Polish film and television composer Abel Korzeniowski has earned acclaim for both his introspective chamber works and his sweeping orchestral-choral scores. His career began with Polish productions in the early 2000s and later expanded to British and Hollywood assignments toward the decade’s end. Standout projects include his newly written 2004 accompaniment to Fritz Lang’s silent Metropolis, scored for a 150-piece orchestra and choir, the Showtime-Sky series Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), and the 2016 psychological thriller Nocturnal Animals. He has also supplied music for numerous stage productions.
Korzeniowski was born in Kraków in 1972 and trained as a cellist, completing composition studies with Krzysztof Penderecki at the Academy of Music in Kraków. After finishing his studies in 2000, he made his screen debut that year with the comedy-drama Big Animal (Duze Zwierze), which received the Best Score prize at the Polish Film Festival. The following year his piece Hypnosis received its premiere in Berlin, performed by the Sinfonietta Cracovia under Penderecki’s direction.
In the ensuing years he contributed to several Polish features and short documentaries before presenting his original score for the 1927 silent film Metropolis at the 2004 New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw. The collection Music for Drama appeared in 2005. He next worked on the 2007 CGI feature Terra (also known as Battle for Terra) and then partnered with writer-director Tom Ford on A Single Man (2009), earning his initial Golden Globe nomination for original score. A second nomination arrived for W.E. (2011), the Madonna-directed biographical film concerning King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.
His music featured in Carlo Carlei’s Romeo & Juliet in 2013. The next year he began a three-season engagement with Penny Dreadful, collecting three Emmy nominations—two for outstanding original dramatic score and one for the main title theme. He earned a BAFTA nomination for his second collaboration with Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals (2016). The horror feature The Nun followed in 2018, with its soundtrack released by WaterTower Music.
