The Most Famous

COMPOSERS from Poland

This page contains a list of the greatest Polish Composers. The pantheon dataset contains 1,451 Composers, 33 of which were born in Poland. This makes Poland the birth place of the 10th most number of Composers behind Czechia, and Spain.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Polish Composers of all time. This list of famous Polish Composers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Polish Composers.

1. Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849)

With an HPI of 89.34, Frédéric Chopin is the most famous Polish Composer. His biography has been translated into 160 different languages on wikipedia.

Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation". Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland. A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his earlier works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at the age of 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising. At 21, he settled in Paris. Thereafter he gave only 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon. He supported himself by selling his compositions and by giving piano lessons, for which he was in high demand. Chopin formed a friendship with Franz Liszt and was admired by many of his musical contemporaries, including Robert Schumann. After a failed engagement to Maria Wodzińska from 1836 to 1837, he maintained an often troubled relationship with the French writer Aurore Dupin (known by her pen name George Sand). A brief and unhappy visit to Mallorca with Sand in 1838–39 would prove one of his most productive periods of composition. In his final years, he was supported financially by his admirer Jane Stirling. For most of his life, Chopin was in poor health. He died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 39. All of Chopin's compositions feature the piano. Most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, some chamber music, and 19 songs set to Polish lyrics. His piano pieces are technically demanding and expanded the limits of the instrument; his own performances were noted for their nuance and sensitivity. Chopin's major piano works include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, the instrumental ballade (which Chopin created as an instrumental genre), études, impromptus, scherzi, preludes, and sonatas, some published only posthumously. Among the influences on his style of composition were Polish folk music, the classical tradition of Mozart and Schubert, and the atmosphere of the Paris salons, of which he was a frequent guest. His innovations in style, harmony, and musical form, and his association of music with nationalism, were influential throughout and after the late Romantic period. Chopin's music, his status as one of music's earliest celebrities, his indirect association with political insurrection, his high-profile love life, and his early death have made him a leading symbol of the Romantic era. His works remain popular, and he has been the subject of numerous films and biographies of varying historical fidelity. Among his many memorials is the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, which was created by the Parliament of Poland to research and promote his life and works. It hosts the International Chopin Piano Competition, a prestigious competition devoted entirely to his works.

2. Krzysztof Penderecki (1933 - 2020)

With an HPI of 67.32, Krzysztof Penderecki is the 2nd most famous Polish Composer. His biography has been translated into 54 different languages.

Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (Polish: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf pɛndɛˈrɛt͡skʲi] ; 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, Anaklasis and Utrenja. His oeuvre includes five operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works. Born in Dębica, Penderecki studied music at Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Music in Kraków. After graduating from the academy, he became a teacher there and began his career as a composer in 1959 during the Warsaw Autumn festival. His Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra and the choral work St. Luke Passion have received popular acclaim. His first opera, The Devils of Loudun, was not immediately successful. In the mid-1970s, Penderecki became a professor at the Yale School of Music. From the mid-1970s his composition style changed, with his first violin concerto focusing on the semitone and the tritone. His choral work Polish Requiem was written in the 1980s and expanded in 1993 and 2005. Penderecki won many prestigious awards, including the Prix Italia in 1967 and 1968; the Wihuri Sibelius Prize of 1983; four Grammy Awards in 1987, 1998 (twice), and 2017; the Wolf Prize in Arts in 1987; and the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1992. In 2012, Sean Michaels of The Guardian called him "arguably Poland's greatest living composer". In 2020 the composer's Alma Mater, the Academy of Music in Kraków, was named after Krzysztof Penderecki.

3. Witold Lutosławski (1913 - 1994)

With an HPI of 63.55, Witold Lutosławski is the 3rd most famous Polish Composer. His biography has been translated into 43 different languages.

Witold Roman Lutosławski (Polish: [ˈvitɔld lutɔˈswafski] ; 25 January 1913 – 7 February 1994) was a Polish composer and conductor. Among the major composers of 20th-century classical music, he is "generally regarded as the most significant Polish composer since Szymanowski, and possibly the greatest Polish composer since Chopin". His compositions—of which he was a notable conductor—include representatives of most traditional genres, aside from opera: symphonies, concertos, orchestral song cycles, other orchestral works, and chamber works. Among his best known works are his four symphonies, the Variations on a Theme by Paganini (1941), the Concerto for Orchestra (1954), and his cello concerto (1970). During his youth, Lutosławski studied piano and composition in Warsaw. His early works were influenced by Polish folk music and demonstrated a wide range of rich atmospheric textures. His folk-inspired music includes the Concerto for Orchestra (1954)—which first brought him international renown—and Dance Preludes (1955), which he described as a "farewell to folklore". From the late 1950s he began developing new, characteristic composition techniques. He introduced limited aleatoric elements, while retaining tight control of his music's material, architecture, and performance. He also evolved his practice of building harmonies from small groups of musical intervals. During World War II, after narrowly escaping German capture, Lutosławski made a living playing the piano in Warsaw bars. After the war, Stalinist authorities banned his First Symphony for being "formalist": accessible only to an elite. Rejecting anti-formalism as an unjustified retrograde step, Lutosławski resolutely strove to maintain his artistic integrity, providing artistic support to the Solidarity movement throughout the 1980s. He received numerous awards and honours, including the Grawemeyer Award and a Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal. In 1994, Lutosławski was awarded Poland's highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle.

4. Henryk Górecki (1933 - 2010)

With an HPI of 61.85, Henryk Górecki is the 4th most famous Polish Composer. His biography has been translated into 45 different languages.

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki ( gə-RET-skee, Polish: [ˈxɛnrɨk miˈkɔwaj ɡuˈrɛt͡skʲi] ; 6 December 1933 – 12 November 2010) was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. According to critic Alex Ross, no recent classical composer has had as much commercial success as Górecki. He became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw. His Anton Webern-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and influenced by Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki and Kazimierz Serocki. He continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, but by the mid-1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist sound, exemplified by the transitional Symphony No. 2 and the Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). This later style developed through several other distinct phases, from such works as his 1979 Beatus Vir, to the 1981 choral hymn Miserere, the 1993 Kleines Requiem für eine Polka and his requiem Good Night. Górecki was largely unknown outside Poland until the late 1980s. In 1992, 15 years after it was composed, a recording of his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs with soprano Dawn Upshaw and conductor David Zinman, released to commemorate the memory of those lost during the Holocaust, became a worldwide commercial and critical success, selling more than a million copies and vastly exceeding the typical lifetime sales of a recording of symphonic music by a 20th-century composer. Commenting on its popularity, Górecki said, "Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music ... somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed." This popular acclaim did not generate wide interest in Górecki's other works, and he pointedly resisted the temptation to repeat earlier success, or compose for commercial reward. Nevertheless, his music drew the attention of Australian film director Peter Weir, who used a section of Symphony No. 3 in his 1993 film Fearless. Apart from two brief periods studying in Paris and a short time living in Berlin, Górecki spent most of his life in southern Poland.

5. Martin Agricola (1486 - 1556)

With an HPI of 60.65, Martin Agricola is the 5th most famous Polish Composer. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.

Martin Agricola (6 January 1486 – 10 June 1556) was a German composer of Renaissance music and a music theorist.

6. Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881 - 1950)

With an HPI of 60.32, Nikolai Myaskovsky is the 6th most famous Polish Composer. His biography has been translated into 36 different languages.

Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky (Russian: Никола́й Я́ковлевич Мяско́вский; Polish: Mikołaj Miąskowski; 20 April 1881 – 8 August 1950), was a Russian and Soviet composer. He is sometimes referred to as the "Father of the Soviet Symphony". Myaskovsky was awarded the Stalin Prize five times.

7. Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687 - 1750)

With an HPI of 59.76, Sylvius Leopold Weiss is the 7th most famous Polish Composer. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Sylvius Leopold Weiss (12 October 1687 – 16 October 1750) was a German composer and lutenist. Born in Grottkau near Breslau, the son of Johann Jacob Weiss, also a lutenist, Weiss was one of the most important and most prolific composers of lute music in history and one of the best-known and most technically accomplished lutenists of his day. In later life, Weiss became a friend of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and met J.S. Bach through him. Bach and Weiss were said to have competed in improvisation.

8. Viktor Ullmann (1898 - 1944)

With an HPI of 59.50, Viktor Ullmann is the 8th most famous Polish Composer. His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Viktor Ullmann (1 January 1898 – 18 October 1944) was a Silesia-born Austrian composer, conductor and pianist.

9. Grażyna Bacewicz (1909 - 1969)

With an HPI of 58.80, Grażyna Bacewicz is the 9th most famous Polish Composer. Her biography has been translated into 28 different languages.

Grażyna Bacewicz Biernacka ([ɡraˈʐɨna baˈt͡sɛvit͡ʂ] ; 5 February 1909 – 17 January 1969) was a Polish composer and violinist of Lithuanian origin. She is the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition, the first being Maria Szymanowska in the early 19th century.

10. Mieczysław Weinberg (1919 - 1996)

With an HPI of 58.48, Mieczysław Weinberg is the 10th most famous Polish Composer. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

Mieczysław Weinberg (December 8, 1919 – February 26, 1996) was a Polish, Soviet, and Russian composer and pianist. Born in Warsaw to parents who worked in the Yiddish theatre in Poland, his early years were surrounded by music. He taught himself to play the piano at a young age and eventually became skilled enough to substitute for his father as a conductor at Warsaw's Jewish Theatre. During this period, he began to compose. At the age of 12, he started formal music lessons and soon thereafter enrolled at the Warsaw Conservatory. He studied piano with Józef Turczyński, who considered him and Witold Małcużyński as one of his best students. In 1938, Weinberg played for Josef Hofmann, who offered to teach him at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Weinberg declined, because he preferred to focus on composition instead; the invasion of Poland that initiated World War II in 1939 also made it impossible for him to accept. As the Wehrmacht advanced on Warsaw, Weinberg left his parents behind and fled with his sister towards the Soviet border. Discomfort forced his sister to turn back in mid-journey—he never saw her or the rest of his family again. During his only subsequent visit to Poland in 1966, he learned that his family had been murdered at the Trawniki concentration camp. Weinberg took refuge in the Soviet Union, where he officially adopted a Russified version of his name. He settled first in Minsk, where he studied composition with Vasily Zolotarev, then in Tashkent. It was in that city that Weinberg met and married Natalya Mikhoels, the daughter of the actor Solomon Mikhoels. From there, Weinberg sent a copy of his Symphony No. 1 to Dmitri Shostakovich through an intermediary, which resulted in an official invitation from the Committee on the Arts to come to Moscow. Upon arriving in the capital, Weinberg successfully established himself as a composer. Changes in Soviet cultural policy in the postwar led to increased repression against minority groups, including Jews. This led to the murder of Weinberg's father-in-law on the orders of Stalin in 1948. Although Weinberg's music was praised by critics and colleagues—including Tikhon Khrennikov, general secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers—and continued to be played, he was surveilled and harassed by the MVD. On February 6, 1953, Weinberg was arrested; he was jailed at Lubyanka Prison. Intercession on his behalf by Shostakovich to Lavrenty Beria and Stalin's death led to Weinberg's release on April 25. For the next few years, he focused his efforts on music for film and stage. By the end of the 1950s, he turned his attention again to concert music. He experienced his greatest professional success in the 1960s, when his music was played by musicians such as Rudolf Barshai, the Borodin Quartet, Timofei Dokschitzer, Mikhail Fichtenholz, Leonid Kogan, Kirill Kondrashin, and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others. His score for Fyodor Khitruk's cartoon Winnie-the-Pooh was an immediate success; the verses sung by its titular character entered the Russian popular lexicon. Weinberg later said that its music had contributed the most to the preservation of his legacy. In the mid-1960s, Weinberg began an extramarital affair with Olga Rakhalskaya, daughter of the psychiatrist Yuliy Rakhalsky, that quickly developed into a romantic relationship; they married in 1972. Starting in this period, his personal life stabilized and was dominated mostly by work. His concert music was played with less frequency as many of its former exponents had left the Soviet Union, severed their friendships with Weinberg, or died. He acquired a few new advocates, including Maxim Shostakovich and Vladimir Fedoseyev. Despite being awarded the People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1980, shifts in musical tastes and chronic health problems led to the neglect of Weinberg's music. He continued to compose prolifically through the 1980s, but Crohn's disease and the collapse of the Soviet Union had immediate adverse consequences for him and his output. The loss of state patronage and healthcare prevented him from receiving treatment for his broken hip in late 1992, which left him homebound, and eventually bedridden. Belated recognition of his music outside of Russia began in the 1990s through the advocacy of Tommy Persson, a Swedish judge. In 1994, Poland awarded Weinberg the Meritorious Activist of Culture. After consultations with his wife in late 1995, he converted to Orthodox Christianity a few weeks before his death on February 26, 1996.

People

Pantheon has 40 people classified as Polish composers born between 1486 and 1978. Of these 40, 3 (7.50%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Polish composers include Zbigniew Preisner, Abel Korzeniowski, and Agata Zubel. The most famous deceased Polish composers include Frédéric Chopin, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Witold Lutosławski. As of April 2024, 6 new Polish composers have been added to Pantheon including Mykhailo Verbytskyi, Józef Kozłowski, and Salomon Jadassohn.