Sorrowful Songs
Polish composer Henryk Górecki passed away on Friday 12th November 2010 after a long illness. Górecki was a peripheral figure in the contemporary classical music world whose music was known only to connoisseurs, until 1991, when a recording of his Symphony No. 3 – the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs – was released to commemorate the victims of the holocaust. The piece – and particularly that recording of it – became immensely popular around the world and sold well over a million copies – which is amazing for a modern classical CD.
Critics reacted with hostility to its success, suggesting that people were buying the CD in order to have it as background music while they sat drinking wine at home. I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but although I don’t understand the words of the songs that are incorporated in it except by reading the sleeve note, I still find it extremely moving and listen to it regularly. I’m not very good at bandwagons, cultural or otherwise, but this was one I’m glad I jumped on.
Górecki himself said
Many of my family died in concentration camps. I had a grandfather who was in Dachau, an aunt in Auschwitz. You know how it is between Poles and Germans. But Bach was a German too—and Schubert, and Strauss. Everyone has his place on this little earth.
That’s a good thing to ponder this Remembrance Sunday as you listen to the following excerpt from the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (which was in fact written in 1976, but not recorded commercially until 15 years later).
In the Dark 
November 14, 2010 at 12:12 pm
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November 14, 2010 at 12:36 pm
I agree, Peter: a bandwagon that was, for once, well worth riding on. For some reason I appear to have two copies of that particular recording, but I do also have a handful of other Górecki discs in my collection. There are close links between his music and that of Arvo Pärt, another of the so-called “holy minimalists”, even if Pärt is the more obviously religious.
I was at a science meeting on November 11 and unable to step outside at 11:11 (I was here in The Netherlands; is it clear that it should be at 11:11 local time, regardless of time zone?). But I had a quiet hour at home yesterday with the kids out at a party, so played the 3rd Symphony disc in memory of both Górecki and the millions of war dead.
That said, I also stumbled on the Remembrance Service from the Royal Albert Hall on BBC1 last night, and to be honest, felt quite repelled by the 19th century Britain on show: an over-ripe mixture of monarchy, religion, patriotism, militarism, and politics. I can’t help feeling that it is precisely that combination (in many countries, not just Britain) which has been the root cause of many wars and war deaths, and that remembrance in such an environment is somehow deeply hypocritical.
So I turned over and watched “Have I Got News For You?”. Laughter is often the best medicine.
November 14, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Mark
I couldn’t agree more. I don’t watch the Albert Hall thing, which seems to send entirely the wrong message.
The official two minutes’ silence on 11th November is held at 11am, not at 11.11. I’m not sure about what happens other countries and time zones, e.g. in Australia.
At the England-Australia rugby match yesterday there was also a two-minute silence which was impeccably observed.
Peter
November 14, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Indeed; 11:00, not 11:11. Not quite sure where I got that idea; possibly just continuing the eleventh of the eleventh of the eleventh too far down the recursive tree 🙂
November 14, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Would it have sold a tenth as many copies without that alliterative, grief-saturated title and the composer’s Holocaust connection? I always found the music extremely tedious; seems to me whatever Gorecki was trying to do, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Barber and Sibelius did it much better. (Arvo Part is a completely different case, a really original and interesting composer.)
I don’t know what source you have for the supposed criticism as ‘mood music’, but it’s not surprising that a work so unrelievedly sad and monochrome would be used as a background to people’s personal thoughts of war, death, or grief (not to speak of Chardonnays or Cabernets). It’s a very 19th-century composition in this way, I mean the Victorian cult of mourning when art and music were subservient to the central act of grief.
Critics expect classical music to be foreground – to have enough interest and variety to occupy our entire attention, rather than serve as accompaniment to non-musical thoughts. In this respect it could be said that Gorecki wrote an unconventional piece of popular music.
November 14, 2010 at 6:44 pm
I can’t answer your question, but the success of this work is an interesting cultural phenomenon in its own right.
If you read the wikipedia page here you can find where I got the comment about drinking wine.
I should say that this work is very different from others by the same composer, and it is fair to say it is essentially a simple piece which probably helped make it accessible to a large audience. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
And tedious? You’re entitled to your opinion of course, but I don’t agree. I listened to it all over again this afternoon, and still found it moving. But then I know people who think Bach’s music is tedious.
November 14, 2010 at 10:21 pm
I certainly wouldn’t want to defend Górecki’s 3rd as the ultimate symphony, but it has definitely earned its place in my collection. I’d agree that Bruckner, Mahler, Barber, and Sibelius have also conjured the same emotions very effectively, although I’m not sure I’d include Tchaikovsky in the same list: a little too bombastic for too much of the time for my tastes.
Another composition I would include in the list is Richard Strauss’ “Metamorphosen”, although I’m fully cognisant of that Strauss’ relationship with Nazi Germany is somewhat controversial. “Metamorphosen” in particular was initially viewed as mourning the end of that regime, although it’s more generally believed now to mark the passing of German culture at the hands of the Nazis. Regardless, for me the music speaks more loudly than political interpretation and, if nothing else, makes the eloquent point that in war there are no winners.