The Gorecki Phenomenon
Mark Bradford
January 1, 1998
It is common for arts organizations to host artists of note in residency, so nothing seemed extraordinary when the music department at the University of Southern California, in conjunction with the Polish Music Reference Center, recently hosted the Polish composer Henryk Górecki for a special series of concerts and lectures that they whimsically titled Górecki Autumn. Nothing extraordinary, that is, except that until five years ago, no one except a few classical music enthusiasts and aficionados of the Polish avant-garde had ever heard of Henryk Górecki.
Record stores are now well stocked with Górecki recordings and he is being invited to such places as use where he conducts performances of his works to sell-out audiences. The title of one of the lectures offered during the series by Górecki's biographer James Harley seems to have been aptly named. It was titled "The Górecki Phenomenon."
Górecki's rapid rise in the music world can be traced back to a single work: his Symphony No. 3, or as it is also known, the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." A recording of this work made by the London Sinfonietta in 1992 was tremendously successful on both popular and classical charts, selling more than a million copies. Such wide success for any classical recording is extraordinary these days. Given the orientation of both the work and its composer, its success is nothing short of astounding. This work, based on texts that center on the Virgin Mary, clearly projects the spiritual orientation of its composer. In fact, as Harley said, "the hardest [thing] for many to accept in this piece, is that Górecki has gone beyond the point where the music can be judged on its own. He has moved from the abstract to the subjective, taking a point of view ...
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