Polish composer Wojciech Kilar is not as well known as several of his contemporaries and compatriots such as Penderecki and Górecki, but his compositional path has taken a similar trajectory. He was trained as a modernist, with a stint at Darmstadt, but unlike them he always had a strong interest in folk traditions. Like them, he experienced an aesthetic conversion in the 1970s and abandoned the modernism of his youth. His music more closely resembles that of Górecki in its radical simplicity and incorporation of certain ...
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Polish composer Wojciech Kilar is not as well known as several of his contemporaries and compatriots such as Penderecki and Górecki, but his compositional path has taken a similar trajectory. He was trained as a modernist, with a stint at Darmstadt, but unlike them he always had a strong interest in folk traditions. Like them, he experienced an aesthetic conversion in the 1970s and abandoned the modernism of his youth. His music more closely resembles that of Górecki in its radical simplicity and incorporation of certain minimalist tendencies in his slowly unfolding musical time. His music has more textural, harmonic, and expressive variety than Górecki's, though. Kilar is a real original, and his artistic vision seems unbeholden to any school or tradition. His music has a level of constantly unfolding inventiveness and unpredictability that sets it apart from Górecki's, which can rely heavily on repetition. Kilar's serenely joyous 50-minute Magnificat is a substantial and deeply expressive work that...
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