(December 6, 1933 – November 12, 2010)
Until 1992, Górecki was viewed as a remote and fiery figure[10] known only to a few connoisseurs, primarily as one of a number of composers responsible for sparking a postwar renaissance in Polish music.[11] 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."[11] This popular success did not generate wide interest in Górecki's other works,[12] 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
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.[17] Górecki continued to suffer ill health throughout his life and, as a result, said he had "talked with death often".[18]
Emerging composer: Rydułtowy and Katowice
Górecki continued his formal study of music at the Katowice Academy of Music,[21] 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.[10] 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.[22] He graduated from the Academy with honours in 1960.
Professorship
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".[10] 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.[21] In 1979 he resigned from his post in protest at the government's refusal to allow Pope John Paul II to visit Katowice[24] and formed a local branch of the "Catholic Intellectuals Club"; an organisation devoted to the struggle against the Communist Party.[10] 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.[8]
Style and compositions
See also: List of compositions by Henryk Górecki
Górecki's music covers a variety of styles, but tends towards relative harmonic and rhythmical simplicity. He is considered to be a founder of the so-called New Polish School.[25][26] 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."[27]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."[28]
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".[29]
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 Bartók. 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,[11] and was described as representing "the most colourful and vibrant expression of the new Polish wave".[30] 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.[29] 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".[29]Górecki wrote his First Symphony in 1959, and graduated with honours from the Academy the following year.[21] 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.[21][31] 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.[5]
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,[21] 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".[10] 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.”[32] Due to his commitments as a teacher and also because of bouts of ill health, he composed only intermittently during this period.[33]
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".[29] Górecki progressively rejected the dissonance, serialism 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.[34]
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.[38] 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.[39]
Main article: Symphony No. 3 (Górecki)
The third uses the text of a Silesian folk song which describes the pain of a mother searching for a son killed in the Silesian uprisings.[41] 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".[42]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).[27]
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.[43] "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."[44]
Personal life
He was married to Jadwiga, a piano teacher. His daughter, Anna Górecka-Stanczyk, is a pianist, and his son, Mikolaj Górecki, a composer.[45]Death
During the last decade of his life, Górecki suffered from frequent illnesses.[46] His Symphony No. 4 was due to be premièred in London in 2010, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, but the event was cancelled due to the composer's ill health.[46][47] He died on November 12, 2010, in his home city of Katowice, of complications due to a lung infection.[48] 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".[49] 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".[46]Górecki had been awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour, just a month before his death.[1] He received the award from Anna Komorowska,[50] wife of Polish President Bronisław Komorowski, in his hospital bed.[48]
Critical opinion
When placing Górecki in context, musicologists and critics generally compare his work with such composers as Olivier Messiaen and Charles Ives.[51] 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.[51]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.[31][51] 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.[27]
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,
- 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.[32]
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