On Sunday, 29 December this year, died Wojciech Kilar, the world famous Polish Composer. He wrote music for nearly 130 films. At the beginning of his career he created avant-garde works which were big events during the Warsaw Autumn festival. He made a creative use of Polish folk music (Krzesany symphonic poem). His spirituality inspired him to compose outstanding and moving works of sacred music.

On 12 August 2005, after the first Day of the XXXIX Congress of Polish Physicists in Warsaw, a grand concert took place at the Warsaw Philharmonic. During the concert, the Congress participants heard the first performance of Wojciech Kilar’s Symphony No. 4 ‘Sinfonia de motu’, written and dedicated to Polish physicists to celebrate the World Year of Physics 2005. The symphony was performed by the National Orchestra and Choir of the Warsaw Philharmonic and conducted by Antoni Wit and Iwona Hossa (soprano) and Jaroslaw Bręk (bass-baritone).

‘The Symphony of Movement’ is a musical confrontation between the movement understood in a purely physical way and the  Dantesque concept rooted in the Creator.  In his monumental symphony Wojciech Kilar refers to the ‘Divine Comedy’ and makes five ‘physics’ sounds the motto of his great work: G (gravitational constant), E (elementary charge), C (speed of light), H (Planck's constant) and A (the first letter of the word ‘atom’). Jan Stankowski wrote about it in his article, published in Nauka, entitle ‘Physicists thank Wojciech Kilar for the ‘Symphony of Movement’ dedicated to them in the World Year of Physics’: To us, the people of lenses and eye, this great composer gave his strength of spirit. Not often is sound an inspiration in a physicist’s work, yet while listening to this symphony, everyone found something for themselves. Astrophysicists were listening intently to the mystery of the appearance of our Universe’s elements in the big bang process. Elementary particles researchers heard the elements collide. It seems that those emotions, connected with the weave of the symphony sounds, will inspire them to new achievements. People involved in the chaos theory, were inspired with new ideas in the field of molecular dynamics. Even the solid-state physicists, with all its aberrations, saw how the great universe is present in their laboratories. 

Polish physicists pay tribute to the Great Composer.

Wiesław Andrzej Kamiński

President of the Polish Physical Society