Henryk Gorecki, Polish composer of surprise hit 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,' dies at 76
By Matt SchudelWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 12, 2010; 10:10 PM
Henryk Gorecki, a Polish composer whose hauntingly beautiful Symphony No. 3, the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," became a recording phenomenon of the early 1990s, surpassing Madonna and Michael Jackson on the British pop charts, died Nov. 12 at a hospital in Katowice, Poland. He was 76 and had a lung infection and other ailments.
Mr. Gorecki (pronounced go-RETZ-kee), who was also a leading voice of Polish dissent under communist rule, was as surprised as anyone when his lyrical symphony for orchestra and solo soprano captured the public imagination and shot up the charts. The 52-minute composition contains three movements, each with an achingly plaintive lyric sung in Polish.
When the symphony was first performed in 1977, it received unfavorable reviews. Critics complained that Mr. Gorecki, whose music had been aggressively dissonant in his youth, was no longer a serious composer.
In fact, he had found a more simplified and melodic approach, built on his love of the rich Polish folk tradition and the great composers of the past.
His Third Symphony had been recorded twice in Eastern Europe and was used in the credits of Maurice Pialat's 1985 film "Police," but it didn't take off until 1992, when the Nonesuch label released a new recording featuring the limpid voice of the American soprano Dawn Upshaw. Her performance with the London Sinfonietta, conduced by David Zinman, touched an immediate nerve with listeners who found it a work of profound spiritual depth.
"There are several reasons for the popularity of Gorecki's music," critic Joseph McLellan wrote in The Washington Post in 1995. "He is less concerned with the structural subtleties or stylistic innovations that preoccupied so many composers in the post-World War II generation. Instead, his music communicates pure emotion."
The Upshaw recording sold 800,000 copies in three years and reached No. 6 on the British pop charts, overtaking albums by Madonna, Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger. In the United States, it was on Billboard's classical charts for almost three years and spent 38 weeks at No. 1.
Mr. Gorecki was the first living classical composer to have a pop hit in Britain and the first to have an album reach No. 1 on the U.S. classical charts.
"It is a wonder, a miracle," he told Gramophone magazine in 1993. "But I must not think about this too much, I must not take it to heart because it will spoil me."
Mr. Gorecki, who subtitled his work the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," used a different Polish text in each of three movements. The first consists of a liturgical work from the 15th century, "Lament for the Holy Cross," sung over a hypnotic figure that begins in the double basses and slowly builds.
The text of the second movement is a prayer written during World War II on the wall of a Nazi prison in the Tatra Mountains of Poland, near Mr. Gorecki's childhood home.
"No, Mother, do not weep," an 18-year-old girl scratched in concrete. "Most chaste queen of heaven, support me always."
The final movement, with echoes of melodies by Chopin and Beethoven, includes the words of a Polish folk song in which a mother mourns the loss of her son in battle.
The total effect is a powerful mood of despair mixed with hope that many listeners interpret as a commentary on the Holocaust or on the repression Poland faced under communist rule. Mr. Gorecki stepped aside to allow people to hear what they wanted in his music.
"Perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music," he said. "Somehow I hit the right note, something they were missing. Something, somewhere had been lost to them."
Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki was born Dec. 6, 1933, in Czernica, a small town in the Polish region of Silesia. His mother died when he was 2, and several members of his family were killed in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
Mr. Gorecki showed little interest in music until his teens, when he traded a table tennis paddle for a score of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which he studied obsessively for years. He taught in a primary school while attending music school and then enrolled in a more advanced conservatory in Katowice, graduating in 1960.
He was an important figure in the Polish avant-garde musical movement of the 1950s and began teaching at his alma mater in the 1960s.
After writing dozens of works in a jagged, percussive style, he began to reflect his newfound interest in folk music and lyricism with his Symphony No. 2, the "Copernican," in 1972.
After writing a work on commission for the archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla, who later became Pope John II, Mr. Gorecki resigned his teaching position when communist authorities restricted the pope's travels in Poland in 1979.
Mr. Gorecki formed a group of intellectuals opposed to communist ruled and, in 1981, composed a choral work, "Miserere," dedicated to the Polish Solidarity movement.
After the fall of communism, Mr. Gorecki was free to travel, and he spent 1997 as a composer at the University of Southern California. Mostly, however, he stayed at home, where he composed late at night in a room filled with crucifixes and religious images. He wrote dozens of works for string quartet, chamber groups and orchestra, including "Little Requiem for a Polka" (1993) and the 1990 vocal requiem, "Good Night."
He had completed his Symphony No. 4 shortly before his death, but the scheduled premiere in London this fall was postponed because of Mr. Gorecki's health.
Survivors include his wife, Jadwiga; two children; and five grandchildren.
"When you think about the great composers, you have to be humble," Mr. Gorecki told The Post in 1995. "I will die without learning the secrets of Chopin, Bach, Mahler.
"What is it? You hear very simple sounds; you look at the notes in a Schubert song and there is nothing special, but it is a masterpiece. Why? A mystery."
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111206879.html
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