Penderecki’s own musical trajectory spans five decades and saw him move from his initial avant-garde compositions into more traditional territory, all while retaining his sense of the unexpected.
The eerie tension and sustained impact of Penderecki’s work is underlined by the inclusion of a number of his pieces on soundtracks to films of an intense psychological nature, including William Friedkin's 1973 horror masterpiece The Exorcist, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 cinematic adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining (which the composer declined to score, allowing his music to be used and edited instead), David Lynch’s Wild At Heart (1990), and Martin Scorsese’s 2010 thriller Shutter Island, which featured Penderecki's Symphony No. 3.
Latterly, Penderecki’s continued relevance among contemporary musicians was confirmed by his work with Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. The pair collaborated in 2012 on an album released on Nonesuch, which featured a re-working of Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima alongside other Penderecki compositions such as 48 Responses To Polymorphia.
Penderecki's death was confirmed earlier today by Andrzej Giza, director of the Ludwig van Beethoven Association that was founded by Mr. Penderecki’s wife Elzbieta. The news was met by an outpouring of love from contemporary heavy musicians, among them extreme noise artist Lingua Ignota, who posted on her Twitter feed, “Penderecki’s influence on me is massive. Seth [Manchester] and I have sampled him on every project we’ve recorded together, I am constantly chasing how to replicate the feeling of abject physical horror his music imparts.”