PENDERECKI, KRZYSZTOF

born Nov. 23, 1933, Debica, Poland outstanding Polish composer of his generation whose novel and masterful treatment of orchestration won worldwide acclaim. Penderecki studied composition at the Superior School of Music in Krakw (graduated 1958), subsequently becoming a professor there. He first drew attention in 1959 at the third Warsaw Festival of Contemporary Music, where his Strophes for soprano, speaker, and ten instruments was performed. The following year was marked by the performances of both Anaklasis, which premiered at the Donaueschingen Festival, and the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima for 52 strings. The Threnody illustrates Penderecki's skilled and refined treatment of instruments, making use of quarter-tone clusters (close groupings of notes a quarter step apart), glissandi (slides), whistling harmonics (faint, eerie tones produced by partial string vibrations), and other extraordinary effects. Penderecki received the UNESCO Award and the Polish Minister of Culture Prize in 1961 for his innovative composition. The techniques used in Threnody were extended to his vocal work Dimensions in Time (1961) and his operas The Devils of Loudun (1968) and Paradise Lost (1978). Penderecki's Psalms of David (1958) and Stabat Mater (1962) reflect a simple, linear trend (letting interwoven melodic lines predominate and determine harmonies) in his composition. The Stabat Mater combines traditional and experimental elements and led to his other well-known masterpiece, the Passion According to St. Luke (196366). In form, the latter work resembles a Baroque passion, such as those by J.S. Bach, and Penderecki makes use of traditional forms such as the passacaglia (a variation form), a chantlike freedom of metre, and a twelve-tone row (ordering of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale) based on the motif B-A-C-B (in German notation, B-A-C-H) in homage to Bach. Penderecki's 1962 Canon for 52 strings made use of polyphonic techniques (based on interwoven melodies) known to Renaissance composers. On the other hand, he also made some use of aleatory (chance music) freedoms, percussive vocal articulation, nontraditional musical notation, and other devices that stamped him as a leader of the European avant-garde. Later works include Utrenja (in two parts, 196971; Morning Prayer), a cello concerto (1972), Magnificat (197374), Rajutracony (197678; Paradise Lost), De Profundis (1977), and a violin concerto (1977).