about us

POLMICPolskie Centrum Informacji Muzycznej POLMIC

was set up in 2001, using as its foundation the Library and Music Collection of the Polish Composers’ Union (PCU) – Polish Contemporary Music Documentation Centre. For more than fifty years prior to POLMIC’s establishment, the latter institution had collected books, scores and records as well as information about contemporary Polish composers and their output. In 1998, the PCU Library had become Poland’s representative in the International Association of Music Information Centres (IAMIC). POLMIC continues all the forms of the Library’s earlier activity while at the same time extending them so as to include modern ways of operation, suited to the ever-changing needs of the present-day world.

POLMIC’s director, Mieczysław Kominek, Ph.D., is a musicologist, sound engineer, journalist, critic, and media commentator.

The Library and Music Collection of the Polish Composers’ Union:

  • collects and makes available books, periodicals, and other publications on Polish contemporary music,
  • boasts Poland’s largest collection of scores by contemporary Polish composers,
  • possesses a vast collection of Polish contemporary music recordings, in the form of CDs released by professional music labels, radio recordings, and its own documentation of concerts held by the PCU,
  • collects and makes available the writings of Polish musicologists and music theorists,
  • in our reading room you can read PCU’s archival documents concerning music life and composition in Poland after World War II,
  • we have developed our own (Poland’s largest) database of contemporary Polish composers and their works; most of the data can be accessed online,
  • we are open to visitors from Poland and abroad.

On the basis of an opinion issued by the National Library Council, on 29th June 2020 Professor Piotr Gliński, Ph.D., Habil., Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture and National Heritage granted us the status of a research library.

Read (in Polish): Minister's DecisionMinister's Announcement.

We are doing our best to answer every question and solve all problems, including those that go beyond our basic scope of activity, which focuses on Polish contemporary music. We also encourage people to present their requests and queries by promoting Polish music among the widest possible audience using state-of-the-art technologies.

The Polmic.pl website is the first and the only online service to date dedicated to Polish classical music at large, primarily to its 20th- and 21st-century developments. Its principal aim is to inform about the current activities of the music environment in Poland and Polish musicians abroad, as well as providing updated and comprehensive data about Polish artists, music institutions, and publications about music. This objective is pursued by both the website and the separate database app, comprising data on composers, their works, etc., as well as the Newsletter, sent to all the registered website users.

Download: POLMIC logo

POLMIC logo - simple version

POLMIC logo - signet ring