Compositions by Henryk Gorecki - Symphony No. 3, Miserere, Beatus Vir, Symphony No. 2, Two Sacred Songs, Op. 30, Totus Tuus (Paperback)

Chapters: Symphony No. 3, Miserere, Beatus Vir, Symphony No. 2, Two Sacred Songs, Op. 30, Totus Tuus. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 33. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Polish: ), is a symphony in three movements composed by Henryk Gorecki in Katowice, Poland, between October and December 1976. The work is indicative of the transition between Gorecki's dissonant earlier manner and his more tonal later style. It was premiered the 4 of April, 1977, at the Royan International Festival, with Stefania Woytowicz as soprano and Ernest Bour as conductor. 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. Until 1992, Gorecki 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. It has now 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, has failed to generate interest in Gorecki's other works. Despite a political climate that was unfavorable to modern art (often denounced as "for...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=211495