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Posted: |
Mar 29, 2020 - 4:58 AM
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By: |
hyperdanny
(Member)
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without a doubt, a giant of the XX Century, and a very intesting artistic trajectory: from one of the most extreme and innovative figures of the 50-60's avantgarde, to the conservative composer of a wealth of dense, unrelentingly serious (and totally tonal) concertos and symphonies, not to mention the sprawling and religious ( in a typically morose Polish way) choral-orchestral works.
He was also a very good conductor, not only of his own music..a few years ago I saw him conducting a quite wonderful Dvorak "from the new World".
On this forum, it is also worthy to point out Scorsese's marvellous use in Shutter Island of the Passacaglia movement from the 3rd symphony (his best IMHO) ..basically it's the movie's main theme, and some of the most implacably terrifying music I know.
This afternoon I'll drag out a few cd's and revisit some of my favorite pieces of his...maybe not he jollyest choice in a quarantine situation  , but great music.
RIP Maestro-
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Several of these films (non-English), which Penderecki provided music for, have been issued on home video.
Perhaps the one with the higher profile is Je t'aime, je t'aime - a French film directed by Alain Resnais. A non-linear stream-of-consciousness sci-fi narrative about suicide attempts, I saw it only once and don't recall the style of Penderecki's music.
The 1965 Polish opus The Saragossa Manuscript, directed by Wojciech Has, is a 3-hour period-piece puzzle-box fantasy. I think this is Penderecki's 1st feature film assignment after doing music for a few short films. Penderecki's approach here is a curious blend of musique concrete-type sounds with a main theme in an ersatz late-Classical idiom. This score didn't appeal to me because I was beforehand anticipating Penderecki music in his early '60s textural mode and what is heard instead sounds as if from the early 1800s.
His mid-'60s opera The Devils of Loudon was shot on monochrome videotape by West German television in 1969 and should not disappoint any viewer/listener interested in early Penderecki modernism.
R.I.P.
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Posted: |
Mar 29, 2020 - 10:59 AM
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By: |
John Smith.
(Member)
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Few people know that he actually wrote quite a bit of original film music too, mostly for lesser known Polish films. Alas, I've never heard any of these, as they weren't widely distributed outside their home country, but has anyone heard/seen them and would care to comment?
Thor, if the subject of your post were Wojciech Kilar, then every word you wrote would be 100 per cent accurate. Unfortunately, as far as Penderecki is concerned, some clarification is required.
1.“…he actually wrote quite a bit of original film music”
The extensive filmography on IMDB masks a stark truth about Penderecki: he through-composed the music to ONE feature-length film in his entire career – REKOPIS ZNALEZIONY W SARAGOSIE (THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT) directed by Wojciech Has (1965). While he did compose some music for Has’s next film SZYFRY (THE CODES), it was not scene specific and all the jazz elements were composed by Penderecki’s former student, Stanislaw Radwan. Incidentally, Radwan was also responsible for tracking Andrzej Wajda’s KATYN with pre-existing Penderecki compositions. Many reviews of KATYN have commented on Penderecki’s original score for the film, whereas in reality the composer wrote nothing new for Wajda. The soundtrack consists solely of excerpts from Penderecki’s Second and Third symphony, the Agnus Dei from his Polish Requiem, a section of “Chaconny", written after the death of John Paul II and an a capella piece in memory of Stefan Wyszynski). Wajda himself added to the problem by stating on numerous occasions that Penderecki “wrote the music for KATYN”, which, to quote Obi-Wan, is true from a certain point of view, but is highly misleading for the uninformed.
As for JE T’AIME, JE T’AIME (1968), it contains little original music – mainly atonal vocalizations (pre-composed and then tracked in). The main piece in the film is a reworked composition written for PASSACAGLIA NA KAPLICE ZYGMUNTOWSKA, a documentary from 1966 (not included in imdb):
http://archiwum.nina.gov.pl/film/passacaglia-na-kaplice-zygmuntowska
This aria was later included in Penderecki’s “Three Pieces in Old Style” – the other two pieces being minuets from the SARAGOSSA score.
https://ninateka.pl/audio/trzy-utwory-w-dawnym-stylu-na-orkiestre-smyczkowa-1
2.”… mostly for lesser known Polish films”
THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT is one of the most celebrated of Polish films, certainly among film buffs. Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese were intimately involved in the restoration of the film and, along with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, extensively promoted the film in the USA. Luis Bunuel was so enamored of Has’s masterpiece, he bought a freshly struck print for his private collection. THE CODES is, admittedly, a much less popular movie, but plays a key role in Has’s filmography and is preferred by some of the cognoscenti to SARAGOSSA. (It’s set in Krakow, which can only work in its favour!)
3 “…they weren't widely distributed outside their home country”
Both of the films directed by Has did the festival circuits at the time of release and were extensively reviewed in the specialized world press. Currently, THE CODES and SARAGOSSA are accessible from the catalogues of specialist film distributors and are also available on DVD. (SARAGOSSA, has seen multiple iterations on DVD and blu-ray in at least 10 different languages.)
Regarding the score for THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT, it is barely adequate. The electronic component is sub-Barron – try (in vain) to listen to it without thinking of FORBIDDEN PLANET (which preceded Penderecki’s score by a decade) or Williams’ IMAGES. Hints of Toru Takemitsu and smidgens of Cage abound. The vocalizations, though effective, begin to wear thin after a while. Anyone who has seen THE SHOUT by Jerzy Skolimowski (a Polish director much influenced by Has) may wonder whether John Hurt’s sound recordings in the film (he plays an avant-garde musician) were influenced by Penderecki. The faux baroque music which permeates the film is uninspired - pure pastiche with little of Penderecki’s unique flavoring. He does, however, make good use of Beethoven’s 9th, though I tend to prefer Kamen’s more ingenious utilization in DIE HARD. The Spanish music, on the other hand, is totally generic.
All in all, not a terribly groundbreaking score and doesn’t really lend itself to repeated listening.
The full CD album is available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wMt1CaD0Ik
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Posted: |
Mar 29, 2020 - 12:47 PM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT is one of the most celebrated of Polish films, certainly among film buffs.
You're right. I have IMDB set to show the films in their original language, so if I had seen that title in English, I would have recognized it. Never seen it, but I'm aware of it.
Otherwise, thanks for the clarifications. But the short films that IMDB lists him with, are genuine original compositions, no? I know that IMDB often has errors, but the DOZENS of titles listed under 'composer' rather than 'soundtrack' can't ALL be misleading, can they?
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This is a rough one to accept. The Penderecki cues on THE SHINING and THE EXORCIST got me not only interested in his music but modern classical music as well.
He wrote some excellent tonal works later in his life, but I still get a massive thrill listening to pieces like "The Entombment/Resurrection of Christ" and "The Awakening of Jacob."
In the fall of 1988, my city of Seattle hosted a Penderecki Week in which several orchestras and performing arts groups around town performed various works of his, with KP himself attending and conducting a few of the concerts. I had the great privilege to chat with the man at an after-performance party held at a museum. He was very gracious and good-humored, even inquiring if I was a musician. I mentioned that I was introduced to his music through the above-mentioned two films. He was OK with The Shining, but frowned at the mention of The Exorcist - clearly the unauthorized use of his works in that movie still annoyed him!
R.I.P. to one of the great composers of the 20th century.
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Posted: |
Mar 29, 2020 - 5:00 PM
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By: |
John Smith.
(Member)
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Otherwise, thanks for the clarifications. But the short films that IMDB lists him with, are genuine original compositions, no? I know that IMDB often has errors, but the DOZENS of titles listed under 'composer' rather than 'soundtrack' can't ALL be misleading, can they?
You’re absolutely right, of course. The shorts are, in almost all cases, new compositions by Penderecki.
Most classical composers in Communist Poland supplemented their meagre state salaries with bread-and-butter assignments – cinema, theatre and television. With its conveyor belt production of documentary and animated shorts, work on Polish state TV was, by and large, easy to come by, and most composers availed themselves of the easy money. Penderecki was no exception. Between 1959 and 1966, he scored 22 cartoons – all between 5 and 10 minutes in length. He also composed the music for a dozen or so documentary shorts up until the fall of communism in Poland in 1989.
All of these films had original scores for a handful of musicians, though some studios had a 40-piece orchestra on salary. If you were lucky, you got to score an animated pearl by a production company like Studio Miniatur Filmowych – creators of animation classics employing all genres by up-and-coming visionary directors such as Kazimierz Urbanski and Miroslaw Kijowicz. Alternatively, you received a brainless time-filler for tea time viewing - bereft of a creative force but hey, it paid the bills!
Regarding the soundtracks for Penderecki's animated shorts, it’s often difficult to work out how much is actually Penderecki's music and how much stems from the sound designer. Two cartoons by Kazimierz Urbanski (both Studio Miniatur Filmowych) highlight the problem:
THE ALLURE OF WHEELS (1966)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPDq3yIV_eo
SWEET RHYTHM (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmJm07Vv8_8
Films scored by Krzysztof Komeda are less open to debate in this respect. Here are two superb cartoons by director Miroslaw Kijowicz (also Studio Miniatur Filmowych), where the composer clearly does the heavy lifting on the soundtrack:
THE WICKER BASKET (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTp5RxUi7nQ
THE CAGE (1966)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi-2s4FJCl4
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Posted: |
Mar 31, 2020 - 10:01 AM
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By: |
John Smith
(Member)
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Like two earlier (Nobel Prize-winning) luminaries of the Polish arts, Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska, who wrote odes to Stalin and then repudiated these youthful (and opportunistic) excesses, Penderecki consistently waived a dismissive and derisive hand at his film composing career. His original scores for dozens of animated and documentary shorts remained shrouded in obscurity for years.
This all changed - albeit temporarily - in 1983 when, as part of the Penderecki Project Festival in North Brabant, screenings were organized of Penderecki’s cartoons, along with well-attended seminars to discuss the composer’s contribution to the art of animated film scoring.
Despite the best efforts of the Dutch, this exploration into Penderecki’s collaboration with some of the most innovative animators in film history was short-lived, and subsequent biographers seemed keen to gloss over this “unfortunate” period in his professional life.
Nearly four decades after this initial burst of interest, we still eagerly await the intrepid musicologist or film historian who will finally do justice to this mainly untapped segment of Penderecki’s musical oeuvre…
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