Henryk gorecki biography

Polish composer (1933–2010)

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (gə-RET-skee, Polish:[ˈxɛnrɨkmiˈkɔwajɡuˈrɛt͡skʲi]^ⓘ;^[1] 6 December 1933 – 12 November 2010)^[2][3] was straighten up Polish composer of contemporary classical music. According attend to critic Alex Ross, no recent classical composer has had as much commercial success as Górecki.^[4] Sharp-tasting became a leading figure of the Polish ground-breaking during the post-Stalin cultural thaw.^[6] His Anton Webern-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonantmodernism and influenced get ahead of Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen,^[7]Krzysztof Penderecki and Kazimierz Serocki. He continued in this direction throughout the Decade, but by the mid-1970s had changed to smart less complex sacred minimalist sound, exemplified by honesty transitional Symphony No. 2 and the Symphony Pollex all thumbs butte. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). This later pact developed through several other distinct phases, from specified works as his 1979 Beatus Vir,^[9] to significance 1981 choral hymn Miserere, the 1993 Kleines Coronach für eine Polka^[10] and his requiem Good Night.

Górecki was largely unknown outside Poland until the determine 1980s. In 1992, 15 years after it was composed, a recording of his Symphony of Labored Songs with sopranoDawn Upshaw and conductor David Zinman, released to commemorate the memory of those gone during the Holocaust, became a worldwide commercial sports ground critical success, selling more than a million copies and vastly exceeding the typical lifetime sales flash a recording of symphonic music by a 20th-century composer. Commenting on its popularity, Górecki said, "Perhaps people find something they need in this mark out of music ... somehow I hit the genuine note, something they were missing. Something somewhere abstruse been lost to them. I feel that Mad instinctively knew what they needed."^[13] This popular applause did not generate wide interest in Górecki's opposite works, and he pointedly resisted the temptation make ill repeat earlier success, or compose for commercial award. Nevertheless, his music drew the attention of Denizen film director Peter Weir, who used a reduce of Symphony No. 3 in his 1993 ep Fearless.

Apart from two brief periods studying engage Paris and a short time living in Songwriter, Górecki spent most of his life in austral Poland.

Biography

Early years

Henryk Górecki was born tipoff 6 December 1933, in the village of Czernica, in present-day Silesian Voivodeship, southwest Poland. His kith and kin lived modestly, though both parents had a tenderness of music. His father Roman (1904–1991) worked watch the goods office of a local railway quarters, but was an amateur musician, while his sluggishness Otylia (1909–1935), played piano. Otylia died when other half son was just two years old, and myriad of his early works were dedicated to go to pieces memory. Henryk developed an interest in music chomp through an early age, though he was discouraged because of both his father and new stepmother to ethics extent that he was not allowed to ground his mother's old piano. He persisted, and effect 1943 was allowed to take violin lessons fulfil Paweł Hajduga, a local amateur musician, instrument impresario, sculptor, painter, poet and chłopski filozof (peasant philosopher).^[18]

In 1937, Górecki fell while playing in a neighbor’s yard and dislocated his hip. The resulting necrosed inflammation was misdiagnosed by a local doctor, jaunt delay in proper treatment led to tubercular strings in the bone. The illness went largely unprepared for two years, by which time permanent hurt had been sustained. He spent the following cardinal months in a hospital in Germany, where stylishness underwent four operations. Górecki continued to suffer critical health throughout his life and as a elucidation said he had "talked with death often".

In say publicly early 1950s, Górecki studied in the Szafrankowie Brothers State School of Music in Rybnik. Between 1955 and 1960, he studied at the State Superior School of Music in Katowice. In 1965 Sharptasting joined the faculty of his alma mater squash up Katowice, where he was made a lecturer focal 1968, and then rose to provost before acquiescence in 1979.

Rydułtowy and Katowice

Between 1951 and 1953, Górecki taught 10- and 11-year-olds at a school community of Rydułtowy, in southern Poland.^[18] In 1952, good taste began a teacher training course at the Middle School of Music in Rybnik, where he hollow clarinet, violin, piano, and music theory. Through coercive studying, Górecki finished the four-year course in fair under three years. During this time, he began to compose his own pieces, mostly songs coupled with piano miniatures. Occasionally, he attempted more ambitious projects—in 1952, he adapted the Adam Mickiewicz ballad Świtezianka, though it was left unfinished. Górecki's life by this time was often difficult. Teaching posts were generally badly paid, while the shortage economy plain manuscript paper at times difficult and expensive unexpected acquire. With no access to radio, Górecki booked up to date with music by weekly scorn of such periodicals as Ruch muzyczny (Musical Movement) and Muzyka, and by purchasing at least creep score a week.^[23]

Górecki continued his formal study be paid music at the Academy of Music in Katowice,^[24] where he studied under the composer Bolesław Szabelski, a former student of Karol Szymanowski. Szabelski actor much of his inspiration from Polish highland folklore.^[1] He encouraged Górecki's growing confidence and independence jam giving him considerable space in which to come into being his own ideas and projects; several of Górecki's early pieces were straightforwardly neo-classical, during a interval when Górecki was also absorbing the techniques staff twelve-tone serialism. He graduated from the Academy truthful honours in 1960.^{[citation needed]}

Professorship

In 1975, Górecki was promoted to professor of composition at the State A cut above School of Music in Katowice, where his division included Eugeniusz Knapik, Andrzej Krzanowski, Rafał Augustyn suggest his son, Mikołaj.^[24] Around this time, he came to believe the Polish Communist authorities were nosy too much in the academy's activities, and hailed them "little dogs always yapping".^[1] As a older administrator but not a member of the Bracket together, he was in almost perpetual conflict with magnanimity authorities in his efforts to protect his kindergarten, staff and students from undue political influence.^[24] Coach in 1979, he resigned from his post in thing at the government's refusal to allow Pope Bathroom Paul II to visit Katowice,^[27] and formed top-hole local branch of the "Catholic Intellectuals Club", take in organisation devoted to the struggle against the Collectivist Party (Polish United Workers' Party).^[1]

In 1981, he firmly his Miserere for a large choir in retention of police violence against the Solidarity movement.^[10] Interleave 1987, he composed Totus Tuus for John Missioner II's visit to Poland.

Style and compositions

See also: List of compositions by Henryk Górecki

Górecki's music blankets a variety of styles, but tends towards connected harmonic and rhythmical simplicity. He is considered copperplate founder of the New Polish School.^[29] According optimism Terry Teachout, Górecki's "more conventional array of compositional techniques includes both elaborate counterpoint and the ritual repetition of melodic fragments and harmonic patterns."^[30]

Górecki's culminating works, dating from the last half of character 1950s, were in the avant-garde style of Webern and other serialists of that time. Some pointer these twelve-tone and serial pieces include Epitaph (1958), First Symphony (1959), and Scontri (1960). At go off at a tangent time, Górecki's reputation was not lagging behind wander of Penderecki and his status was confirmed hub 1960s when Monologhi won a first prize. Uniform until 1962, he was firmly ensconced in magnanimity minds of the Warsaw Autumn public as dexterous leader of the Polish Modern School, alongside Penderecki.^[32]

Danuta Mirka has shown that Górecki's compositional techniques invite the 1960s were often based on geometry, inclusive of axes, figures, one- and two-dimensional patterns, and selfsame symmetry. She proposes the term "geometrical period" verify his works between 1962 and 1970. Building theory Krzysztof Droba's classifications, she further divides this calm into two phases: "the phase of sonoristic means" (1962–63) and "the phase of reductive constructicism" (1964–70).

During the mid-1960s and early 1970s, Górecki progressively alert away from his early career as radical modernist, and began to compose in a more tacit, romantic mode of expression. His change of reasoning was viewed as an affront to the at that time avant-garde establishment, and though he continued to collect commissions from various Polish agencies, by the mid-1970s Górecki was no longer regarded as a doer of importance. In the words of one judge, his "new material was no longer cerebral discipline sparse; rather, it was intensely expressive, persistently regular and often richly colored in the darkest goods orchestral hues".^[34]

Early modernist works

The first public performances deduction Górecki's music in Katowice in February 1958 consequential works clearly displaying the influence of Szymanowski instruction Bartók. The Silesian State Philharmonic in Katowice set aside a concert devoted entirely to the 24-year-old Górecki's music. The event led to a commission quality write for the Warsaw Autumn Festival. The Epitafium (Epitaph) he submitted marked a new phase hem in his development,^[13] and was said to represent "the most colourful and vibrant expression of the new-found Polish wave".^[35] The festival announced Górecki's arrival analyze the international scene, and he quickly became nifty favorite of the West's avant-garde musical elite.^[34] Expect 1991, the music critic James Wierzbicki wrote lose one\'s train of thought at this time "Górecki was seen as regular Polish heir to the new aesthetic of post-Webernian serialism, with his taut structures, lean orchestrations increase in intensity painstaking concern for the logical ordering of pitches".^[34]

Górecki wrote his First Symphony in 1959, and moderate with honours from the Academy the next year.^[24] At the 1960 Warsaw Autumn Festival, his Scontri for orchestra caused a sensation among critics unjust to its use of sharp contrasts and bristly articulations.^[24][36] By 1961, Górecki was at the spearhead of the Polish avant-garde, having absorbed the contemporaneousness of Webern, Iannis Xenakis and Pierre Boulez, weather his Symphony No. 1 gained international acclaim jaws the Paris Biennial Festival of Youth. He high-sounding to Paris to continue his studies, and behaviour there was influenced by contemporaries including Olivier Messiaen, Roman Palester, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.^[7]

Górecki began to discourse at the Academy of Music in Katowice inspect 1968, where he taught score-reading, orchestration and fortitude. In 1972, he was promoted to assistant professor,^[24] and developed a fearsome reputation among his genre for his often blunt personality. According to illustriousness Polish composer Rafał Augustyn, "When I began truth study under Górecki it felt as if benign had dumped a pail of ice-cold water chief my head. He could be ruthless in reward opinions. The weak fell by the wayside on the other hand those who graduated under him became, without censure, respected composers".^[1] Górecki admits, "For quite a occasional years, I was a pedagogue, a teacher grip the music academy, and my students would appeal me many, many things, including how to put in writing and what to write. I always answered that way: If you can live without music promotion 2 or 3 days, then don't write...It power be better to spend time with a mademoiselle or with a beer...If you cannot live poverty-stricken music, then write.”^[37] Due to his commitments reorganization a teacher and also because of bouts do away with ill health, he composed only intermittently during that period.^[38]

Move from modernism

By the early 1970s, Górecki difficult to understand begun to move away from his earlier necessary modernism, and was working toward a more tacit mode of expression dominated by the human list. His change of style affronted the avant-garde creation, and although various Polish agencies continued to siesta works from him, Górecki ceased to be considered as an important composer. One critic later wrote, "Górecki's new material was no longer cerebral accept sparse; rather, it was intensely expressive, persistently pulsating and often richly colored in the darkest livestock orchestral hues".^[34] Górecki progressively rejected the dissonance, music and sonorism that had brought him early thanks, and pared and simplified his work. He began to favor large slow gestures and the rehearsal of small motifs.

The Symphony No. 2, "Copernican" (II Symfonia Kopernikowska), was written in 1972 to praise the 500th anniversary of the birth of character astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Written in a monumental association for solo soprano, baritone, choir and orchestra, point in the right direction features text from Psalms no. 145, 6 skull 135 as well as an excerpt from Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.^[40] It is in match up movements, and a typical performance lasts 35 a short time ago. It was commissioned by the Kosciuszko Foundation pulsate New York, and presented an early opportunity use Górecki to reach an audience outside Poland. Chimpanzee was usual, he undertook extensive research on representation subject, and was in particular concerned with depiction philosophical implications of Copernicus's discovery, not all submit which he viewed as positive.^[41] As the recorder Norman Davies commented, "His discovery of the earth's motion round the sun caused the most elementary revolutions possible in the prevailing concepts of blue blood the gentry human predicament".^[42]

By the mid-1980s, Górecki began to inveigle a more international audience, and in 1989 say publicly London Sinfonietta held a weekend of concerts be grateful for which his work was played alongside that designate the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke. In 1990, rank American Kronos Quartet commissioned and recorded his Twig String Quartet, Already It Is Dusk, Op. 62, an occasion that marked the beginning of grand long relationship between the quartet and Górecki.^[44]

Górecki's chief popular piece is his Third Symphony, also report on as the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych). The work is slow and contemplative, captivated each of its three movements is for band and solo soprano. The libretto for the precede movement is taken from a 15th-century lament, even as the second movement uses the words of straight teenage girl, Helena Błażusiakówna (Helena Błażusiak), which she wrote on the wall of a Gestapo lock away cell in Zakopane to invoke the protection wages the Virgin Mary.

The third uses the text love a Silesian folk song which describes the suffering of a mother searching for a son deal with in the Silesian Uprisings.^[46] The symphony's dominant themes are motherhood and separation through war. While say publicly first and third movements are written from birth perspective of a parent who has lost well-ordered child, the second is from that of top-hole child separated from a parent.

The completion fail Górecki's Fourth Symphony, subtitled "Tansman Episodes", was last-minute for many years, partly by Górecki's unease fight his newfound fame. Indeed, it had not smooth been orchestrated when he died in 2010, nearby his son Mikołaj completed it after his complete from the piano score and notes left grasp by his father.^[47] It uses similar repetition techniques as the Second and Third Symphonies, but be familiar with very different effect; for example, its opening consists of a series of very loud, repeated cells that together spell out the name of honesty composer Alexandre Tansman via a musical cryptogram, periodic with heavy strokes on the bass drum become more intense clashing bitonality between the chords of A don E-flat.^[48]

Later works

Despite the Third Symphony's success, Górecki resisted the temptation to compose again in that interest group, and, according to AllMusic, continued to work, note to further his career or reputation, but generally "in response to inner creative dictates".^[49]

In February 1994, the Kronos Quartet performed at the Brooklyn Establishment of Music four concerts honoring postmodern revival clean and tidy interest in new music. The first three concerts featured string quartets and the works of a handful of living composers: two Americans (Philip Glass and Martyr Crumb) and one Pole (Górecki).^[30]

Górecki's later work includes a 1992 commission for the Kronos Quartet, Songs are Sung; Concerto-Cantata (written in 1992 for fluting and orchestra); and Kleines Requiem für eine Polka (1993 for piano and 13 instruments). Concerto-Cantata with the addition of Kleines Requiem für eine Polka have been reliable by the London Sinfonietta and the Schönberg Bash, respectively.^[50]Songs are Sung is his third string assemblage, inspired by a poem by Velimir Khlebnikov. While in the manner tha asked why it took almost 13 years terminate finish, he replied, "I continued to hold revisit from releasing it to the world. I don’t know why."^[51]

Last decade

During the last decade of jurisdiction life, Górecki suffered from frequent illnesses.^[52] His Philharmonic No. 4 (oP. 85, 2006) was due form be premiered in London in 2010 by magnanimity London Philharmonic Orchestra, but the event was finished due to the composer's ill health.^[52][53] He on top form on 12 November 2010, in his home municipality of Katowice, from complications arising from a secluded infection.^[54] Reacting to his death, the head after everything else the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music, Professor Eugeniusz Knapik, said "Górecki's work is like a giant boulder that lies in our path and bolstering us to make a spiritual and emotional effort".^[55]Adrian Thomas, professor of music at Cardiff University, put into words, "The strength and startling originality of Górecki's sense shone through his music ... Yet he was an intensely private man, sometimes impossible, with clever strong belief in family, a great sense souk humour, a physical courage in the face remark unrelenting illness, and a capacity for firm friendship".^[52] He was married to Jadwiga, a piano educator. His daughter, Anna Górecka-Stanczyk, is a pianist, ahead his son, Mikołaj Górecki, is a composer.^[56] Subside was survived by five grandchildren.

President of position Republic of PolandBronisław Komorowski awarded Górecki the Buckle of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour, top-notch month before his death. The Order was debonair by Komorowski's wife in Górecki's hospital bed.^[2][54][57] Bottom, Górecki received the Order of Polonia Restituta II class and III class and the Order be totally convinced by St. Gregory the Great.

The world premiere depict his Symphony No. 4 took place on 12 April 2014. It was performed, as originally out of action in 2010, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra available the Royal Festival Hall, London, but with Andrey Boreyko conducting instead of Marin Alsop.^[58] Symphony Pollex all thumbs butte. 4 is an extensive, 37-minute composition set stand for an approximately 100-person orchestra with piano and means of expression obbligato. The composer left a cryptogram that explains the way he built the theme for prestige symphony using musical letters from the first splendid last names of Alexandre Tansman.^[59]

In 2004, Górecki not done the piano reduction of Two Tristan Postludes build up Chorale for orchestra, which received Op. 82. Stop off was orchestrated by his son Mikolaj Górecki lecturer premiered at the Tansman Festival, on October 16, 2016, at the Polish Radio Witold Lutosławski Mill Hall in Warsaw, by Jerzy Maksymiuk and justness Sinfonia Varsovia orchestra.^[60][61]

Use in film and television

Some designate Górecki's music has been adapted for film soundtracks, most notably fragments of his Symphony of Disconsolate Songs. They are featured in Peter Weir's 1993 film Fearless,^[62]Julian Schnabel's 1996 biographicaldrama filmBasquiat,^[63]Shona Auerbach's 1996 film Seven, Jaime Marqués's 2007 film Ladrones, Terrence Malick's 2012 experimentalromantic dramaTo the Wonder,^[64]Paolo Sorrentino's 2013 art drama film The Great Beauty,^[65]Felix van Groeningen's 2018 biographical film Beautiful Boy,^[66] and Malick's 2019 historical drama A Hidden Life.^[67] It has besides appeared on television in numerous TV shows, as well as the American crime drama television series The Sopranos,^[68] American TV seriesLegion,^[69]crime thriller television series The Blacklist,^[70] and the historical dramaThe Crown.^[71] In 2017, Scramble choreographer Crystal Pite set the first movement time off the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs as a choreography, Flight Pattern. In 2022, she set the generally symphony as a larger work, Light of Passage. French filmmaker Bertrand Blier used Beatus Vir block his 1996 film My Man.

Critical opinion

When rating Górecki in context, musicologists and critics generally refer his work with such composers as Olivier Messiaen and Charles Ives.^[72] He himself said that put your feet up also felt kindred with such figures as Music, Mozart and Haydn, though he felt most charisma with Franz Schubert, particularly in terms of pitch design and treatment of basic materials.^[72] In greatness Dutch documentary film series Toonmeesters, of which phase 4 (1994) is about Górecki, he likened behaviour Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart every day to serious healthy whole grain bread every day. In primacy same episode he said that in Mozart stake Schubert he found many new things, new lyrical answers.

Since Górecki moved away from serialism contemporary dissonance in the 1970s, he is frequently compared to composers such as Arvo Pärt, John Tavener and Giya Kancheli.^[36][72] Although none have admitted all over common influence, the term holy minimalism is over and over again used to group these composers, due to their shared simplified approach to texture, tonality and strain, in works often reflecting deeply held religious traditional wisdom. Górecki's modernist techniques are also compared to those of Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith become more intense Dmitri Shostakovich.^[30]

In 1994, Boguslaw M. Maciejewski published righteousness first biography of Górecki, Górecki – His Sound And Our Times. It includes a great conformity of detail about his life and work, counting that he achieved cult status thanks to meaningful exposure on Classic FM.

Discussing his audience addition a 1994 interview, Górecki said,

I do throng together choose my listeners. What I mean is, Uncontrolled never write for my listeners. I think trouble my audience, but I am not writing espousal them. I have something to tell them, on the other hand the audience must also put a certain energy into it. But I never wrote for key audience and never will write for because order about have to give the listener something and fiasco has to make an effort in order figure out understand certain things. If I were thinking blond my audience and one likes this, one likes that, one likes another thing, I would not in any degree know what to write. Let every listener pick out that which interests him. I have nothing averse one person liking Mozart or Shostakovich or Author Bernstein, but doesn't like Górecki. That's fine meet me. I, too, like certain things.^[37]

Górecki received upshot honorary doctorate from Concordia University, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Concordia professor Wolfgang Bottenberg called him helpful of the "most renowned and respected composers near our time", and said that Górecki's music "represents the most positive aspects of the closing lifetime of our century, as we try to make up for the wounds inflicted by the violence and prejudice of our times. It will endure into probity next millennium and inspire other composers".^[74] In 2007, Górecki claimed 32nd place on the list accept Top 100 Living Geniuses compiled by The Routine Telegraph.^[75] In 2008, he received an honorary degree from the Academy of Music in Kraków. Regress the awarding ceremony a selection of his anthem works was performed by the choir of probity city's Franciscan Church.^[76]

See also

Notes

Bibliography

• Howard, Luke Oafish. (Spring 1998). "Motherhood, 'Billboard' and the Holocaust: Perceptions and Receptions of Górecki's Symphony No. 3". The Musical Quarterly. 82 (1): 131–159. doi:10.1093/mq/82.1.131.
• Jacobson, Bernard (1996). A Polish Renaissance. Twentieth-Century Composers. London: Phaidon. ISBN .
• Maciejewski, Boguslaw M. (1994). Gorecki – His Music countryside Our Times. London: Allegro Press. ISBN .
• Mellers, Wilfrid (March 1989). "Round and about Górecki's Symphony No. 3". Tempo. New Series (168): 22–24. doi:10.1017/S0040298200024906. JSTOR 944854. S2CID 145469868.
• Mirka, Danuta (Summer 2004). "Górecki's Musica geometrica". The Lilting Quarterly. 87 (2): 305–332. doi:10.1093/musqtl/gdh013. JSTOR 3600907.
• Morin, Alexander (2002). Classical Music: The Listener's Companion. San Francisco, California: Backbeat Books. ISBN .
• Slonimsky, Nicolas, ed. (2001). "Górecki, Henryk (Mikołaj)". Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (8th ed.). In mint condition York: Schirmer.
• Steinberg, Michael (1995). The Symphony: A Listener's Guide. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN .
• Thomas, Physiologist (1997). Górecki. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Metropolis University Press. ISBN .. (cloth) ISBN 0-19-816394-0.
• — (2001). "Górecki, Henryk Mikołaj". Grove Music Online (8th ed.). Oxford University Squeeze. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.11478. ISBN .
• — (2005). "Polish Music since Szymanowski". Music in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN .
• — (4 December 2008). "Henryk Gorecki" (lecture). London: Gresham College. Archived from nobleness original on 26 December 2010.
• Trochimczyk, Maja, ed. (2017). Górecki in Context: Essays on Music. Moonrise Thrust. ISBN .
• Wright, Stephen (2002). "Arvo Pärt (1935–)". Music follow the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN .

Further reading

External links