Henryk Mikolaj Górecki

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (pronounced [ˈxɛnrɨk mʲiˈkɔwaj guˈrɛ͡tski]) (born December 6, 1933 in Czernica, Silesia, Poland) is a Polish composer of classical music best known for this Third Symphony which became an international success in early 1992, some 16 years after it was written.

Górecki's post-Webernian serialist work of the 1950s and 1960s was characterised by an adherence to dissonant modernism and was influenced by Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Górecki's contemporaries Krzysztof Penderecki and Kazimierz Serocki. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw. Although he continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, in the mid 1970s, he moved towards a 'pure' sacred minimalist sound, notably encapsulated by the 1976 Symphony No. 3 Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Since then, Górecki has remained primarily a religious composer, but has progressed through several other 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 seen as a fiery figure^[1] who was known only to a few connoisseurs; primarily as one of a number of composers responsible for sparking the postwar Polish music renaissance.^[2] 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.^[3] Górecki was as surprised as anyone 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."^[2]

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,^[4] and many of his early works were dedicated to her memory.^[5] Górecki developed an interest in music from an early age, though he was discouraged by both his father and new 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).^[6] 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.^[7] Górecki has continued to suffer ill health throughout his life, and as a result has said he has "talked with death often."^[8]

Between 1951 and 1953, Górecki taught 10 and 11 year olds at a school outside of Rydułtowy, in southern Poland.^[6] 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.^[9]

Górecki began his formal study of music in 1952 at the pedagogical department of the Music High School in Rybnik,^[10] 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.^[11] 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.^{[citation needed]}

Early modernist works

In February 1958, The Silesian State Philharmonic in Katowice held a concert devoted entirely to Górecki's music. The event was a great opportunity for the then twenty four year old composer, and 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,^[2] and was described as representing "the most colourful and vibrant expression of the new Polish wave".^[12] The Festival introduced the composer on the international scene, and he quickly became a favorite of the West's avant-garde musical elite.^[13] 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."^[13]

Górecki wrote his first Symphony in 1959, and graduated with honours from the Academy the following year.^[10] At the 1960 Warsaw Autumn Festival, his "Scontri (Opus 17)", written for orchestra, caused a sensation among critics.^[10]

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,^[10] and became known amongst students for his often blunt personality. Górecki developed a fearsome reputation amongst students; 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."^[1] 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.”^[14]

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."^[13] 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.^[15]

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 Rafał Augustyn.^[16] 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.^[17] Górecki formed a local branch of the "Catholic Intellectuals Club", an organisation devoted to the struggle against the communist party.^[1] He remained politically active through the late 1970s and 1980s. During the mid-1970s, he had composed for a celebration of the Pope's visit to Poland, while 1981's "Miserere" was written for a large choir to remember police violence enacted against the Solidarity movement.

Górecki's more recent work includes a 1995 commission for the Kronos Quartet entitled "...songs are sung", and "Concerto-Cantata", written in 1992 for flute and orchestra and 1993's "Kleines Requiem für eine Polka". Both "Concerto-Cantata" and "Kleines Requiem für eine Polka" have been recorded by the London Sinfonietta and the Schoenberg Ensemble. ^[18]

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

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 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."^[13]

Lemminkainen's Mother (1897) by Akseli Gallen-Kallela is an earlier evocation of the themes of motherhood and war explored in Symphony No. 3.

Górecki's most popular piece is his Third Symphony, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych). Slow and contemplative, the three movements are composed for orchestra and solo soprano. The liberato for the first movement is taken from a 15th century lament; while second movement uses the words of a teenage girl, Helena Błażusiak, which she wrote on the wall of a Gestapo prison cell in Zakopane to invoke the protection of the Virgin Mary. 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.^[19] 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.

Critical opinion

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 himself has 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.^[20]

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.^[20] 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.

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.^[14]

Górecki received an honorary doctorate from the Concordia University, in Quebec, Canada. The press statement, the University described him as "most renowned and respected composers of our time", and stated that Górecki's music "represents the most positive aspects of the closing years of our century, as we try to heal the wounds inflicted by the violence and intolerance of our times. It will endure into the next millennium and inspire other composers".^[21] In 2008, he received a further honorary doctorate from the Music Academy in Krakow. At the awarding cermony a selection of the composer's choral works was preformed by the choir of the city's Franciscan Church.^[22]

Sound files

Citations

Bibliography

• Adam Mickiewicz Institute. "Henryk Mikołaj Górecki". Polish Music Information Center, November 2001.
• Howard, Luke B. Motherhood, 'Billboard', and the Holocaust: Perceptions and Receptions of Górecki's Symphony No. 3. Musical Quarterly 82, no. 1, Spring, 1998. 131–59.
• Jacobson, Bernard. 1996. A Polish Renaissance. Twentieth-Century Composers. London: Phaidon. ISBN 0-7148-3251-0
• Mirka, Danuta. "Górecki's Musica Geometrica". The Musical Quarterly 87:305–32, 2004.
• Perlez, Jane. Henryk Gorecki. New York Times, February 27, 1994.
• Steinberg, Michael. The Symphony: A Listener's Guide. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-1951-2665-3
• Thomas, Adrian. Górecki. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-1981-6393-2 (cloth) ISBN 0-1981-6394-0
• Wierzbicki, James. 1991. "Henryk Gorecki". St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7 July, 1991. Retrieved on 24 October, 2008.

External links

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