Henryk Górecki

Lore & Background

His mother died when he was two, and his father and stepmother discouraged his early interest in music. His early works were avant-garde and serialist, influenced by Anton Webern, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Kazimierz Serocki. By the mid-1970s, he shifted to a less complex sacred minimalist sound, exemplified by his Symphony No. 2 'Copernician' and Symphony No. 3 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.'

Górecki was largely unknown outside Poland until the late 1980s. He resisted the temptation to repeat this success or compose for commercial reward. Apart from brief periods in Paris and Berlin, he spent most of his life in southern Poland.

Reader's Guide

Henryk Górecki's significance lies in his transition from a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde to a composer of sacred minimalist works that achieved unprecedented commercial success for a contemporary classical composer. His Symphony No. This success did not generate wide interest in his other works, and he pointedly resisted commercial repetition. His legacy includes his role as a founder of the New Polish School and his influence as a professor at the Academy of Music in Katowice, where he taught students including his son Mikołaj. His music covers a variety of styles but tends toward relative harmonic and rhythmical simplicity, using elaborate counterpoint and ritualistic repetition.

Did You Know?

• Górecki's mother died when he was two years old, and many of his early works were dedicated to her memory.
• He suffered a hip injury as a child that led to tubercular complications, requiring four operations and twenty months in a hospital in Germany.