Krzysztof Penderecki

“My music is rather abstract and maybe even strange-sounding for some people, so maybe that's why it's been used in so many horror movies and thrillers.”

“Melody was banned from music by the composers of the avant-garde. I was unique among them in always using and writing melody and so I think this is why I've shared my music, why they can have also pleasure, not only an interesting structure.”

“I don't really think my work breaks into periods. In fact, if you listen to my work in all its so-called periods, what you should hear is continuity.”

“In my own works I am an obsessionist. Though I write humorous music too, much of it has been obsessed by death and the tragic.”

“I don't write political music. Political music is immediately obsolete.”

“I have always had an audience for my music, even in the very avant garde, crazy times.”

“I must never change my way - because of critics who may not like it - I preserve my language and my style.”

“There is some limit to finding, always, new things. It's rather impossible.”

“I was a very religious child.”

“I grew up at the time of Social Realism in Poland, when everyone was supposed to be 'writing for the workers.' But I soon became allergic to this. I have never written for audiences. I like it if they appreciate my music. But I would never change my style for them.”

“When the Second World War started, I was only five but I still remember... Being a witness... I wanted people to remember what happened in our country and elsewhere.”

“Listen to the triple fugue in 'Magnificat' - the first subject is seven voices, the second one has 52 different voices, the third uses five; then I combine all together. Such textures you cannot call primitive.”

“I always had my roots in the past.”

“I began as a violinist, not a composer. Thus my contact with orchestral musicians, with the source of music, is very important.”

“I started to write religious music at a time when it was absolutely impossible. The first religious work I wrote was the 'Psalms of David,' when I was still a student in 1957... At that time, religious music was really forbidden.”

“For me, music is pure abstraction.”

“I think in work like 'Passion According to St Luke,' which I wrote when the Church was being persecuted by the Communist regime, it mattered to me to declare for the cause. I sided with the militant Church and I think my music fulfilled an important socio-political function.”

“I studied violin since I was a boy, and my dream was to be a violinist and to play.”

“Traveling, talking to people, and rehearsing, I'm always finding new ideas. If I stay in one place, maybe I won't have so many ideas.”

“Conducting is a natural way to participate in one's own music. Almost every 19th-century composer Mendelssohn, Mahler was conducting or playing his own music. Mozart did both.”