Renowned Polish sound engineer and avant-garde composer Eugeniusz Rudnik has passed. He was 83.
Rudnik was considered a true pioneer of early European electronic music. He was instrumental in the establishing of the “Polish school” of electroacoustic music, centered around Polish Radio’s Experimental Studio. The studio, founded in 1957, was one of the first in Europe to produce electronic scores for radio programs, films, and theatrical plays. It also quickly developed into a playground for the country’s most progressive avant-garde composers.
Rudnik started out as a sound engineer for the studio, later moving into production and composing. He has collaborated with such greats as Krzysztof Penderecki, Andrzej Dobrowolski, and Franco Evangelisti. His own pieces include “Skalary,” one of the earliest instances of “poliversional” tape music in the world, as well as the first Polish recording of quadrophonic sound, “Vox Humana.”