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Henryk Górecki

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Henryk Górecki was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. He was born in 1933 in Czernica, in the south of Poland, and studied in Rybnik and Katowice. There he later became a teacher and provost of the music academy. He had poor health from a leg disease in his youth. His mother died when he was two, and he dedicated many early works to her.

Music and breakthrough

In the 1950s and 1960s he was known as a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde. His work was then dissonant and modernist, influenced by Webern, Nono, Stockhausen and Penderecki. In the mid-1970s he chose a simpler, religious minimalism. An example is the Symphony No. 3, nicknamed the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, from 1976. The work consists of slow movements with soprano, in which short motifs return again and again.

Influence

Until the late 1980s hardly anyone outside Poland knew him. That changed in 1992, when a recording of the symphony with soprano Dawn Upshaw and conductor David Zinman became a worldwide success and sold more than a million copies, far more than a classical record by a twentieth-century composer usually achieves. Górecki himself did not want to repeat that success and went on his own way. He shows that quiet, slow music, too, can move a large audience.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to the slow movement Lento e largo and notice how the music hardly moves forward. Hear how the soprano appears above the slowly swelling strings.

Discography

Studio albums

Mentioned in other articles

See also

Categories: ArtistsHoly minimalism