Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (born December 6, 1933 in Czernica, Silesia, Poland) is a Polish composer of classical music. His work in the late 1950s and 1960s was characterised by a dissonant modernism influenced by Nono, Stockhausen and Górecki's contemporaries Penderecki and Serocki. In the mid 1970s, he moved towards a 'pure' sacred minimalist sound, encapsulated by the 1976 Symphony No. 3 Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Though he has remained primarily a religious composer, Górecki has progressed through several distinct styles, from the reverence of Beatus Vir (1979), to the meditative Miserere (1981) to the spiritualism of Good Night (1990).

Though he spent two brief periods studying in Paris and a short time in Berlin, Górecki has remained for most of his life in his native southern Poland. Until 1992, he was known only to a few connoisseurs, primarily as one of a number of composers responsible for sparking the postwar Polish music renaissance. That year Elektra-Nonesuch released a recording of his fifteen year-old Symphony No. 3, which topped the classical charts in the UK. Within two years Symphony No. 3 had sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide—at least four hundred times the expected lifetime sales of a recording of a symphony by a relatively unknown twentieth-century composer. However the recording's success failed to arouse interest in other works by the composer. Górecki was as surprised as anyone else at the recording's success and 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."

Biography

Early years

Henryk Górecki was born on December 6, 1933, in the village of Czernica (near Rybnik), Silesia in Poland. The Górecki family lived modestly, though both parents had a love of music. His father Roman (1904-1991) was an amateur musician, while his mother, Otylia (1909-1935) played piano. Otylia died when her son was just two years old, and many of his early works were dedicated to her memory. Górecki developed an interest in music from an early age, though he was discouraged by both his father and stepmother to the extent that he was not allowed to play his mother's old piano. However, he persisted, and in 1943 was allowed to take violin lesson with Pawel Hajduga, a local amateur musician, instrument maker, and 'chłopski filozof' (peasant philosopher). Around 1945, Górecki slipped while playing in a neighbor’s yard and dislocated his hip. The resulting suppurative inflammation was misdiagnosed by a local doctor, and 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, during which time he underwent four operations. Górecki has continued to suffer ill health throughout his life, and as a result has said he has "talked with death often.

Between 1951 and 1953, Górecki taught 10 and 11 year olds at a school outside of Rydułtowy, in southern Poland. In 1952, he began a teacher training course at the Intermediate School of Music in Rybnik, where he studied clarinet, violin, piano, and music theory. Through intensive studying Górecki finished the four year course in just under three years. During this time he began to compose his own pieces, usually songs and piano miniatures. Occasionally he attempted more ambitious projects—in 1952 he adapted the Adam Mickiewicz ballad Świtezianka, though his work was left unfinished.

Górecki began his formal study of music in 1952 at the pedagogical department of the Music High School in Rybnik, where he studied under the composer Bolesław Szabelski, a former student of Karol Szymanowski. Szabelski schooled his pupil in a neoclassical reading of contrapunctual and motorics; at the same time Górecki absorbed the rules of twelve-tone serialism. His first public performances were held in Katowice in February 1958, and the works performed displayed clear influence from Szymanowski and Bartók. By 1961, Górecki had progressed to the modernism of Anton Webern, Iannis Xenakis and Pierre Boulez, and was at the forefront of the Polish avant-garde, while 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 such contemporaries as Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Roman Palester, and Karlheinz Stockhausen; composers who were at the time suppressed in Poland by the communist authorities.

Early modernist works

In February 1958, The Silesian State Philharmonic in Katowice held a concert devoted entirely to Górecki's music, and the event proved to be great opportunity for the then twenty four year old composer. The performance led to a commission to write for the Warsaw Autumn Festival. The Epitafium (Epitaph) he submitted introduced a new phase in his development, and was described as representing "the most colourful and vibrant expression of the new Polish wave". The Warsaw Autumn Festival introduced the composer on the international scene, and he quickly became a favorite of the West's avant-garde elite. 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."

In 1959, he wrote his Symphony No. 1, and graduated with honours from the Academy the following year. At the Warsaw Autumn Festival In September 1960, his Scontri (Opus 17), written for orchestra, caused a sensation among critics. Górecki 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, and became known amongst students for his often blunt personality. Górecki developed a fearsome reputation amongst students' the Polish composer Rafal Augustyn remembers, "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." According to Górecki, “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.”

Minimalism

By the early 1970s, Górecki had begun to move away from his early career as radical modernist, and towards a more traditional, romantic mode of expression. His change of style was seen as an affront by the avant-garde establishment, and though he continued to receive commissions from various Polish agencies, he ceased to be viewed as a composer that mattered. 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." As Górecki progressively rejected the dissonant, serialist, and sonorist mannerisms that had brought him fame, he pared and simplified his musical materials. He began to favor large slow gestures, and the repetition of small motifs.

In 1975, Górecki was promoted to Professor of Composition at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice. Among his students were Eugeniusz Knapik, Andrzej Krzanowski, and Rafal Augustyn. However the academy at the time received a high level of interference from the Polish communist authorities. As a senior administrator, but not a member of the party, Górecki was in almost perpetual warfare with the authorities in an effort to protect his school, staff, and students from political influence.

He resigned his post in 1979, in protest at the government’s refusal to allow Pope John Paul II visit Katowice. Górecki formed a local branch of the "Catholic Intellectuals Club", an organisation devoted to the struggle against the communist party. He remained politically active through the late 1970s and 1980s. During the mid-1970s, he had composed for a celebration of Pope John Paul II's visit to Poland, while 1981's Miserere was written to commemorate police violence enacted against the Solidarity movement.

Górecki's more recent work includes a 1995 commission for the Kronos Quartet entitled, ...songs are sung as well as Concerto-Cantata (1992) for flute and orchestra and Kleines Requiem für eine Polka (1993) Both Concerto-Cantata and Kleines Requiem für eine Polka have been recorded by the London Sinfonietta and the Schoenberg Ensemble.

Górecki is married to the pianist Jadwiga Rurańska and has two children—Anna, also a pianist, and Mikolaj, a composer.

Style and compositions

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 New Polish School, and his first works were in the avant-garde style of Pierre Boulez and other serialists. 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 had ceased to be a composer that mattered. In the words of one critic, "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."

Górecki's most popular piece is his Third Symphony, subtitled Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych). Slow and contemplative, the three movements are composed for orchestra and solo soprano. The words of the first movement are from a 15th century lament; the words of the second from a teenage girl, Helena Błażusiak, written on the wall of a Gestapo prison cell in Zakopane to invoke the protections of the Virgin Mary; the third movement uses a folk song.

When placing Górecki in the context of the history of modern art, musicologist and critics generally compare his work with such composers as Olivier Messiaen and Charles Ives. He has said that he 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.

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. The term "holy minimalism" is often used to group these composers, due to their sharing a simplified approach to musical texture, tonality, and melody, in works often reflecting religious beliefs. However, none of these composers has admitted to common influences.

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. The same thing is true of poetry, of paintings, of books. 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.

Sound files

Year	Song title	Work	Instrumentation
1972:	"Symphony No. 2"	Symphony No. 2 'Copernican', Op. 31	Baritone, Soprano and orchestra
1981:	"Miserere"	Miserere, Op. 44	Mixed choir
1986:	"Molto Lento"	Lerchenmusik, Op. 53	Flute, Clarinet, Soprano, Trumpet, Trombone, Percussion.

Citations

Bibliography

• Adam Mickiewicz Institute. " Henryk Mikołaj Górecki". Polish Music Information Center, November 2001; updated 2004.
• Howard, Luke B. 1998. "Motherhood, Billboard, and the Holocaust: Perceptions and Receptions of Górecki's Symphony No. 3", Musical Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Spring): 131–59.
• Jacobson, Bernard. 1996. A Polish Renaissance. Twentieth-Century Composers. London: Phaidon. ISBN 0714832510
• Mirka, Danuta. 2004. "Górecki's Musica Geometrica". The Musical Quarterly 87:305–32.
• Perlez, Jane. 1994. "Henryk Gorecki". New York Times (February 27).
• Steinberg, Michael. 1995. The Symphony: A Listener's Guide. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195061772 ISBN 0-1951-2665-3
• Thomas, Adrian. 1997. Górecki. Oxford Studies of Composers. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198163932 (cloth) ISBN 0198163940 (pbk.)
• Wierzbicki, James. 1991. " Henryk Gorecki". St. Louis Post-Dispatch (7 July).

External links

• Henryk Mikołaj Górecki interview with Bruce Duffie
• USC Polish Music Center biography
• Henryk Górecki @ Boosey & Hawkes