Bogurodzica (Polish pronunciation: [bɔɡurɔˈd͡ʑit͡sa], Mother of God) is the oldest Polish religious hymn. It was composed somewhere between the 10th and 13th centuries. The origin of the song is not clear.

Polish knights sang it as an anthem before the Battle of Grunwald and during the battle with the Turkish army at Varna in 1444. Bogurodzica also accompanied the coronation ceremonies of the first Jagiellonian kings.

It was recorded in writing at the beginning of the 15th century. Two records preserved till today date back to that time:

Other records date back to the second half of the fifteenth century, the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and to the beginning of the 16th century. In 1509 the song was printed in Kraków in Jan Łaski's Statut.

The origin of the song is not clear (the thesis about the authorship of St Adalbert has been rejected). It used to be related either to Latin liturgy, the tradition of church hymns, Greek or Old Church Slavonic influences, Western or Eastern culture. The two initial stanzas were created first - probably in the middle or at the end of the thirteenth century, or possibly at the very beginning of the fourteenth century.

Wojciech Kilar (Polish pronunciation: [ˈvɔjt͡ɕex kilar] (pronounced phonetically: Voy-cheh Kee-lahr) ; b. 17 July 1932 in Lwów, Poland) is a Polish classical and film music composer.

Wojciech Kilar is one of Poland’s esteemed composers. Born in 1932 in Lwów (now a city in Ukraine, it was part of Poland at the time). His father was a gynecologist and his mother was a theater actress. Kilar has spent most of his life since 1948 in the city of Katowice in Southern Poland, married (from April 1966 to November 2007) to Barbara Pomianowska, a pianist. Kilar was 22 years old when he met 18 year old Barbara, his future wife.

Kilar studied at some of Poland's finest music academies, including the State Higher School of Music in Katowice, under the composer and pianist Władysława Markiewiczówna, graduating with top honors in 1955. He continued his post-graduate studies at the State Higher School of Music in Kraków from 1955 to 1958 under composer and pianist Bolesław Woytowicz. In 1957 he participated in the International New Music Summer Course in Darmstadt. Kilar expanded on his musical education in Paris in 1959-60, when a scholarship from the French government allowed him to study composition under Nadia Boulanger.

Sir Gilbert Levine, KC*SG (born January 22, 1948, Brooklyn, New York) is an American conductor. He is considered an "outstanding personality in the world of international music television."

Levine attended the Juilliard School of Music, and holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a M.A. degree from Yale University. He studied bassoon with Stephen Maxym and Sherman Walt, piano with Gilbert Kalish, Music History with Lewis Lockwood and Arthur Mendel, Music Theory with Edward T. Cone, Peter Westergaard and Milton Babbitt, ear training and score reading with Nadia Boulanger, Renée Longy, and Luise Vosgerchian, and conducting with Jacques-Louis Monod and Franco Ferrara.

Levine was assistant to Sir Georg Solti in London at the London Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), and in Paris with l'Orchestre de Paris. Levine was also a protégé of Klaus Tennstedt.

Levine has lectured at Harvard University, Princeton University, and Yale University, and has taught conducting both at Yale and the Manhattan School of Music. His conducting students have included the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis. Levine maintains current ties to his two alma maters. He serves as a member of the Princeton University Department of Music Advisory Council and has recently been appointed to a fifth term as Associate Fellow of Trumbull College/Yale by the Yale Corporation, that university's highest governing body.

Michał Żebrowski (born 17 June 1972) is a Polish actor.