A reluctant requiem: The history and reception of Henryk M. Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 in Britain and the United States.

Abstract

During late 1992 and early 1993, Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (1976), was transformed from a relatively obscure orchestral work by a little-known Polish composer into a Top 10 hit on Britain's pop charts. This study examines the work itself and the musical, social, and emotional forces that contributed to its sudden and widespread popularity. The sources for this study, primarily articles in newspapers and popular journals, position Gorecki's Third Symphony uniquely in the repertoire. Rarely has a work been so widely ignored in the scholarly literature and at the same time been granted so much column space in daily newspapers. Gorecki's success is further evidence of a popularization of art music in the 1990s; a phenomenon seen also in the popular recordings of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, the Three Tenors, and Gregorian chant. Beginning with a survey of Gorecki's early career and compositions, this study outlines how the Third Symphony is situated stylistically in Gorecki's oeuvre. Though aspects of the work were new for the composer (including the extensive use of canon), much of the style and subject matter arose out of previous compositions, both finished and unfinished. The symphony's premiere in Royan, France, evoked a strongly negative reaction, but subsequent performances, and more especially the three recordings released in the West in the 1980s, reversed the initial censure and excited rare levels of enthusiasm. A 1992 recording by Dawn Upshaw, David Zinman, and the London Sinfonietta on the Elektra-Nonesuch label was the catalyst for Gorecki's pop-like success. The remainder of this study examines the phenomenon from a marketing and sales perspective, discusses the critical perception of its musical style as a form of crossover music, or (together with the music of Arvo Part and John Tavener) a mystical branch of Minimalism, and concludes with popular responses to the symphony's perceived message: a cathartic requiem for Auschwitz, the Holocaust, and decades of suffering in communist Eastern Europe.