The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is a
symphony in three
movements composed by
Henryk Górecki in
Katowice, Poland, between October and December 1976. The work is indicative of the transition between Górecki's
dissonant earlier manner and his more
tonal later style. A solo
soprano sings a different Polish text in each of the three movements. The first is a 15th-century Polish lament of
Mary, mother of Jesus, the second a message written on the wall of a
Gestapo cell during World War II, and the third a
Silesian folk song of a mother searching for her son killed in the
Silesian uprisings. The first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, and the second movement from that of a child separated from a parent. The dominant themes of the symphony are motherhood and separation through war. It was premièred on 4 April 1977 at the
Royan International Festival, conducted by
Ernest Bour, with soprano Stefania Woytowicz.
Until 1992, Górecki was known only to connoisseurs, primarily as one of several composers responsible for the postwar
Polish music renaissance. That year,
Elektra-Nonesuch released a recording of the 15-year-old symphony that topped the classical
charts in Britain and the United States. To date, it has sold more than a million copies, vastly exceeding the expected lifetime sales of a typical symphonic recording by a 20th-century composer. This success, however, did not generate much interest in Górecki's other works. (more...)
This Wikipedia is written in
English. Started in 2001 (2001), it currently contains
3,556,747 articles. Many other Wikipedias are available; some of the largest are listed below.