Henryk Gorecki Died Today

Death of a legend:

Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, who became one of the best-selling classical artists ever with his doleful Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, has died after a long illness at the age of 76.

"We are sorry to confirm the news that Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki has passed away," Beata Jankowska-Burzynska, an official with Polish Radio's National Symphony Orchestra in the southern city of Katowice, told AFP Friday.

Gorecki was born December 6, 1933 in Czernica, near Poland's gritty coal-mining city of Katowice. He was orphaned at the age of two when his mother, a pianist, died.

He studied music at the Katowice Music Academy, where he went on to hold a professorship and became its rector from 1975-1979.

Known for his trademark simple yet monumental musical style, Gorecki was regarded as being at the forefront of Polish avant-guard classical composers through the 1950's to 1970's, exploring Polish folk music and medieval themes.

Focused on motherhood and the ravages of war, Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 or Symphony of Sorrow Songs, gained critical acclaim and world-wide popularity after its 1992 re-release featuring American soprano Dawn Upshaw.

Having topped the charts in both Britain and the United States, it sold more than a million copies world-wide, becoming one of the world's best-selling pieces of contemporary classical music.

Divided into three movements, the monumental work is inspired by a 15th century lamentation, a Polish folksong and words scrawled by a prisoner held by the Nazi German Gestapo on the wall of a cell in the southern Polish mountain town of Zakopane.

"Gorecki's work is like a huge boulder which lies on our path and forces us to make a spiritual and emotional effort," Professor Eugeniusz Knapik, Gorecki's friend and current head of the Katowice Music Academy said.

Gorecki was simply irreplaceable.



EDJ