Famous People • Music

Fryderyk Chopin

(1810 - 1849) is one of the greatest Polish composers considered also as one of the most significant and individual composers of the Romantic age.
As a child he started to write his own music, he also performed in elegant salons. Later he studied at the Warsaw University and was giving recitals in Austria, Germany and France. In 1832 he settled in Paris and established himself as a piano teacher.
Chopin created or developed a number of new forms of piano music. He has composed: waltzes, nocturnes, preludes, mazurkas, and polonaises (the last-named two groups reflect his fervent Polish nationalism). The most important features of his music are originality and novelty.

Stanislaw Moniuszko

(1819-1872) was the composer, the conductor and the teacher. He is generally referred to as the father of Polish national opera. He studied in Berlin, then he return to Poland. Later he became organist at St John's, Vilnius and conducted the theatre orchestra. His output includes many songs and operas. The songs are simple, usually strophic, displaying a rich melodic inventiveness and folkdance rhythms. His musical style is often filled with patriotic Polish themes. The plots representing the Polish world of nobility (The Haunted Manor, 1861-4; The Countess, 1859) and often introducing common people as victims (Halka); in a country deprived of statehood they fostered patriotic feeling. Moniuszko died of a sudden heart attack and was buried at the Powazki Cemetery in Warsaw.

Karol Szymanowski

(1882 in Tymoszówka (present-day Ukraine) – 1937) was a Polish composer and pianist. He was raised in a strong musical, conservative family. Before going to school of music he was taught privately by his father. From 1901 he attended the State Conservatory in Warsaw, of which he was later director from 1926. He traveled widely throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the USA. He was spreading his name as a composer and absorbing the newest trends in European art. These travels, especially those to the Mediterranean area, provided him with much inspiration. His passion was not only the musical works but poetry as well. Szymanowski drew much influence from the music of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Chopin and from Polish folk music He was specifically influenced by folk music from the Polish Highlands, which he discovered in Zakopane, in the southern Tatra highlands.
He composed symphonies, the ballets, piano music, many mazurkas, orchestral songs.
Szymanowski received many high distinctions and was appointed to numerous international societies. In 1930 he was appointed rector of the Warsaw Academy of Music and made an honorary doctor of Cracow's Jagiellonian University. He was elected to the highly select group of honorary members of the ISCM. The Stabat Mater brought him widespread renown, and in 1932 the opera King Roger was presented in Prague. In April 1936 he experienced his greatest popular success when his ballet Harnasie, which had received its premiere in Prague in the previous year, was presented at the Paris Opera and was highly praised by critics and public alike. Continuing health troubles forced him to enter a sanatorium. He died from pulmonary tuberculosis in Lugano.
Szymanowski's unique brand of expressive, lyric modernism has found many admirers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Krzysztof Penderecki

(1933) is a Polish composer and conductor of classical music. As a child he took private composition lessons with Franciszek Skolyszewski, then he studied in Krakow at the University and the Academy of Music. Penderecki's early works show the influence of Anton Webern and Pierre Boulez (he has also been influenced by Igor Stravinsky). His music involved dense note clusters and unorthodox sounds. He developed his own musical notation to convey the desired effects. Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima written for 52 string instruments gave him the popularity. Penderecki makes use of extended instrumental techniques (for example, playing on the wrong side of the bridge, bowing on the tailpiece).
He is among the most honored composers ever. He holds honorary memberships in many of the world's most prestigious conservatories, awards from numerous competitions, several honorary doctorates, and has been recognized with national orders from such nations as Germany, Austria, and his native Poland. Penderecki has amassed a sizeable catalog of orchestral works, chamber music, concertos, and choral works.

LeoTravel.pl - Find your own path...