Polish pianist composed scores for films including Roman Polanski's The Pianist and Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula
Wojciech Kilar, a Polish pianist and composer of classical music and scores for many films, including Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning The Pianist and Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, died on Sunday. He was 81.
Kilar wrote music for more than 130 movies in Poland and abroad, with Dracula earning him the award for best score composer from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1992. He died in his home town of Katowice, southern Poland, after a long illness, according to Jerzy Kornowicz, head of the Association of Polish Composers.
The composer was born on 17 July 1932, in Lviv, a former Polish city now in Ukraine, to a doctor and an actor. The family moved to Rzeszow in south-eastern Poland, then to Katowice in the south, where Kilar continued his musical education.
He studied piano, music theory and composition in Rzeszow, Krakow and Katowice before graduating in 1955 with top honors from the State Music Academy in Katowice.
In 2003 the British Academy of Film and Television Arts gave him an award for his score for The Pianist. Kilar also wrote music for Polanski's The Ninth Gate. In Poland he was known for working with three influential Polish film directors: Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and Krzysztof Zanussi.
Kilar told the PLUS journal he would like to be remembered as a "good human being, someone who brought a little happiness, hope and reflection into life and into the world and perhaps a bit of faith".
His wife of over 40 years, Barbara, died in 2007. They had no children.
Kilar will be buried in Katowice on Saturday in a ceremony starting with a mass at the Arch Cathedral of Christ the King.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/29/polish-composer-wojciech-kilar-dies
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