Krzysztof Penderecki (born 1933) was the best known of a group of vigorous and adventuresome Polish composers who emerged in the 1950s.

Krzysztof Penderecki was born in Debica, Krakow district, a Polish provincial town, on November 23, 1933 and started his musical studies as a child. During the German occupation of Poland in World War II he experienced some of the Nazi atrocities against Poland's Jewish population. "The problem of that great apocalypse (Auschwitz), that great war crime, has undoubtedly been in my subconscious mind since the war, when as a child, I saw the destruction of the ghetto in my small native town of Debica," he said.

Penderecki was educated in Krakow where he took courses at the Jagallonian University. He also attended the State Higher School of Music in Krakow from 1955 to 1958. The following year he gained prominence when three compositions he had submitted to a competition organized by...