Kazimierz Serocki

Music and the story

Kazimierz Serocki composed the music for Jerzy Hoffman's The Deluge¹. In an adaptation of this scale, music helps bind battle scenes, journeys and individual lives into a continuous story. The soundtrack is an artistic choice by the filmmakers, not a reconstruction of what people heard in the seventeenth-century Commonwealth.

Serocki was not solely a film composer. He also wrote concert music and had earlier scored Aleksander Ford's Knights of the Teutonic Order (Krzyżacy). According to the Polish Music Information Centre, The Deluge marked his return to feature film after a break².

From score to recording

FilmPolski credits Serocki as composer and lists the Great Symphony Orchestra of Polish Radio and Television in Katowice and the National Philharmonic Choir among the performers. Stanisław Wisłocki and Arnold Rezler are listed as conductors³. These names show how many people were involved in bringing a film score to the screen.

What can we hear in The Deluge?

The POLMIC study identifies recurring musical ideas, including a psalm sung by the Swedes and the song Oj wyjdę ja. Alongside historical stylisation, Serocki drew on techniques of modern orchestral music⁴. A revealing way to listen is to notice when a melody returns and whether it carries the same meaning in a new scene. The study also recounts journalist Zdzisław Sierpiński's memory: Serocki declined a television interview, then spent a Sunday helping him choose film excerpts that would show how the music worked⁵.