This symphony marked Górecki’s shift from a more dissonant serialist style to a more tonal one. Though it is “tonal” and sometimes considered “minimalist”, I think the terms downplay the complexity of the music. This symphony is Górecki’s most popular work, it is a monument to grief and loss, maybe sentiments of angst and pain that Poland had suffered through the 20th century. The first movement is a giant eight voiced canon, where each new introduction of the theme is in a different Greek mode [from lowest strings to highest, we hear the Aeolian, Phrygian, Locrian, Lydian, Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, and back to Aeolian modes], and the canon is interrupted by a pause of tone clusters, the soprano sings a 15th century Lamentation of the Virgin Mary from the Lysagora Songs collection of the Holy Cross Monastery, lamenting Jesus’ death. After the song is over, the canon breaks in at its height, and then unravels into silence. The second movement is also built out of tone cluster drones, the soprano sings a prayer to the Virgin Mary that was found in a Gestapo cell in Zakopane. The third movement is made of subtle variations on a short theme in a minor, while the soprano sings a folk song about a mother searching for her son who was killed in the Silesian uprisings of 1919-1921, and the music opens into a majestic uplifting major section before returning to the somber mood of the opening. The work is depressing, languid, and conveys the pain of parents losing children, and vice versa, and even though Górecki was previously an obscure composer, a 1992 recording of the work with Dawn Upshaw exploded in popularity, over one million copies sold, and probably became the best selling record of a contemporary classical piece in recording history. Regardless of popularity, Górecki is an awesome composer and if you haven’t heard him before I urge you to listen to this symphony, his “Little Requiem for a Polish Girl”, his Harpsichord/Piano Concerto, and his Symphony 2 “Copernicus”
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