caption death_date era name birth_date image article_title birth_name list_of_works
górecki photographed in 1993 12 november 2010 contemporary henryk górecki 6 december 1933 henryk mikołaj górecki polish composer.jpg henryk górecki
 henryk mikołaj górecki list of compositions by henryk górecki
henryk górecki

henryk mikołaj górecki -lrb- ; english pronunciation go-ret-ski ; december 6 , 1933 -- november 12 , 2010 -rrb- was a polish composer of contemporary classical music .
according to alex ross , no recent classical composer has had as much commercial success as górecki .
górecki became a leading figure of the polish avant-garde during the post-stalin cultural thaw .
his webernian-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and drew influence from luigi nono , karlheinz stockhausen , krzysztof penderecki and kazimierz serocki .
he continued in this direction throughout the 1960s , but by the mid-1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist sound , exemplified by the transitional symphony no. 2 and the hugely popular symphony no. 3 -lrb- `` symphony of sorrowful songs '' -rrb- .
this later style developed through several other distinct phases , from such works as his 1979 `` beatus vir '' , to the 1981 choral hymn `` miserere '' , the 1993 `` kleines requiem für eine polka '' and his requiem `` good night '' .
his name remained largely unknown outside poland until the mid-to late 1980s , and his fame arrived in the 1990s .
in 1992 , 15 years after it was composed , a recording of his third symphony , `` symphony of sorrowful songs '' -- recorded with soprano dawn upshaw and released to commemorate the memory of those lost during the holocaust -- became a worldwide commercial and critical success , selling more than a million copies and vastly exceeding the typical lifetime sales of a recording of symphonic music by a 20th-century composer .
as surprised as anyone at its popularity , górecki said , `` perhaps people find something they need in this piece of music -lsb- ... -rsb- somehow i hit the right note , something they were missing .
something somewhere had been lost to them .
i feel that i instinctively knew what they needed . ''
this popular acclaim did not generate wide interest in górecki 's other works , and he pointedly resisted the temptation to repeat earlier success , or compose for commercial reward .
apart from two brief periods studying in paris and a short time living in berlin , górecki spent most of his life in southern poland .
