Penderecki, one of the world’s most prominent composers, died on Sunday morning in the southern Polish city of Kraków after a long and serious illness.
The National Pantheon, in the crypts of Kraków’s centuries-old Church of Saints Peter and Paul, is a burial site for the most outstanding figures in Polish culture and science.
Prof. Franciszek Ziejka, who heads the Board of the National Pantheon Foundation, has told public broadcaster Polish Radio that the composer’s body will be cremated and a burial ceremony will be held once constraints related to the coronavirus pandemic are lifted.
Earlier, a memorial mass will be celebrated solely for members of the composer’s family.
The National Pantheon, which was inaugurated in 2012, contains the tomb of playwright Sławomir Mrożek and the symbolic graves of Jerzy Różycki, Marian Rejewski and Henryk Zygalski, Polish mathematicians and cryptologists who broke German Enigma-machine ciphers during World War II.
Meanwhile, condolences and tributes to Penderecki have poured in from fellow musicians and politicians.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Culture Minister Piotr Gliński has said that Penderecki’s death is a “huge and irreparable loss” for Polish culture.
“Drawing from the rich heritage of national culture, he was able to give his works a universal dimension,” Gliński said in a television interview, adding that Penderecki was a “great Polish patriot.”
The director of the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, Waldemar Dąbrowski, said that Penderecki’s musical legacy “will have a lasting place in mankind’s cultural treasure house.”
Dąbrowski added: “The fact that it was Penderecki who was commissioned to write pieces for the American Bicentennial, the Olympic Games in Munich and the 3000 years of the city of Jerusalem speaks for itself.”
Composer Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa told the media that Penderecki never behaved like a celebrity.
“He was an open person who was not too keen to talk about his own music,” she said.
World-famous violinist Anne Sophie Mutter, who performed Penderecki’s music and made many tours with him, said, as quoted by Poland’s PAP news agency: “His death is a great loss, all the more poignant that it comes at a time of crisis in the world, which is a time when we need music and composers more than at any other moment.”
Mutter, who is now confined to her home with coronavirus, added: “We need them because they can save us from despair and misery. Of course, I can go now to my music studio and play the works that he wrote for me. In that sense, he will always be present because his music is immortal, but his physical departure makes me very sad.”
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, who several years ago collaborated with Penderecki on a series of concerts, tweeted: “What sad news to wake to. Penderecki was the greatest—a fiercely creative composer, and a gentle, warm-hearted man. My condolences to his family, and to Poland on this huge loss to the musical world.”
Many of Penderecki’s friends have stressed his love of nature and his passion for gardening. He planted and grew several hundred species of trees and bushes in his estate in Lusławice, southern Poland.
(mk/gs)