In Memoriam: Henryk Gorecki (1933-2010)

Photo by Gerry Hurkmans

(Nov. 15, 2010) - Polish composer Henryk Gorecki, whose powerful music gave voice to the sorrows of war and loss, has died today in Katowice after a lengthy illness. The news was announced by his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, and by Polish Radio's National Symphony Orchestra.

To international listeners, his best-known work is his Symphony No. 3, "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." Though written in 1976, the piece--which incorporated 15th-century choral music, a Silesian folk song, and a text that used words written by a teenage girl on the wall of a Gestapo prison cell--skyrocketed to worldwide acclaim and popularity in 1992, when it was recorded by conductor David Zinman, the American soprano Dawn Upshaw, and the London Sinfonietta. That recording for Nonesuch went on to sell more than a million copies, an astonishing number for any classical album, let alone one of serious contemporary music. Not only did this recording top the classical music charts in both the US and the UK, but also reached No. 6 on the UK main pop chart. Since then, more than a dozen other recordings have been made of this elegiac work.

Born in the southwestern region of Silesia to two amateur violinists, he first studied music in both Rybnik and Katowice before becoming a music professor in the latter city. By the mid-1950s, when artists within the Soviet bloc had begun to experience a slightly easier time after the diminution of Stalinism, he had started to gain recognition as an avant-gardist, but one who also incorporated folk influences as well, in works that bore influences of both Bartok and his countryman Szymanowski. But by the late 1950s and early 1960s, in such works as the Symphony No. 1 (1959) and Genesis (1962-63), he had begun to cleave more strictly to the high European modernism practiced by Boulez and others. However, he also wrote other works that connected clearly to his cultural roots, such as 1963's Three Pieces in Old Style and Muzyka staropolska (Old Polish Music), written between 1967 and 1969.

Choral music and pieces incorporating voice were an important vehicle for Gorecki; his pieces like 1979's Beatus Vir and other smaller-scaled works suited him during this era, which was rife with both political issues and health problems. (He was politically visible; for example, he resigned his post as a composition professor in Katowice to protest the authorities' refusal to allow John Paul II a visit to his own homeland. In fact, before he was elected to the papacy, it was Karol Wojtyla who commissioned Beatus Vir to mark the 9ooth anniversary of the martyr Stanislaw, whom Pope John Paul II eventually made a saint.

But as Poland emerged from the Soviet Union's long shadow in the late 1980s, Gorecki's music also attracted wider attention, particularly in western Europe and the United States. As a result, he wrote three string quartets for the Kronos Quartet: 1988's Already It Is Dusk, Quasi una fantasia (1991) and ...songs are sung (1995).

At the time of the composer's death, he was working on a now unfinished Fourth Symphony, which had been commissioned by a consortium that included the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Southbank Centre in London, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the ZaterdagMatinee, a concert series held at the Concertgebouw that is presented by Dutch public radio.

Gorecki is survived by his wife, Jadwiga, his daughter Anna (a pianist), and his son Mikolaj, who is also a composer.