Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music
Kraków Artists: Music
A Polish state music university whose history goes back to the Kraków Conservatory of the Musical Society, founded in 1888. The Conservatory was created on 1 February 1888 from the Kraków Music School of the Musical Society thanks to the efforts of Władysław Żeleński and the pressure on the Austrian authorities exerted by Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, a pupil of Frédéric Chopin. Only in 1993 did the academy obtain a building at św. Tomasza Street 43, the former seat of the communist party's provincial committee. It trains musicians in first-, second- and third-cycle studies.
History
The academy began on 1 February 1888 as the Conservatory of the Music Society, separated from the Society's Music School in Kraków. The founding of a conservatory in the Austrian partition was achieved through the efforts of Władysław Żeleński, a graduate of the conservatories in Prague and Paris, and the pressure put on the authorities in Vienna by Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, a pupil of Frédéric Chopin. Between the wars the school's offering grew: from six basic specialisations to thirty-seven in 1931.
The occupation interrupted this growth. On 5 February 1940 the Gestapo forcibly closed all Kraków schools, and all the movable property was taken from the conservatory; the lost instruments were never recovered. After the war everything had to start again from scratch. A music school opened in 1945, and from 1946 the institution was called the State Higher School of Music, with Zbigniew Drzewiecki as its first rector. In 1972 Krzysztof Penderecki became rector and led the academy until 1987. The institution took the name Academy of Music in 1979, and since 1 January 2021 Penderecki has been its patron.
Its present seat at 43 św. Tomasza Street was given to the academy in 1993 - it is the former seat of the Kraków Voivodeship Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party. The most important events, however, take place in the former Florianka building, whose representative part the academy acquired in 1956; it houses the Bronisław Rutkowski Concert Hall. Its graduates include Halina Czerny-Stefańska and Adam Harasiewicz, winners of the Chopin Competition - no other Polish academy counts two such laureates among its graduates - as well as Tomasz Stańko and Stanisław Skrowaczewski.
Did you know?
The academy's honorary doctorates have been awarded to, among others, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (2008), Pope Benedict XVI (2015) and Anne-Sophie Mutter (2022). The view from the sixth-floor terrace of the Academy building served as a location in Juliusz Machulski's film Vinci.