Michael White finds the perfect setting for Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.
Some years ago I went to Warsaw to meet Henryk Górecki, who had been one of the many creditable modernist composers functioning in Poland in the later 20th century and would have remained so but for the fact that he abandoned modernism, discovered a new sound-world, and found international fame as a result.
The sound-world was what became known, with a mixture of mockery and respect, as Holy Minimalism: a phenomenon characterised by slow-moving, austerely simplistic writing of religious aspiration that was usually repetitive, contemplative and darkly atmospheric. And a prime example was the piece that made Górecki a household name: his 3rd Symphony, also known as Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.
Górecki was devoutly Catholic, compassionate but (so far as I remember from our meeting) troubled. He had problems with his health. And he seemed baffled by the barrage of world interest in his symphony – which had been written years before in 1976 and had drawn not very much attention until Classic FM, in the 1990s, seized on it as “relaxation” music. There was a recording by the London Sinfonietta with Dawn Upshaw singing the soprano solo lines that soar above the instrumental textures. Classic FM played it endlessly. The disc sold millions. And film and TV companies queued up to use the score onscreen.
The irony in all this was that the 3rd Symphony was never meant for relaxation: it’s disturbingly intense and pain-wracked. The soprano’s soaring lines deliver texts of loss and separation: a 15th-century lament of the Blessed Virgin over the body of Christ, the song of a mother searching for the body of her soldier son, and a prayer to the “chaste Queen of Heaven” found scrawled on the walls of a Gestapo prison. This is not music for stressed executives to come home to at the end of a heavy day, sprawled on a sofa with a glass of Chablis. And I’m glad to say, the point was grasped by English National Opera who, last month, staged the Symphony as a sort of one-woman opera.
It was an odd thing to do, given that the piece is so static, with no real opportunity for narrative action. But the director, Isabella Bywater, rose to the challenge – never quite finding enough for the soprano, Nicole Chevalier, to do but masking the void with hypnotically diverting abstract design and striking effects that took the singer up into the air on wires.
I wasn’t bored. And I was forcefully reminded that Górecki, who died in 2010, was always reluctant to identify specific meaning in his symphony. I recall him saying, with a shrug: “It’s about sorrow. That’s it.” And though this was unhelpful for a young music journalist in search of a story, it made clear that the canvas of the symphony was too expansive to reduce down to specifics. Here was something that embraced pain: altruistically, aesthetically and maybe therapeutically. It set out, in some quasi-sacramental way, to seek and share catharsis. And although I’m not sure that Górecki liked the label Holy Minimalist, what he put into this piece could fairly be described as holy. To be in its presence is to step out of the world for 50-something minutes, and feel changed.
More recently – last month in fact – I’ve been to Essen, which is not the loveliest of German cities. It’s indust-rial, home of the mighty Krupps steel empire that provided Germany with armaments in two world wars. And for that reason it was bombed hard in the 1940s, leaving not too much of value. But historically it had great wealth, thanks to a powerful community of noble nuns who answered only to the pope and their own princess-abbess, and amassed great treasure in the middle ages – much of it on show in the cathedral now, including an extraordinary gold-encrusted figure of the Madonna and Child that’s allegedly the oldest in existence.
A less endearing secular alternative to all this wealth is Villa Hugel: the family mansion of the Krupps which was somehow not bombed and still stands, a monstrous 1870s pile with 269 rooms, on Essen’s outskirts. It’s a fascinating testament to awesome riches, with the added attraction that it now houses concerts in a vast central hall equipped with a vast organ. This year happens to be the 150th anniversary of completion of the house, so the concert programme is busier than usual. And should you ever find yourself in the vicinity I recommend attendance, if only to see the interiors. But whatever music they play there can only be infected by the history that shrouds the building. Essen people talk about the Krupps as local benefactors, which they were. But they were also architects of misery. In WW2 they used slave labour. You can smell it in their house. And though the anniversary programme doesn’t touch the piece, I can’t help thinking that Górecki’s Symphony would work there rather well. A sonic exorcism of the past.
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