Henryk Górecki

Henryk Górecki (born Dec. 6, 1933, Czernica, near Rybnik, Pol.—died Nov. 12, 2010, Katowice) was a Polish composer in the Western classical tradition whose sombre Symphony No. 3 (1976) enjoyed extraordinary international popularity in the late 20th century.

Górecki studied at the Music Academy of Katowice, Pol. The works of Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen, and Karlheinz Stockhausen informed Górecki’s often atonal and violent early compositions. A change in his compositional style came in 1963 when, challenged to write simple tunes, he created Three Pieces in Old Style for orchestra. Folk songs, medieval music, and references to his Roman Catholic faith characterized his subsequent work, which frequently was based on tragic themes and cast in very slow tempi. “I want to express great sorrow,” Górecki said, as he contemplated various conflicts and hardships across the globe. “This sorrow, it burns inside me.”

Górecki was elected provost of his alma mater, the Music Academy in Katowice, in 1975, but he resigned in protest four years later when the government refused to let Pope John Paul II visit the city. He then traveled to Kraków to conduct his choral work Beatus Vir for the pope and composed new pieces for subsequent papal visits to Poland. Górecki’s Miserere, also a choral composition, was written in 1981 to honour a Solidarity (Polish labour union) leader beaten by the militia; however, because of turbulent political circumstances, it was not until 1987 that the piece was performed.

Until 1991 only one of Górecki’s works, Monologhi (1960), was available in the United States. By the end of 1993, however, some half dozen other compositions by Górecki had been recorded and distributed on a major international label. In part, the widespread interest in Górecki’s music may have been related to Poland’s emergence in 1989 from nearly five decades of communist rule. (Several of Górecki’s early works were indeed described as symbolic anticommunist protests.) In large measure, however, the composer’s rise in prominence was the result of the tremendously successful recording in 1992 of his Symphony No. 3: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs performed by soprano Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta, conducted by David Zinman. The album sold more than half a million copies worldwide at a time when the average classical album typically sold about 15,000 copies. Suddenly Górecki, who had seldom ventured beyond Katowice, became an international celebrity, traveling to London, Brussels, and New York City, holding press conferences, and appearing as the subject of a British television special.

Symphony No. 3 consists of three movements in slow lento and largo tempi and is played at low dynamic levels throughout. It is based on a modal canon that gradually builds upward from low strings to the soprano voice, which enters with pastoral melody, suggesting an element of light amid otherwise dark shadows. The texts are Polish lamentations: a 15th-century monastic song, a folk song, and a prayer scratched in a cell wall by a girl imprisoned by the Gestapo. The repeated orchestral lines recall, to some listeners, minimalist techniques (a compositional style employing extreme simplicity of form). Upshaw’s performance in particular was highly acclaimed by critics, although praise for the Symphony No. 3 was not universal. Some critics dismissed it as simplistic.

In the decade straddling the turn of the 21st century, Górecki composed or revised roughly 15 works, consisting mainly of vocal compositions and pieces for small ensemble. Górecki’s final work—The Song of Rodziny Katynskie, Opus 81, for unaccompanied chorus—was completed in 2004 and premiered by the Polish Radio Choir in Kraków in 2005.