Kilar’s musical output on the web
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
19.03.2015 10:20
The National Audiovisual Institute (NiNA) has launched an online service devoted to the work of prominent Polish composer Wojciech Kilar, who died in December 2013 at the age of 81.
Wojciech Kilar. Foto: wikicommons/Lzur
It is the largest publicly available repository of Kilar’s diverse output and includes over 130 compositions, from the best known soundtracks to films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ and Jane Campion’s ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ to his avant-garde pieces from the early stage of his career (‘Riff62’, ‘Upstairs-Downstairs’) and folk-inspired works such as ‘Orawa’, ‘Krzesany’ and ‘Kościelec 1909’.
The service is bi-lingual, in Polish and English. It also includes notes on compositions by Kilar himself, critics and musicologists, many recently-discovered materials from the composer’s private archive, photographs, as well as about 120 clips of films with Kilar’s soundtracks.
Born in 1932, Kilar was one of the founders of the Polish school of avant-garde music in the early 1960s. In the 1970s he began to use a simplified musical idiom. He turned to tradition and looked for inspiration in folk music and religion.
As a composer of film music, Kilar worked closely with many prominent Polish and foreign directors, including Zanussi, Wajda and Polański.
Click here to explore the Kilar collection. (mk/nh)