Van Den Budenmayer

Zbigniew Preisner (; born 20 May 1955 as Zbigniew Antoni Kowalski) is a Polish film score composer, best known for his work with film director Krzysztof Kieślowski. He is the recipient of the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis as well as the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. He is a member of the French Film Academy.

Life

Zbigniew Preisner was born in Bielsko-Biała, southern Poland, and studied history and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Never having received formal music lessons, he taught himself music by listening and transcribing parts from records. His compositional style represents a distinctively sparse form of tonal neo-Romanticism. Paganini and Jean Sibelius are acknowledged influences.

Career

Preisner is best known for the music composed for the films directed by fellow Pole Krzysztof Kieślowski. His ''Song for the Unification of Europe'', based on the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 13, is attributed to a character in Kieślowski's '' Three Colors: Blue'' and plays a dominating role in the story. His music for '' Three Colors: Red'' includes a setting of Polish and French versions of a poem by Wisława Szymborska, a Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet.

After working with Kieślowski on '' Three Colors: Blue'', Preisner was hired by the producer Francis Ford Coppola to write the score for ''The Secret Garden'', directed by Polish director Agnieszka Holland. Although Preisner is most closely associated with Kieślowski, he has collaborated with several other directors, winning a César in 1996 for his work on Jean Becker's '' Élisa''. He has won a number of other awards, including another César in 1994 for '' Three Colors: Red'', and the Silver Bear from the 47th Berlin International Film Festival 1997 for '' The Island on Bird Street''. He was nominated for Golden Globe awards for his scores for '' Three Colors: Blue'' (1993) and At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991).

In 1998, '' Requiem for My Friend'', Preisner's first large scale work not written for film, premiered. It was originally intended as a narrative work to be written by Krzysztof Piesiewicz and directed by Kieślowski, but it became a memorial to Kieślowski after the director's death. The ''Lacrimosa'' from this Requiem appears in Terrence Malick's ''The Tree of Life''. The ''Dies Irae'' from this Requiem appears in the film ''La Grande Bellezza'', directed by Paolo Sorrentino and in the second season of the television series ''The Crown''.

Preisner composed the theme music for the ''People's Century'', a monumental 26-part documentary made jointly in 1994 by the BBC
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