Only CDs Is Sounding Like These # 21: Henryk Górecki, Symphony No. 3 (1976, 1992 )

A new occasional series - CDs are coming back baby! And I’m here for it. BIGTIME! Also, some albums just REALLY suit the format, right

The piece was composed in 1976, first published in 1977, but the version I know and love was released in 1992 — American soprano Dawn Upshaw performing with the London Sinfonietta.

I sometimes think about how there were huge ‘gaps’ in my musical education. We never really played any classical music in the house. Maybe my dad was reacting against it, because it was almost all he heard in his house growing up. But I remember, at school, there’d be conversations around classical music in the class — and short of recognising a few key cues by Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Beethoven (Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies) I was lost, really. I bought myself a Best of Tchaikovsky tape, and shortly after Mozart and Beethoven, and set about trying to educate myself. I read Nigel Kennedy’s autobiography (useful, a great distillation of some of the key composers and their timelines and motifs/motivations) and I absorbed a lot of ambient and soundtrack music (and still do).

But the best thing my mum ever did, in terms of classical music appreciation, was bring home the 1992 recording of Henryk Górecki‘s Third Symphony (A Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) because it changed how I listened to music, and it gave me a prod in the direction of instrumental music that sits in the “classical section”. And also a whole of of music that is essentially ‘genre-less’.

Górecki sent me forward/adjacent to Arvo Part, Eno, John Zorn and Steve Reich. And back to Faure, Berlioz, Bach, and Carl Orff. After Górecki, I was in! I had a touchstone, a connection, a way of finding from there.

The music was used to soundtrack news clips of the Bosnian war — and we all bit on the marketing I guess. The music was suddenly everywhere. But it was an anomaly in our home, since we mostly played Prince and The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and Santana and The Animals and Fleetwood Mac.

It was nice to have some music of contemplation; music for contemplation.

It has forever changed and shaped how I hear and listen to music.

I bought, and still own, the album on vinyl. But to me, really, it’s a CD. You need to hear it as a continuous piece, the silence between the parts, and within them, as poignant and important as any of the music; the way the first long movement builds up and into the room is as perfect as the “ambient” music Brian Eno was first imagining around the exact time this piece was composed. It’s suddenly ‘there’ and feels like it has always been there. A soundtrack for the room it is in. Music both in and of.

So I’m pleased to have it on CD again — I used to sneak into the lounge at home early, and play this before school. It was clandestine listening before a day of Lenny Kravitz and Beastie Boys and Nirvana and Lemonheads. It was an entree before a main of The JPS Experience, The Chills, The 3Ds, and The Buddy Rich Big Band. All that noise and all that clatter, but before it some scene-setting calmness; my first musical meditation.

I still listen to this a lot. I still adore it. For a while there I had to take a break.

Back, just before the pandemic, I was elated to attend a live performance of it — something I’d dreamed of for years but never accessed. It was the single most disappointing gig experience I’ve ever had. My expectations too high? Maybe. But also the incongruous setting of the music, the decision to try to ‘do something’ rather than just present it, and the wrong choice of soprano, all just crushed my dream.

So I had to let that die down. Then I heard Beth Gibbons from Portishead attempt it — and I was back in. I also heard Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance blaze through it — and I listened to that a whole bunch as a result, because I probably got to Dead Can Dance and Gerrard, indirectly though listening to Symphony No. 3.

I also heard Dawn Upshaw singing a few other pieces besides this. Those three things pulled me back to this particular version of this short, sorrowful symphony. Yes, yes, it’s toward the “pop” spectrum of “classical” music. But for me it’s about the fact that not only do I find this very moving — and it hit me when I was 15 like a ton of bricks and changed my direction. It’s also been a catalyst for finding a whole lot of music, from across various genres — from Zorn to Lustmord to Burial and beyond — that does this to me. Not going to lie, I also quite like anything that makes a purist’s toes curl. Fuck the purists. They’re not wrong. But also, they’re so wrong!

I bought the current CD version I have for $1 — a rescue from the dump-store. If I see it again at that price I’m going to buy more. Start handing them out. Encouraging people to listen. Again.