Krzysztof Penderecki
Polish composer and conductor (1933–2020)
Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (Polish: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf pɛndɛˈrɛt͡skʲi] ; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best-known works include Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Symphony No. 3, his St Luke Passion, Polish Requiem, Anaklasis and Utrenja. His oeuvre includes five operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works.
After graduating from the Academy of Music in Krakow, he became a teacher there and began his career as a composer in 1959 during the Warsaw Autumn festival. His Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra and the choral work St. Luke Passion have received popular acclaim. His first opera, The Devils of Loudun, was never successful despite repeated revisions. In the mid-1970s, Penderecki became a professor at the Yale School of Music. From the mid-1970s his composition style changed, with his first violin concerto focusing on the semitone and the tritone.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q153469. VIAF identifies the subject as 102369734. The Library of Congress control number is n79140945. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 2020 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Krzysztof Penderecki” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.