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2nd movement of Henryk Górecki’s Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra.
Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (December 6, 1933 – November 12, 2010)
“If you can live without music for two or three days, then don’t write – it might be better to spend the time with a girl or with a beer.”
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Henryk Górecki (born 6 December, 1933), Arioso: Adagio cantabile, from the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 64, Quasi una Fantasia. Performed by The Kronos Quartet.
A photograph of Górecki, taken at the University of Southern California in October 1997.
‘Górecki began Quasi una Fantasia in his home city of Katowice on his 57th birthday, 6 December 1990 (St. Mikołaj’s Day), and finished the score three months later, on 19 March 1991.’
-from the liner notes, by Adrian Thomas, to the CD Henryk Górecki: Strng Quartets Nos. 1 and 2, performed by The Kronos Quartet.
If you can live without music for two or three days, then don’t write – it might be better to spend the time with a girl or with a beer.
“
| — | Henryk Górecki |
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Euntes Ibant et Flebant (“He that goeth forth and weepeth”), Op. 32 composed by Henryk Górecki. John Nelson conducting the Chicago Symphony Chorus and Chicago Lyric Opera Chorus.
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2nd movement of Henryk Górecki’s Concerto for Harpsichord and String Quartet.
Górecki on the necessity of music
BD: The big question: What is the purpose of music?
HG: Dear Lord! You have to ask Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn.
BD: But I'm asking Górecki!
HG: I'll answer in a kind of humorous fashion. 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. If you cannot live without music, then write. The same thing. If you can live without listening to music - any kind of music - then live without music. In the intelligent world, you hear people say, "I know nothing about music." I always say, "It's nothing to be proud of, because just as you don't know music, so you also don't know literature and poetry and art." I don't believe it. I don't understand when someone says they don't know music. I can't understand that. It was as if I gave him a book and he didn't know what it was. It's like you couldn't breathe. Music is not to play. Music is for listening. If you don't need it, you don't need it. But then that is a very poor person. Very poor person. Very, very poor.
BD: Does it please you that more and more people now, all of a sudden it seems, are listening to your music?
HG: I'm not so sure they're listening to me. Leave the "me" out of it. There is something about people on earth that people listen to music. It's not important if it's Górecki's music. What is important is that the music is necessary, that they need the music.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Henryk Górecki (born 6 December, 1933), Arioso: Adagio cantabile, from the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 64, Quasi una Fantasia. Performed by The Kronos Quartet.
A photograph of Górecki, taken at the University of Southern California in October 1997.
‘Górecki began Quasi una Fantasia in his home city of Katowice on his 57th birthday, 6 December 1990 (St. Mikołaj’s Day), and finished the score three months later, on 19 March 1991.’
-from the liner notes, by Adrian Thomas, to the CD Henryk Górecki: Strng Quartets Nos. 1 and 2, performed by The Kronos Quartet.
Henyrk Górecki - Symphony No. 3, Op. 36 Mov. II
Augmented by the artwork of Van Gogh, Hugues Merle, and Francis Louis Mora, this Spadecaller video dramatizes the dominant themes of Gorecki’s symphonic masterpiece about motherhood and separation through war. David Zinman, conductor, and Dawn Upshaw, soprano.
Górecki’s most popular piece is his “Third Symphony” also known as the “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych). 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 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. 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. wiki
Henryk Górecki : December 6 1933 - November 12 2010
