Avant-garde period
Penderecki taught polyphony and composition in Krakow, Essen, and Yale. Among his students in this period - Antoni Wit, Peter Moss.
The first success as a composer Penderecki - victory in 1959 at vsepolskom Composition Competition, organized by the Union of Polish composers: Penderecki presented the jury their essays «strophe», «emanation» and «Psalms of David».
In the early 1960's Penderecki has received worldwide fame as one of the main representatives of the Eastern European musical avant-garde. Composer regularly participates in international festivals of contemporary music in Warsaw, Donaueshingene, Zagreb.
In the early works of Penderecki experimented in the field of modern expressive properties - primarily sonoriki actively used clusters, non-traditional ways of singing (including the choir), and playing musical instruments, music means the various mock screams, cries, whistling, whispering. To adequately implement the idea of musical composer in the score used specially invented signs. Among the salient works of this period - «Cry of the victims of Hiroshima» (1960), Symphony number 1 (1973).
The main task of the composer's art in the early works - to achieve maximum emotional impact on the listener, and become the main themes of suffering, pain, hysteria. For example, the piece for 48 strings «Polimorfiya» (1961) was based on the encephalogram sick people made while listening to «weeping for the victims of Hiroshima». The sole opera of this period - «The devil of Lyudena» (1966, based on the novel by Aldous Huxley) tells us about the mass hysteria among the nuns and the women's monastery is clear, graphic in the referral of erotic madness.
However, in this period of apparent characteristic of the religious passion Penderecki ( «Stabat Mater», 1962; «Passions on Luke», 1965; «Matins», 1970-1971), which appear in his works of musical intonation Gregorian singing Orthodox liturgical tradition, and JS Bach.