Komeda archive donated to National Library

The collection is comprised of is a vast selection of musical manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, recordings , personal documents and memorabilia.

Komeda’s letters include those to recording and film companies, theatres, symphony orchestras and jazz clubs, as well as private letters written to his wife Zofia and his family from Scandinavia and the United States as well as to the film director Roman Polanski, his close friend.

Among the musical manuscripts are hitherto unknown arrangements of jazz standards and the scores of his soundtracks and incidental music for the theatre. The documents include Komeda’s school certificates, identity cards and his student grade book.

The director of the National Library, Tomasz Makowski, said during the presentation ceremony that the entire collection will be researched and catalogued, and subsequently made available to musicologists and music historians.

Krzysztof Komeda (real name Krzysztof Trzcinski) was born in 1931 in Poznan. A child prodigy, he was admitted to the piano class of the city’s Conservatory at the age of eight.

After the war he developed a career as a jazz pianist and composer. He also completed medical studies and for some time worked as a physician.

In December 1968, while in Los Angeles to work on the soundtrack to Polanski’s ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, Komeda had a tragic accident which led to a brain haemorrhage.

He was flown back to Poland, but failed to recover, and died in a Warsaw hospital in April 1969, aged 38. Komeda’s credits also include Polanski’s ‘Knife in the Water’. (mk/jb)