biography
| name: |
Górecki, Henryk Mikolaj
|
pronunciation:
[goreskee]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1933– )
|
| biography:
| Composer, born in Czernica, near Rybnik, S Poland. He studied in Paris and at the Katowice Conservatory, and in 1975 was elected provost of the State Higher School of Music, but resigned in protest four years later when the government refused to allow Pope John Paul 2 to visit Katowice. His work, usually based on tragic themes and in very slow tempi, was virtually unknown in the West until 1993, when his Symphony No. 3: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (1973), with texts from a 15th-c monastic song, a folk song , and a prayer scratched on a cell wall by a girl imprisoned by the Gestapo, reached number six in the British best-selling album charts, and sold over half a million copies worldwide. Later works include Miserere (1981), Good Night (1990), and Kleines Requiem (1993). |
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