Henryk Górecki

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki [ xɛnrɨk m ʲ ikɔwaj ɡurɛtski ] ( born December 6, 1933 Czernica, † November 12, 2010 in Katowice ) was a Polish composer and professor.

Life

Górecki was born in a small village near Rybnik and grew up in Upper Silesia. He initially worked as a teacher before, at the State Conservatory of Music in Katowice studied composition with Boleslaw Szabelski, a pupil of Karol Szymanowski.

Górecki was the forerunner of the Polish avant-garde of the late fifties and had his first success at the Warsaw Autumn Festival. After receiving the union price of Polish composers, he studied in 1961 and 1963 in Paris, where he met Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

In 1975 he was appointed rector of the State Conservatory of Music in Katowice, but resigned due to political developments in 1979 from this office. After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, his work was better known abroad, and Górecki attended numerous performances in Western Europe and the North America. His son, born in 1971 Mikołaj Górecki is also a composer.

Work

Górecki's early work as Scontri (1960 ) is based on one hand on the serial music. On the other hand, was his music show such as the Three Pieces in Old Style ( 1963), clearly determined by the folk music and the religious tradition of Poland.

His major work, among other things include epitaph (1958), Scontri (1960), the Third Symphony (1976 ), Beatus Vir (1979 ), Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra ( 1981) and the three string quartets, he wrote for the Kronos Quartet: Already It Is Dusk ( 1988), Quasi una fantasia (1991) and ... songs are sung (1994 /1995).

The greatest success had Górecki early nineties with his written as a commissioned work of the Southwest Radio Baden- Baden third symphony, which he had composed in 1976.

On 8 May 2005 took place in Goldbacherstrasse studs at Überlingen on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the prisoners a concert of works by Górecki in the context of the 17th Bodensee festivals.

Awards

Górecki was a member of the Polish Academy of learning. The University of Warsaw, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and the Catholic University of Lublin have awarded him an honorary doctorate.