Wojciech Kilar

Wojciech Kilar (17 July 1932 – 29 December 2013) was a Polish classical and film music composer.

Kilar was born on 17 July 1932 in Lwów (then Poland; since 1945 Lviv in UkrSSR, now Ukraine).

His father was a gynecologist and his mother was a theater actress.

Kilar spent most of his life from 1948 in the city of Katowice in Southern Poland, married (from April 1966 to November 2007) to Barbara Pomianowska, a pianist.

Kilar was 22 years old when he met 18-year-old Barbara, his future wife.

After studying piano under Maria Bilińska-Riegerowa and harmony under Artur Malawski, he moved from Kraków to Katowice in 1948, where he finished his music middle school in the class of Władysława Markiewiczówna, after which he went to the State College of Music (now the Music Academy) in Katowice where he studied piano and composition under Bolesław Woytowicz, graduating with top honours and the award of a diploma in 1955 He continued his post-graduate studies at the State College of Music (now the Music Academy) in Kraków from 1955 to 1958.

In 1957 he took part in the International New Music Summer Course in Darmstadt.

In 1959–60 a French government scholarship enabled him to study composition under Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

Kilar belonged (together with Bolesław Szabelski, his student Henryk Górecki and Krzysztof Penderecki) to the Polish Avant-garde music movement of the Sixties, sometimes referred to as the New Polish School.

Having received critical success as a classical composer, Kilar scored his first domestic film in 1959, and went on to write music for some of Poland's most acclaimed directors, including Krzysztof Kieślowski, Krzysztof Zanussi, Kazimierz Kutz and Andrzej Wajda.

He worked on over 100 titles in his home country, including internationally recognised titles such as Bilans Kwartalny (1975), Spirala (1978), Constans (1980), Imperativ (1982), Rok Spokojnego Słońca (1984), and Życie za Życie (1991), plus several others in France and across other parts of Europe.

He made his English-language debut with Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Dracula.

In 1977 Kilar was one of the founding members of the Karol Szymanowski Society, based in the mountain town of Zakopane.

Kilar chaired the Katowice chapter of the Association of Polish Composers for many years and from 1979 to 1981 was vice chair of this association's national board.

He was also a member of the Repertoire Committee for the "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music.

His 1984 composition Angelus was used in the motion picture City of Angels; Orawa, from 1988, found its use in the Santa Clara Vanguard's 2003 production, "Pathways".

For most of his life, Kilar's output was dominated by music for film with a small but steady stream of concert works.

In 1991 Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi made a biographical film about the composer titled Wojciech Kilar.

One of his greatest successes came with his score to Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992, which received the ASCAP Award and the nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Music.

His other English language features — Roman Polanski's trio Death and the Maiden (1994), The Ninth Gate (1999) and The Pianist (2002), and Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady (1996) — were typified by his trademark grinding basses and cellos, deeply romantic themes and minimalist chord progressions.

Post 2000, he turned to "music of a singular authorship".

January 2001 saw the world premiere of his Missa pro pace (composed for a full symphony orchestra, mixed choir and a quartet of soloists) at the National Philharmonic in Warsaw.

The work was written to commemorate the Warsaw Philharmonic's centennial.

In December 2001, it was performed again in the Paul VI Audience Hall in the presence of Pope John Paul II.

In 2003, he won the César Award for Best Film Music written for The Pianist, for which he also received a BAFTA nomination.

In addition to his film work, Kilar continued to write and publish purely classical works, which have included a horn sonata, a piece for a wind quintet, several pieces for chamber orchestra and choir, the acclaimed Baltic Canticles, the epic Exodus (famous as the trailer music from Schindler's List and the main theme of Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups), a Concerto for Piano and Orchestra dedicated to Peter Jablonski, and his major work, the September Symphony (2003).

Having abandoned Avant-garde music technical means almost entirely, he continued to employ a simplified musical language, in which sizable masses of sound serve as a backdrop for highlighted melodies.

This occurs in those compositions that reference folk music (especially Polish Highlander Gorals folk melodies) and in patriotic and religious pieces.

During the summer of 2013, Kilar manifested signs of poor health, such as fainting and elevated blood pressure, but attributed those symptoms to his heart problems.

However, in September he fell while on the street.

He was admitted to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, though news of his illness was only publicly released after his death.

He underwent a successful surgery to remove the tumor, which caused no serious side–effects; Kilar was very optimistic and continued to work after the operation.

In addition, he underwent radiotherapy for six weeks, a process which left 81-year-old Kilar physically exhausted.

In early December 2013, Kilar left the hospital to return to his residence in Katowice.

As he did not have any children, he was taken care of by his niece.

He was also regularly visited by a Catholic priest and received the Holy Communion twice during the Christmas season.

His condition deteriorated on 28 December and on the morning of Sunday, 29 December 2013, Kilar died.

Following the cremation of his body, Kilar's funeral was held on 4 January 2014 at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Katowice.

After the service, his ashes were laid to rest alongside those of his wife.

Later in life, Kilar composed symphonic music, chamber works and works for solo instruments.