, and he was also bad with deadlines. Relatable.
https://mirrorspectator.com/2020/04/02/krzysztof-penderecki-polish-composer-with-cinematic-flair-dies-at-86/
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