1. Wojciech Kilar's father was a gynecologist and his mother was a theater actress.
20 Facts About Wojciech Kilar
1. 2.
Wojciech Kilar spent most of his life from 1948 in the city of Katowice in Southern Poland, married to Barbara Pomianowska, a pianist.
3.
Wojciech Kilar was 22 years old when he met 18-year-old Barbara, his future wife.
4.
Wojciech Kilar continued his post-graduate studies at the State College of Music in Krakow from 1955 to 1958.
5.
Wojciech Kilar belonged to the Polish Avant-garde music movement of the Sixties, sometimes referred to as the New Polish School.
6.
In 1977 Wojciech Kilar was one of the founding members of the Karol Szymanowski Society, based in the mountain town of Zakopane.
7.
Wojciech Kilar chaired the Katowice chapter of the Association of Polish Composers for many years and from 1979 to 1981 was vice chair of this association's national board.
8.
Wojciech Kilar was a member of the Repertoire Committee for the "Warsaw Autumn" International Festival of Contemporary Music.
9.
Wojciech Kilar made his English-language debut with Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Dracula.
10.
Wojciech Kilar was admitted to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, though news of his illness was only publicly released after his death.
11.
In early December 2013, Wojciech Kilar left the hospital to return to his residence in Katowice.
12.
Wojciech Kilar was regularly visited by a Catholic priest and received the Holy Communion twice during the Christmas season.
13.
Wojciech Kilar's condition deteriorated on 28 December and on the morning of Sunday, 29 December 2013, Kilar died.
14.
Later in life, Wojciech Kilar composed symphonic music, chamber works and works for solo instruments.
15.
For most of his life, Wojciech Kilar's output was dominated by music for film with a small but steady stream of concert works.
16.
September Symphony was the first symphony by the composer since 1955's Symphony for Strings and Wojciech Kilar considered it his first mature symphony.
17.
From 2003, Wojciech Kilar had been steadily producing large scale concert works.
18.
Wojciech Kilar received numerous awards for his artistic activity and achievements, including prizes from the Lili Boulanger Foundation in Boston, the Minister of Culture and Art, the Association of Polish Composers, the Katowice province, and the city of Katowice.
19.
Wojciech Kilar was awarded the First Class Award of Merit of the Polish Republic, the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation Prize in New York City, the Solidarity Independent Trade Union Cultural Committee Arts Award, the Wojciech Korfanty Prize, the "Lux ex Silesia" Prize bestowed by the Archbishop and Metropolitan of Katowice, and the Sonderpreis des Kulturpreis Schlesien des Landes Niedersachsen.
20.
In November 2008 Wojciech Kilar was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.