''De natura sonoris'' (''On the nature of sound'') is the title of three works by the Polish composer

Krzysztof Penderecki Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best known works include ''Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima'', Symphony No. 3, his '' St Luke Passion'', ''Polish Requiem'', ''A ...

. ''De natura sonoris no. 1'' (the number was appended later) was composed in 1966. The title was inspired by

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ; – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem ''De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into E ...

's ''

De rerum natura ''De rerum natura'' (; ''On the Nature of Things'') is a first-century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius ( – c. 55 BC) with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, written in some 7 ...

'' (''On the nature of things''). As the title suggests, it is a vigorous exploration of wildly divergent orchestral effects and dynamics. It was premiered on 7 April 1966 at the International Festival of Contemporary Art in the French town of

Royan Royan (; in the Saintongeais dialect; oc, Roian) is a commune and town in the south-west of France, in the department of Charente-Maritime in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Its inhabitants are known as ''Royannais'' and ''Royannaises''. Capi ...

. ''De natura sonoris no. 2'' was composed five years later to a commission by the Juilliard School of Music in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. Penderecki again took up the theme of vividly contrasting orchestral colouration, including unusual

percussive A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excl ...

effects: an iron bar is struck by implements such as a

hammer A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nails into wood, to shape metal (as w ...

and a

saw A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, wire, or chain with a hard toothed edge. It is used to cut through material, very often wood, though sometimes metal or stone. The cut is made by placing the toothed edge against the material and mo ...

. It was premiered on 3 December 1971 at Juilliard under the conductor

Jorge Mester Jorge Mester (born April 10, 1935, Mexico City) is a Mexican conductor of Hungarian ancestry. He has served as the artistic director for the Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río, Veracruz, since it was founded in 2014. Biography He studied cond ...

. Both pieces are approximately eight minutes in length each, with ''De natura sonoris no. 2'' being the longer of the two. In 1975 the composer recorded both works with the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra for

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...

. Both of these pieces featured in the Stanley Kubrick film The Shining. In 2012, Penderecki composed ''De natura sonoris no. 3''.

References

{{Krzysztof Penderecki 1966 compositions 1971 compositions Compositions by Krzysztof Penderecki Compositions that use extended techniques