Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I used to do most of my composing at a little table in a cafe. Composing for 52 instruments, I had to figure out how to accommodate myself to the small table.
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.
There is something about performing my own music, and other people's music, that gives me pleasure. I think I learn more by doing that than I ever did studying music.
The 1960s were a time of cultural revolution in Poland. And I was a part of that revolution. For me, those years - the late 1950s and early 1960s - were the most fruitful.
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.
The isolation of Eastern Europe actually helped me to be so original. I couldn't travel so much, I had to find my own things, such as making the strings sound like electronic music.
I don't believe in a composer who is only able to compose, who can't play or conduct, can only use a computer. If that trend continues there will be no more symphonies, no more oratorios.
So many new things have been discovered in the 20th century that now, at the end of the century, we need some kind of synthesis, some musical language which will allow us just to write music.
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.
If I would be born in New Zealand, maybe, I would never write the Polish Requiem or pieces which were connected with the history of war. But this was my childhood. War was the main subject, and also in our family.
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.
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 started with very tonal 19th-century music because I wanted to be a violinist as a child. So this was my first music, and then I was very much influenced by Stravinsky and Shostakovich in the 1950s. But I was starting to develop my own style.
I was growing up in a communist time, especially, and the other music, the western music, was banned, so on radio half of the music was Chopin. So my colleagues and I were a little bit allergic to this music because it was everywhere - everywhere!
When Kubrick called me about 'The Shining,' it was very strange. He first asked me to write music for his film, but I instead gave him suggestions about some of my pieces. I told him about 'The Awakening of Jacob,' which he did use in 'The Shining.'
There was this kind of dictatorship of the Darmstadt school, composers like Boulez and Stockhausen, who were very strict and orthodox. They would not allow other composers to write the music they wanted to write, and only a certain kind of music could be played.
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.
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.
After music, trees are my passion. My great-grandfather was a forester, so maybe it is genetic. My father would take me for walks in the forest and sometimes I would play truant with him. 'You won't learn anything in a communist school, my boy,' he would say. He loved trees too.
My family was very open. My grandfather was German and a Protestant. My father, a lawyer, was Greek-Catholic and played the violin. My mother was very religious and went to church twice a day. My grandmother was Armenian. So I was raised with three different faiths - that's why I am so open.
When writing music for the 'Kaddish,' I evoked the prayers that were sung in Eastern Galicia, Ukraine and Romania. I was advised by my late friend, Boris Carmeli... He would sing me various melodies that were sung by his grandfather, thus they had to be at least as old as the mid-19th century.
Poland is different from the other so-called socialist countries. We have a different background. Poland belongs to the West, not the East. We belong to the Mediterranean, Latin culture, not to the Byzantine, which is very different and which you find in Bulgaria and even parts of Czechoslovakia and, of course, Romania.
With Orff it is text, text, text - the music always subordinate. Not so with me. In 'Magnificat,' the text is important, but in some places I'm writing just music and not caring about text. Sometimes I'm using extremely complicated polyphony where the text is completely buried. So no, I am not another Orff, and I'm not primitive.
As a young man I couldn't travel, nobody could travel, they wouldn't give us a passport. For many years I was trying to go abroad. And then one day I read in the newspaper about a new competition for composers, and the first prize was a trip to the West. I decided I must get the first prize, so I wrote three pieces in three different styles.