Henryk Górecki
Encyclopedia
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (ˈxɛnrɨk mʲiˈkɔwaj ɡuˈrɛtski) (December 6, 1933 – November 12, 2010) was a composer
of contemporary classical music
. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice
between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw. His Webernian
-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and drew influence from Luigi Nono
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
, Krzysztof Penderecki
and Kazimierz Serocki
. He continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, but by the mid-1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist
sound, exemplified by the transitional Symphony No. 2
and the hugely popular Symphony No. 3
(Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). This later style developed through several other distinct phases, from such works as his 1979 Beatus Vir, to the choral 1981 hymn Miserere
, the 1993 Kleines Requiem für eine Polka and his requiem Good Night.
Until 1992, Górecki was viewed as a remote and fiery figure known only to a few connoisseurs, primarily as one of a number of composers responsible for sparking a postwar renaissance in Polish music. In 1992, 15 years after it was composed, a recording of his Third Symphony, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
—recorded with soprano
Dawn Upshaw
and released to commemorate the memory of those lost during the Holocaust
—became a worldwide commercial and critical success, selling more than a million copies and vastly exceeding the typical lifetime sales of a recording of symphonic music by a 20th-century composer. As surprised as anyone at its popularity, Górecki said, "Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music […] somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed." This popular acclaim did not generate wide interest in Górecki's other works, and he pointedly resisted the temptation to repeat earlier success, or compose for commercial reward.
Apart from two brief periods studying in Paris and a short time living in Berlin, Górecki spent most of his life in southern Poland.
Henryk Górecki was born on December 6, 1933, in the village of Czernica
(Silesian Voivodeship) in, Silesia
, southwest Poland. The Górecki family lived modestly, though both parents had a love of music. His father Roman (1904–1991) worked at the goods office of a local railway station, but was an amateur musician, while his mother Otylia (1909–1935), played piano. Otylia died when her son was just two years old, and many of his early works were dedicated to her memory. Henryk developed an interest in music from an early age, though he was discouraged by both his father and new stepmother to the extent that he was not allowed to play his mother's old piano. However, he persisted, and in 1943 was allowed to take violin lessons with Paweł Hajduga; a local amateur musician, instrument maker and chłopski filozof (peasant philosopher).
In 1945, Górecki fell while playing in a neighbor’s yard and dislocated his hip. The resulting suppurative inflammation
was misdiagnosed by a local doctor, and delay in proper treatment led to tubercular complications in the bone. The illness went largely untreated for two years, by which time permanent damage had been sustained. He spent the following twenty months in a hospital in Germany, where he underwent four operations. Górecki continued to suffer ill health throughout his life and, as a result, said he had "talked with death often".
Between 1951 and 1953, Górecki taught 10- and 11-year-olds at a school outside of Rydułtowy, in southern Poland. In 1952, he began a teacher training course at the Szafrankowie Brothers State School of Music
in Rybnik
, where he studied clarinet, violin, piano, and music theory. Through intensive studying Górecki finished the four year course in just under three years. During this time he began to compose his own pieces, mostly songs and piano miniatures. Occasionally he attempted more ambitious projects—in 1952 he adapted the Adam Mickiewicz ballad Świtezianka, though his work was left unfinished. However, life for the composer during this time was often difficult. Teaching posts were generally badly paid, while the shortage economy
made manuscript paper at times difficult and expensive to acquire. With no access to radio, Górecki kept up to date with music by weekly purchases of such periodicals as Ruch muzyczny (Musical Movement) and Muzyka, and by purchasing at least one score
a week.
Górecki continued his formal study of music at the Katowice Academy of Music
, where he studied under the composer Bolesław Szabelski, a former student of the renowned composer Karol Szymanowski
. As Górecki was later to follow, Szabelski drew much of his inspiration from Polish highland folklore. Szabelski schooled his pupil in a neoclassical reading of counterpoint and motorics, during a period when Górecki was also absorbing the techniques of twelve-tone serialism
. He graduated from the Academy with honours in 1960.
In 1975, Górecki was promoted to Professor of Composition at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice, where his students included Eugeniusz Knapik
, Andrzej Krzanowski
and Rafał Augustyn.
Around this time, Górecki came to believe the Polish Communist authorities were interfering too much in the activities of academy, and described them as "little dogs always yapping". As a senior administrator but not a member of the Party
, he was in almost perpetual conflict with the authorities in his efforts to protect his school, staff and students from undue political influence. In 1979, he resigned from his post in protest at the government's refusal to allow Pope John Paul II
to visit Katowice and formed a local branch of the "Catholic Intellectuals Club"; an organisation devoted to the struggle against the Communist Party. He remained politically active through the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1991, he composed his Miserere
for a large choir in remembrance of police violence against the Solidarity movement.
and rhythm
ical simplicity. He is considered to be a founder of the so-called New Polish School. Described by Terry Teachout, he said Górecki has "more conventional array of compositional techniques includes both elaborate counterpoint
and the ritualistic repetition of melodic fragments and harmonic patterns."
His first works, dating from the last half of the 1950s, were in the avant-garde
style of Pierre Boulez
(b. 1925) and other serialists
of that time. His compositions were not always well received by critics, in 1967 his "Refrain" was described by a British writer with the words, "players can bang and blow and scrape repeated notes as they wish. The experiment might better have been conducted in private."
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Górecki progressively moved away from his early career as radical modernist, and began to compose with a more traditional, romantic mode of expression. His change of style was viewed as an affront to the then avant-garde establishment, and though he continued to receive commissions from various Polish agencies, by the mid 1970s Górecki was no longer regarded as a composer that mattered. In the words of one critic, his "new material was no longer cerebral and sparse; rather, it was intensely expressive, persistently rhythmic and often richly colored in the darkest of orchestral hues".
. The Silesian State Philharmonic
in Katowice
held a concert devoted entirely to the 24-year-old Górecki's music. The event led to a commission to write for the Warsaw Autumn Festival. The Epitafium ("Epitaph") he submitted marked a new phase in his development as a composer, and was described as representing "the most colourful and vibrant expression of the new Polish wave". The Festival announced the composer's arrival on the international scene, and he quickly became a favorite of the West's avant-garde musical elite. Writing in 1991, the music critic James Wierzbicki described how that at this time "Górecki was seen as a Polish heir to the new aesthetic of post-Webernian serialism; with his taut structures, lean orchestrations and painstaking concern for the logical ordering of pitches".
Górecki wrote his First Symphony in 1959, and graduated with honours from the Academy the following year. At the 1960 Warsaw Autumn Festival, his Scontri, written for orchestra, caused a sensation among critics due to its use of sharp contrasts and harsh articulations
. By 1961, Górecki was at the forefront of the Polish avant-garde
, having absorbed the modernism
of Anton Webern
, Iannis Xenakis
and Pierre Boulez
, and his Symphony No. 1 gained international acclaim at the Paris Biennial Festival of Youth. Górecki moved to Paris to continue his studies, and while there was influenced by contemporaries including Olivier Messiaen
, Roman Palester
, and Karlheinz Stockhausen
.
He began to lecture at the Academy of Music in Katowice
in 1968, where he taught score-reading, orchestration and composition. In 1972, he was promoted to assistant professor, and developed a fearsome reputation among his students for his often blunt personality. According to the Polish composer Rafał Augustyn, "When I began to study under Górecki it felt as if someone had dumped a pail of ice-cold water over my head. He could be ruthless in his opinions. The weak fell by the wayside but those who graduated under him became, without exception, respected composers". Górecki admits, "For quite a few years, I was a pedagogue, a teacher in the music academy, and my students would ask me many, many things, including how to write and what to write. I always answered this way: If you can live without music for 2 or 3 days, then don't write…It might be better to spend time with a girl or with a beer…If you cannot live without music, then write.” Due to his commitments as a teacher and also because of bouts of ill health, he composed only intermittently during this period.
and sonorism
that had brought him early recognition, and pared and simplified his work. He began to favor large slow gestures and the repetition of small motifs.
The "Symphony No. 2, 'Copernican', Op. 31" (II Symfonia Kopernikowska) was written in 1972 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus
. Written in a monumental style for solo soprano
, baritone
, choir
and orchestra
, it features text from Psalms
no. 145, 6 and 135 as well as an excerpt from Copernicus' book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
. It was composed in two movements, and a typical performance lasts 35 minutes. The symphony was commission by the Kosciuszko Foundation
in New York, and presented an early opportunity for Górecki to reach an audience outside of his native Poland. As was usual, he undertook extensive research on the subject, and was in particular concerned with the philosophical implications of Copernicus's discovery, not all of which he viewed as positive. As the historian Norman Davies
commented, "His discovery of the earth's motion round the sun caused the most fundamental revolutions possible in the prevailing concepts of the human predicament".
By the mid-1980s, his work began to attract a more international audience, and in 1989 the London Sinfonietta
held weekend of concerts in which his work was played alongside that of the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke
. In 1990, the American Kronos Quartet
commissioned and recorded his First String Quartet, Already It Is Dusk, Op. 62, an occasion that marked the beginning of a long relationship between the quartet and composer.
Górecki's most popular piece is his "Third Symphony
", also known as the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych). The work is slow and contemplative, and each of the three movements is composed for orchestra and solo soprano. The libretto
for the first movement is taken from a 15th century lament, while the second movement uses the words of a teenage girl, Helena Błażusiak, which she wrote on the wall of a Gestapo
prison cell in Zakopane
to invoke the protection of the Virgin Mary.
The third uses the text of a Silesia
n folk song which describes the pain of a mother searching for a son killed in the Silesian uprisings
. The dominant themes of the symphony are motherhood and separation through war. While the first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, the second movement is from that of a child separated from a parent.
In February 1994, the Kronos Quartet
performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
four concerts honoring postmodern revival of interest in new music. The first three concerts featured string quartets and the works of three living composers: two American (Philip Glass
and George Crumb
) and one Pole (Górecki).
His later work includes a 1995 commission for the Kronos Quartet
entitled "Songs are Sung", "Concerto-Cantata" (written in 1992 for flute and orchestra) and "Kleines Requiem für eine Polka". Both "Concerto-Cantata" and "Kleines Requiem für eine Polka" (1993 for piano and 13 instruments) have been recorded by the London Sinfonietta
and the Schoenberg Ensemble. "Songs are Sung" is his third string quartet and was commissioned in 1992, and inspired by a poem by Velimir Khlebnikov
. When asked why it took almost thirteen years to finish, he replied, "I continued to hold back from releasing it to the world. I don’t know why."
d in London in 2010, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
, but the event was cancelled due to the composer's ill health. He died on November 12, 2010, in his home city of Katowice
, of complications due to a lung infection. Reacting to his death, the head of the Katowice Music Academy, Eugeniusz Knapik
, said "Górecki's work is like a huge boulder that lies in our path and forces us to make a spiritual and emotional effort". Adrian Thomas
, Professor of Music at Cardiff University
, said "The strength and startling originality of Górecki's character shone through his music [...] Yet he was an intensely private man, sometimes impossible, with a strong belief in family, a great sense of humour, a physical courage in the face of unrelenting illness, and a capacity for firm friendship".
Górecki had been awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour, just a month before his death. He received the award from Anna Komorowska, wife of Polish President Bronisław Komorowski, in his hospital bed.
He was married to Jadwiga, a piano teacher. His daughter, Anna Górecka-Stanczyk, is a pianist, and his son, Mikolaj Górecki, a composer.
and Charles Ives
. He himself said that he also feels kindred with such figures as Bach
, Mozart
, and Joseph Haydn
though he has said he feels most affinity towards Franz Schubert
, particularly in terms of tonal design and treatment of basic materials.
Since Górecki's move away from serialism
and dissonance
in the 1970s, he is frequently compared to composers such as Arvo Pärt
, John Tavener
and Giya Kancheli
. The term holy minimalism
is often used to group these composers, due to their shared simplified approach to texture, tonality
and melody
, in works often reflecting deeply held religious beliefs. However, none of these composers has admitted to common influences. His modernist techniques are also compared to Igor Stravinsky
, Béla Bartók
, Paul Hindemith
and Dmitri Shostakovich
.
In 1994 Boguslaw M. Maciejewski published the first biography of Górecki, entitled Górecki – His Music And Our Times. It includes a great deal of detail about the composer's life and work, including the fact that he achieved cult status thanks to valuable exposure on Classic FM
.
The serene Third Symphony (the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) became the focus of his incredible rise in popularity.
Discussing his audience in a 1994 interview, Górecki said,
Górecki received an honorary doctorate from Concordia University, in Montreal
, Quebec, Canada. In a press statement, Concordia Professor Wolfgang Bottenberg described him as one of the "most renowned and respected composers of our time", and stated that Górecki's music "represents the most positive aspects of the closing years of our century, as we try to heal the wounds inflicted by the violence and intolerance of our times. It will endure into the next millennium and inspire other composers". In 2008, he received a further honorary doctorate from the Music Academy in Kraków. At the awarding ceremony a selection of the composer's choral works was performed by the choir of the city's Franciscan Church.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
of contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice
Katowice
Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2...
between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw. His Webernian
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and drew influence from Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...
and Kazimierz Serocki
Kazimierz Serocki
Kazimierz Serocki was a Polish composer and one of the founders of the Warsaw Autumn contemporary music festival.-Life:...
. He continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, but by the mid-1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist
Holy minimalism
Holy minimalism, mystic minimalism, spiritual minimalism, or sacred minimalism are terms used to refer to a number of late-twentieth-century composers of Western classical music, whose works are distinguished by a minimalist compositional aesthetic and a distinctly religious or mystical subject...
sound, exemplified by the transitional Symphony No. 2
Symphony No. 2 (Górecki)
Symphony No. 2, the "Copernican," Op. 31 is a choral symphony composed by Henryk Górecki in 1972 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Composed in a monumental style for solo soprano, baritone, choir and orchestra, it features text from Psalms no...
and the hugely popular Symphony No. 3
Symphony No. 3 (Górecki)
The Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs , is a symphony in three movements composed by Henryk Górecki in Katowice, Poland, between October and December 1976. The work is indicative of the transition between Górecki's dissonant earlier manner and his more tonal...
(Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). This later style developed through several other distinct phases, from such works as his 1979 Beatus Vir, to the choral 1981 hymn Miserere
Miserere (Górecki)
, Op. 44 was written in 1981 by Polish composer Henryk Górecki. Written for large a cappella mixed choir, a typical performance lasts 35 minutes. The text comprises five words: , which are repeated for the first seven sections, resolved by a chorus of in the eleventh and final section...
, the 1993 Kleines Requiem für eine Polka and his requiem Good Night.
Until 1992, Górecki was viewed as a remote and fiery figure known only to a few connoisseurs, primarily as one of a number of composers responsible for sparking a postwar renaissance in Polish music. In 1992, 15 years after it was composed, a recording of his Third Symphony, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
Symphony No. 3 (Górecki)
The Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs , is a symphony in three movements composed by Henryk Górecki in Katowice, Poland, between October and December 1976. The work is indicative of the transition between Górecki's dissonant earlier manner and his more tonal...
—recorded with soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw is an American soprano described as "one of the most consequential performers of our time" by the Los Angeles Times. The recipient of several Grammy Awards and Edison Prize-winning discs, Upshaw is at home both in opera and art song, and in repertoire from Baroque to contemporary...
and released to commemorate the memory of those lost during the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
—became a worldwide commercial and critical success, selling more than a million copies and vastly exceeding the typical lifetime sales of a recording of symphonic music by a 20th-century composer. As surprised as anyone at its popularity, Górecki said, "Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music […] somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something somewhere had been lost to them. I feel that I instinctively knew what they needed." This popular acclaim did not generate wide interest in Górecki's other works, and he pointedly resisted the temptation to repeat earlier success, or compose for commercial reward.
Apart from two brief periods studying in Paris and a short time living in Berlin, Górecki spent most of his life in southern Poland.
Early years
I was born in Silesia....It is old Polish land. But there were always three cultures present: Polish, Czech, and German. The folk art, all the art, had no boundaries. Polish culture is a wonderful mixture. When you look at the history of Poland, it is precisely the multiculturalism, the presence of the so-called minorities that made Poland what it was. The cultural wealth, the diversity mixed and created a new entity. |
| — Henryk Górecki |
Henryk Górecki was born on December 6, 1933, in the village of Czernica
Czernica, Silesian Voivodeship
Czernica is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Gaszowice, within Rybnik County, Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It lies approximately south-west of Gaszowice, west of Rybnik, and south-west of the regional capital Katowice. The village has an approximate population of...
(Silesian Voivodeship) in, Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
, southwest Poland. The Górecki family lived modestly, though both parents had a love of music. His father Roman (1904–1991) worked at the goods office of a local railway station, but was an amateur musician, while his mother Otylia (1909–1935), played piano. Otylia died when her son was just two years old, and many of his early works were dedicated to her memory. Henryk developed an interest in music from an early age, though he was discouraged by both his father and new stepmother to the extent that he was not allowed to play his mother's old piano. However, he persisted, and in 1943 was allowed to take violin lessons with Paweł Hajduga; a local amateur musician, instrument maker and chłopski filozof (peasant philosopher).
In 1945, Górecki fell while playing in a neighbor’s yard and dislocated his hip. The resulting suppurative inflammation
Pyaemia
Pyaemia is a type of septicaemia that leads to widespread abscesses of a metastatic nature. It is usually caused by the staphylococcus bacteria by pus-forming organisms in the blood. Apart from the distinctive abscesses, pyaemia exhibits the same symptoms as other forms of septicaemia...
was misdiagnosed by a local doctor, and delay in proper treatment led to tubercular complications in the bone. The illness went largely untreated for two years, by which time permanent damage had been sustained. He spent the following twenty months in a hospital in Germany, where he underwent four operations. Górecki continued to suffer ill health throughout his life and, as a result, said he had "talked with death often".
Emerging composer: Rydułtowy and Katowice
Szafrankowie Brothers State School of Music
Szafrankowie Brothers State School of Music is a specialist music school located in Rybnik, Silesian Voivodship, Poland...
in Rybnik
Rybnik
Rybnik is a city in southern Poland, in the Silesian Voivodeship. Rybnik is located close to the border with the Czech Republic and just outside the southern border of the largest urban area in Poland, the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union...
, where he studied clarinet, violin, piano, and music theory. Through intensive studying Górecki finished the four year course in just under three years. During this time he began to compose his own pieces, mostly songs and piano miniatures. Occasionally he attempted more ambitious projects—in 1952 he adapted the Adam Mickiewicz ballad Świtezianka, though his work was left unfinished. However, life for the composer during this time was often difficult. Teaching posts were generally badly paid, while the shortage economy
Shortage economy
Shortage economy is a term coined by the Hungarian economist, János Kornai. He used this term to criticize the old centrally-planned economies of the communist states of the Eastern Bloc...
made manuscript paper at times difficult and expensive to acquire. With no access to radio, Górecki kept up to date with music by weekly purchases of such periodicals as Ruch muzyczny (Musical Movement) and Muzyka, and by purchasing at least one score
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
a week.
University of Music in Katowice
University of Music in Katowice is one of the leading musical schools in Poland. It is located in Katowice, Silesia...
, where he studied under the composer Bolesław Szabelski, a former student of the renowned composer Karol Szymanowski
Karol Szymanowski
Karol Maciej Szymanowski was a Polish composer and pianist.-Life:Szymanowski was born into a wealthy land-owning Polish gentry family in Tymoszówka, then in the Russian Empire, now in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. He studied music privately with his father before going to Gustav Neuhaus'...
. As Górecki was later to follow, Szabelski drew much of his inspiration from Polish highland folklore. Szabelski schooled his pupil in a neoclassical reading of counterpoint and motorics, during a period when Górecki was also absorbing the techniques of twelve-tone serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
. He graduated from the Academy with honours in 1960.
Professorship
If you can live without music for two or three days, then don't write – it might be better to spend the time with a girl or with a beer. |
| — Henryk Górecki |
In 1975, Górecki was promoted to Professor of Composition at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice, where his students included Eugeniusz Knapik
Eugeniusz Knapik
Eugeniusz Knapik is a Polish pianist and composer of classical music best known for his 1980 chamber piece String Quartet No. 1. Knapik studied composition and piano with Henryk Górecki and Czesław Stańczyk at the University of Music in Katowice...
, Andrzej Krzanowski
Andrzej Krzanowski
Andrzej Krzanowski was a Polish composer of classical music and accordionist...
and Rafał Augustyn.
Around this time, Górecki came to believe the Polish Communist authorities were interfering too much in the activities of academy, and described them as "little dogs always yapping". As a senior administrator but not a member of the Party
Communist Party of Poland
The Communist Party of Poland is a historical communist party in Poland. It was a result of the fusion of Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and the Polish Socialist Party-Left in the Communist Workers Party of Poland .-1918-1921:The KPRP was founded on 16 December 1918 as...
, he was in almost perpetual conflict with the authorities in his efforts to protect his school, staff and students from undue political influence. In 1979, he resigned from his post in protest at the government's refusal to allow Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
to visit Katowice and formed a local branch of the "Catholic Intellectuals Club"; an organisation devoted to the struggle against the Communist Party. He remained politically active through the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1991, he composed his Miserere
Miserere (Górecki)
, Op. 44 was written in 1981 by Polish composer Henryk Górecki. Written for large a cappella mixed choir, a typical performance lasts 35 minutes. The text comprises five words: , which are repeated for the first seven sections, resolved by a chorus of in the eleventh and final section...
for a large choir in remembrance of police violence against the Solidarity movement.
Style and compositions
Górecki's music covers a variety of styles, but tends towards relative harmonicHarmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
ical simplicity. He is considered to be a founder of the so-called New Polish School. Described by Terry Teachout, he said Górecki has "more conventional array of compositional techniques includes both elaborate counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
and the ritualistic repetition of melodic fragments and harmonic patterns."
His first works, dating from the last half of the 1950s, were in the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
style of Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
(b. 1925) and other serialists
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
of that time. His compositions were not always well received by critics, in 1967 his "Refrain" was described by a British writer with the words, "players can bang and blow and scrape repeated notes as they wish. The experiment might better have been conducted in private."
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Górecki progressively moved away from his early career as radical modernist, and began to compose with a more traditional, romantic mode of expression. His change of style was viewed as an affront to the then avant-garde establishment, and though he continued to receive commissions from various Polish agencies, by the mid 1970s Górecki was no longer regarded as a composer that mattered. In the words of one critic, his "new material was no longer cerebral and sparse; rather, it was intensely expressive, persistently rhythmic and often richly colored in the darkest of orchestral hues".
Early modernist works
The first public performances of Górecki's music in Katowice in February 1958 programmed works clearly displaying the influence of Szymanowski and BartókBéla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
. The Silesian State Philharmonic
Silesian Philharmonic
The Filharmonia Śląska w Katowicach is a music institution in Katowice, Silesia, Poland. The Silesian Philharmonic in Katowice was founded in 1945. The first concert of the orchestra took place on 26 of May 1945. A mixed choir was added in 1973....
in Katowice
Katowice
Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2...
held a concert devoted entirely to the 24-year-old Górecki's music. The event led to a commission to write for the Warsaw Autumn Festival. The Epitafium ("Epitaph") he submitted marked a new phase in his development as a composer, and was described as representing "the most colourful and vibrant expression of the new Polish wave". The Festival announced the composer's arrival on the international scene, and he quickly became a favorite of the West's avant-garde musical elite. Writing in 1991, the music critic James Wierzbicki described how that at this time "Górecki was seen as a Polish heir to the new aesthetic of post-Webernian serialism; with his taut structures, lean orchestrations and painstaking concern for the logical ordering of pitches".
Górecki wrote his First Symphony in 1959, and graduated with honours from the Academy the following year. At the 1960 Warsaw Autumn Festival, his Scontri, written for orchestra, caused a sensation among critics due to its use of sharp contrasts and harsh articulations
Articulation (music)
In music, articulation refers to the musical direction performance technique which affects the transition or continuity on a single note or between multiple notes or sounds.- Types of articulations :...
. By 1961, Górecki was at the forefront of the Polish avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, having absorbed the modernism
Modernism (music)
Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice.- Defining musical modernism :...
of Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
, Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
and Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, and his Symphony No. 1 gained international acclaim at the Paris Biennial Festival of Youth. Górecki moved to Paris to continue his studies, and while there was influenced by contemporaries including Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
, Roman Palester
Roman Palester
Roman Palester was a Polish composer of classical music. Palester composed his most significant work during the 1960s, and in 1964 was the first Polish musician to be awarded the Alfred Jurzykowski Prize. His work was individual in style, and not noticeably Polish in character.Palester was born in...
, and Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
.
He began to lecture at the Academy of Music in Katowice
University of Music in Katowice
University of Music in Katowice is one of the leading musical schools in Poland. It is located in Katowice, Silesia...
in 1968, where he taught score-reading, orchestration and composition. In 1972, he was promoted to assistant professor, and developed a fearsome reputation among his students for his often blunt personality. According to the Polish composer Rafał Augustyn, "When I began to study under Górecki it felt as if someone had dumped a pail of ice-cold water over my head. He could be ruthless in his opinions. The weak fell by the wayside but those who graduated under him became, without exception, respected composers". Górecki admits, "For quite a few years, I was a pedagogue, a teacher in the music academy, and my students would ask me many, many things, including how to write and what to write. I always answered this way: If you can live without music for 2 or 3 days, then don't write…It might be better to spend time with a girl or with a beer…If you cannot live without music, then write.” Due to his commitments as a teacher and also because of bouts of ill health, he composed only intermittently during this period.
Minimalism
By the early 1970s, Górecki had begun to move away from his earlier radical modernism, and was working towards a more traditional, romantic mode of expression. His change of style affronted the avant-garde establishment, and although various Polish agencies continued to commission works from him, Górecki ceased to be viewed as an important composer. One critic later wrote that "Górecki's new material was no longer cerebral and sparse; rather, it was intensely expressive, persistently rhythmic and often richly colored in the darkest of orchestral hues". Górecki progressively rejected the dissonance, serialismSerialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
and sonorism
Sonorism
Sonorism is an approach to musical composition that focuses on the characteristics and qualities of sound. Emphasis is placed on a search for new types of sounds on individual instruments, as well as the creation of textures by combining different instrumental sounds in unusual and unique ways.In...
that had brought him early recognition, and pared and simplified his work. He began to favor large slow gestures and the repetition of small motifs.
Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....
. Written in a monumental style for solo soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
, baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
, choir
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
and orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
, it features text from Psalms
Psalms
The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...
no. 145, 6 and 135 as well as an excerpt from Copernicus' book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus...
. It was composed in two movements, and a typical performance lasts 35 minutes. The symphony was commission by the Kosciuszko Foundation
Kosciuszko Foundation
Kosciuszko Foundation is a charitable foundation based in New York City. It was created by Stephen Mizwa to fund programs that promote Polish-American intellectual and artistic exchange.-History:...
in New York, and presented an early opportunity for Górecki to reach an audience outside of his native Poland. As was usual, he undertook extensive research on the subject, and was in particular concerned with the philosophical implications of Copernicus's discovery, not all of which he viewed as positive. As the historian Norman Davies
Norman Davies
Professor Ivor Norman Richard Davies FBA, FRHistS is a leading English historian of Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland, and the United Kingdom.- Academic career :...
commented, "His discovery of the earth's motion round the sun caused the most fundamental revolutions possible in the prevailing concepts of the human predicament".
By the mid-1980s, his work began to attract a more international audience, and in 1989 the London Sinfonietta
London Sinfonietta
The London Sinfonietta is an English chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble specialises in contemporary music and works across a wide range of genres, performing modern classics alongside world premieres, and includes music by electronica artists as well as folk and...
held weekend of concerts in which his work was played alongside that of the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...
. In 1990, the American Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
commissioned and recorded his First String Quartet, Already It Is Dusk, Op. 62, an occasion that marked the beginning of a long relationship between the quartet and composer.
Górecki's most popular piece is his "Third Symphony
Symphony No. 3 (Górecki)
The Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs , is a symphony in three movements composed by Henryk Górecki in Katowice, Poland, between October and December 1976. The work is indicative of the transition between Górecki's dissonant earlier manner and his more tonal...
", also known as the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych). The work is slow and contemplative, and each of the three movements is composed for orchestra and solo soprano. The libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
for the first movement is taken from a 15th century lament, while the second movement uses the words of a teenage girl, Helena Błażusiak, which she wrote on the wall of a Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
prison cell in Zakopane
Zakopane
Zakopane , is a town in southern Poland. It lies in the southern part of the Podhale region at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. From 1975 to 1998 it was in of Nowy Sącz Province, but since 1999 it has been in Lesser Poland Province. It had a population of about 28,000 as of 2004. Zakopane is a...
to invoke the protection of the Virgin Mary.
The third uses the text of a Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
n folk song which describes the pain of a mother searching for a son killed in the Silesian uprisings
Silesian Uprisings
The Silesian Uprisings were a series of three armed uprisings of the Poles and Polish Silesians of Upper Silesia, from 1919–1921, against German rule; the resistance hoped to break away from Germany in order to join the Second Polish Republic, which had been established in the wake of World War I...
. The dominant themes of the symphony are motherhood and separation through war. While the first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, the second movement is from that of a child separated from a parent.
Later works
Despite the success of the Third Symphony, Górecki resisted temptation to compose again in that style, and according to Allmusic continued to work, not to further his career or reputation, but largely "in response to inner creative dictates".In February 1994, the Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
four concerts honoring postmodern revival of interest in new music. The first three concerts featured string quartets and the works of three living composers: two American (Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
and George Crumb
George Crumb
George Crumb is an American composer of contemporary classical music. He is noted as an explorer of unusual timbres, alternative forms of notation, and extended instrumental and vocal techniques. Examples include seagull effect for the cello , metallic vibrato for the piano George Crumb (born...
) and one Pole (Górecki).
His later work includes a 1995 commission for the Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet
Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
entitled "Songs are Sung", "Concerto-Cantata" (written in 1992 for flute and orchestra) and "Kleines Requiem für eine Polka". Both "Concerto-Cantata" and "Kleines Requiem für eine Polka" (1993 for piano and 13 instruments) have been recorded by the London Sinfonietta
London Sinfonietta
The London Sinfonietta is an English chamber orchestra founded in 1968 and based in London. The ensemble specialises in contemporary music and works across a wide range of genres, performing modern classics alongside world premieres, and includes music by electronica artists as well as folk and...
and the Schoenberg Ensemble. "Songs are Sung" is his third string quartet and was commissioned in 1992, and inspired by a poem by Velimir Khlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov
Velimir Khlebnikov , pseudonym of Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov , was a central part of the Russian Futurist movement, but his work and influence stretch far beyond it.Khlebnikov belonged to Hylaea,...
. When asked why it took almost thirteen years to finish, he replied, "I continued to hold back from releasing it to the world. I don’t know why."
Death
During the last decade of his life, Górecki suffered from frequent illnesses. His Symphony No. 4 was due to be premièrePremiere
A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...
d in London in 2010, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
, but the event was cancelled due to the composer's ill health. He died on November 12, 2010, in his home city of Katowice
Katowice
Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2...
, of complications due to a lung infection. Reacting to his death, the head of the Katowice Music Academy, Eugeniusz Knapik
Eugeniusz Knapik
Eugeniusz Knapik is a Polish pianist and composer of classical music best known for his 1980 chamber piece String Quartet No. 1. Knapik studied composition and piano with Henryk Górecki and Czesław Stańczyk at the University of Music in Katowice...
, said "Górecki's work is like a huge boulder that lies in our path and forces us to make a spiritual and emotional effort". Adrian Thomas
Adrian Thomas
Adrian Thomas is Professor of Music at Cardiff University School of Music. He specializes in Polish Music.-Academic career:Thomas began his professional career at Queen's University Belfast in 1973. Between 1983 and 1984, he was a Visiting Fellow at University of California, San Diego, and after...
, Professor of Music at Cardiff University
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
, said "The strength and startling originality of Górecki's character shone through his music [...] Yet he was an intensely private man, sometimes impossible, with a strong belief in family, a great sense of humour, a physical courage in the face of unrelenting illness, and a capacity for firm friendship".
Górecki had been awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour, just a month before his death. He received the award from Anna Komorowska, wife of Polish President Bronisław Komorowski, in his hospital bed.
He was married to Jadwiga, a piano teacher. His daughter, Anna Górecka-Stanczyk, is a pianist, and his son, Mikolaj Górecki, a composer.
Critical opinion
When placing Górecki in context, musicologists and critics generally compare his work with such composers as Olivier MessiaenOlivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
and Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
. He himself said that he also feels kindred with such figures as Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, and Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
though he has said he feels most affinity towards Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
, particularly in terms of tonal design and treatment of basic materials.
Since Górecki's move away from serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
and dissonance
Consonance and dissonance
In music, a consonance is a harmony, chord, or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance , which is considered to be unstable...
in the 1970s, he is frequently compared to composers such as Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian classical composer and one of the most prominent living composers of sacred music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs his self-made compositional technique, tintinnabuli. His music also finds its inspiration and influence from...
, John Tavener
John Tavener
Sir John Tavener is a British composer, best known for such religious, minimal works as "The Whale", and "Funeral Ikos"...
and Giya Kancheli
Giya Kancheli
Giya Kancheli , born 10 August 1935, in Tbilisi, is a Georgian composer resident in Belgium.Since 1991, Kancheli has lived in Western Europe: first in Berlin, and since 1995 in Antwerp, where he is composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic....
. The term holy minimalism
Holy minimalism
Holy minimalism, mystic minimalism, spiritual minimalism, or sacred minimalism are terms used to refer to a number of late-twentieth-century composers of Western classical music, whose works are distinguished by a minimalist compositional aesthetic and a distinctly religious or mystical subject...
is often used to group these composers, due to their shared simplified approach to texture, tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
and melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
, in works often reflecting deeply held religious beliefs. However, none of these composers has admitted to common influences. His modernist techniques are also compared to Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
and Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
.
In 1994 Boguslaw M. Maciejewski published the first biography of Górecki, entitled Górecki – His Music And Our Times. It includes a great deal of detail about the composer's life and work, including the fact that he achieved cult status thanks to valuable exposure on Classic FM
Classic FM (UK)
Classic FM, one of the United Kingdom's three Independent National Radio stations, broadcasts classical music in a popular and accessible style.-Overview:...
.
The serene Third Symphony (the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) became the focus of his incredible rise in popularity.
Discussing his audience in a 1994 interview, Górecki said,
- I do not choose my listeners. What I mean is, I never write for my listeners. I think about my audience, but I am not writing for them. I have something to tell them, but the audience must also put a certain effort into it. But I never wrote for an audience and never will write for because you have to give the listener something and he has to make an effort in order to understand certain things. If I were thinking of my audience and one likes this, one likes that, one likes another thing, I would never know what to write. Let every listener choose that which interests him. I have nothing against one person liking Mozart or Shostakovich or Leonard Bernstein, but doesn't like Górecki. That's fine with me. I, too, like certain things.
Górecki received an honorary doctorate from Concordia University, in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec, Canada. In a press statement, Concordia Professor Wolfgang Bottenberg described him as one of the "most renowned and respected composers of our time", and stated that Górecki's music "represents the most positive aspects of the closing years of our century, as we try to heal the wounds inflicted by the violence and intolerance of our times. It will endure into the next millennium and inspire other composers". In 2008, he received a further honorary doctorate from the Music Academy in Kraków. At the awarding ceremony a selection of the composer's choral works was performed by the choir of the city's Franciscan Church.
External links
- Henryk Mikołaj Górecki interview with Bruce Duffie
- USC Polish Music Center biography
- Henryk Górecki @ Boosey & Hawkes
- Polish Music Journal, Vol. 6 No. 2, Winter 2003 - A special edition marking Górecki's 70th birthday, consisting of articles exclusively on Górecki
-