Todays featured composer is Krzysztof Penderecki (Pronounced Kristof Penderezki). Penderecki was born in Poland on November 23, 1933. He began publishing compositions in the late 1950's and by 1960 he had gained international attention for his unsettling music.
This blog often features horror soundtracks and this makes Penderecki a natural addition. His music has been featured in films such as The Shining and The Exorcist. Critically acclaimed weirdo David Lynch has also used Krzysztof's music in films such as Wild at Heart, Inland Empire, and Children of Men.
Penderecki often used "tone clusters" in his music. This means he would sound several notes located closely together that created extremely dissonant and unsettling music. This is the same thing as hitting all the notes you can at once on a piano.
One of Penderecki's best known works "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" is a good example of this...
Around 1970 Krzysztof started writing tonal or, "normal", music making him somewhat of a sell out. Still, what he wrote in the first decade and a half of his career has yet to be surpassed as some of the creepiest music ever created. He is still alive and composing today. He also is an active conductor.
Check out this two CD compilation of his early work here and here.
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11 comments:
I tried falling asleep to his Sacred Choral Works album, and boy did that give me fucked up nightmares! Tonal might be a bit misleading, that is still dissonant stuff. Have you heard his Passion of St. Luke? It sounds like the howling demons of hell.
creepy shit! thanks!
-Chris
Passion of St Luke is awesome too. I probably will post that here eventually as well.
I went looking for some of his charts once, hoping to see instructions like "dump a box of tarantulas on the string section" or "molto formidolose"...
I would hazard a guess that folks are enjoying these 'creepy classical' posts, Pete. nice job.
I aim to please
Steven,
Did you ever find his charts? I know some pieces use taped sounds, but I'd like to believe that a live performance of Flourescences has a real typewriter.
I'd love to be the guy in the orchestra whose part it is to play the typewriter. I'd dress up like Hemingway and have a bottle of Fundador next to the typewriter.
^^^
Wow, I thought I was a nerd!
(that's a compliment.
When you guys say charts are you talking about the scores? Those are available in most public libraries. I know that the San Francisco library has several of his scores available.
You can also google "Penderecki Score Online" or something along those lines and often find online copies for free if they are public domain.
If your in a small town with limited resources and don't have any luck online scores are always available for purchase.
Finally, Fluorescences does indeed call for a real typewriter. You can read about it in an article at this address...
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/collections/moldenhauer/2428143.pdf
There was a lot of weird stuff being used for percussion and in general during the 20th century. Varese may be the most famous for doing this sort of thing. He used ambulance sirens in his composition Ionisation.
Hows that for being a nerd?
Oh and just to clarify James, Passion of St Luke is actually an early work as well. When I talk about his tonal stuff that's later on. He began composing tonal music in the early 70s but still used weird harmonies until a few years later. You would hardly guess that some of his later compositions were wrote by the same guy.
Yeah, actually I did find a few of his scores at the library, the 'Threnody', 'Anaklasis' and some choral works. They are very weird looking...
Didn't see anything about tarantulas unfortunately.
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