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Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki (December 6, 1933 – November 12, 2010) was a composer of contemporary classical music. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Gorecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw. His Webernian-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and drew influence from Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen,
Krzysztof Penderecki and Kazimierz Serocki. He continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, but by the mid 1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist sound, exemplified by the transitional Symphony No. 2 and the hugely popular Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs).
Gorecki's most popular piece is his "Third Symphony", also known as the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" (Symfonia piesni zalosnych). The work is slow and contemplative, and each of the three movements is composed for orchestra and solo soprano. The libretto for the first movement is taken from a 15th century lament, while the second movement uses the words of a teenage girl, Helena Blazusiak, 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. 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. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Gorecki
Performed by Stefania Woytowicz (soprano) and the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra of Katowice (conductor-Jerzy Katlewicz)
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Features
- Compact Disc
- Performed by Stefania Woytowicz (soprano) and the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra of Katowice
- Conductor-Jerzy Katlewicz
- 1976
- Total time 52:18
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