W hen horses die, they breathe,
When grasses die, they wither,
When suns die, they go out,
When people die, songs are sung.”
— Velimir Khlebnikov.
CMT: Listen. Górecki started with techniques that somewhat resemble Messiaen. But in his later works, his atonal practices disappear. They’re replaced by tonal minimalism of gently mounting thematic phrases.
DSM: His String Quartet No. 3, ‘...songs are sung,’ performed by Kronos Quartet, is songlike and thematic. But it’s not purely sorrowful, like his Third Symphony. This String Quartet No. 3 is filled with soul-searching melancholy, it’s true—music that seldom rises above mezzo piano. The opening Adagio builds on a pernicious metrical theme borrowed from Beethoven’s Seventh—over which we have this “breathing” violin melody. The violin part resembles a dying person’s breathing in and breathing out, progressively more labored—inspiring, expiring. It ascends to a tense climax and then dissolves into an angst-filled stillness.
CMT: That’s followed by an even more subdued Largo, interspersed with major-key plateaus. The brief third movement, Allegro, suggests a recovery, but that is short-lived and gives way to the thematically related Deciso and Finale with their continued progression and deterioration.
DSM: There’s a pervasive melancholy followed by a cathartic peacefulness, created by Górecki’s repetition of figures. It reminds me of my experiences taking care of people in hospice, close to the end of their lives.
CMT: Górecki’s slow tempos are very occasionally supplanted by faster ones—ironic or defiant outbursts. These exacerbations and remissions are surely characteristic of the course of many people at life’s end. Górecki’s mildly dissonant minor key chorale textures that tend toward harmonic stasis—those too are symbolically consistent with palliation of pain, with the incurability of failing organ systems in the body, with the clinging to hopes and spiritual concepts, with the dying person’s effort to maintain an emotional stasis up to the last.
DSM: Górecki’s five-movement quartet is a loose, arch-like form. Material from the first two movements is repeated in the last two movements in a way that clarifies or revises the meaning that was imparted at the outset.
CMT: The ending that mirrors the beginning is something of a T.S. Eliot-esque Four Quartets ‘Little Gidding’ (‘to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’) return, a cycle. Górecki’s surprises, such as the romantic theme that appears in the third and fourth movements, are wonderfully narrative: the temporary recovery; the suspense you feel when it becomes increasingly clear that the recovery won’t last, but it’s not yet clear what will happen next. But I think some listeners may have a hard time noticing or appreciating the narrative. It takes some effort on the listener’s part to grasp it—the listener must be in an imaginative mood, must be open to hearing a song about morbidity and mortality. Górecki has this glacial lyricism—long, long projective lines—mounting tensions conducted on a glacial timescale of minutes. Having worked in palliative care, this String Quartet No. 3 immediately spoke to me, spoke poignant truth. But I wonder how many listeners will be receptive and hear in it the things that I hear.
DSM: The hospice or palliative care interpretation is supported, I believe, by the positive, transient major-key melodies undermined by negative harmonies and dissonances. The negative material suggests doubt, and possibly a difficulty remembering.
CMT: Or even a relinquishing, a letting-go of trying anymore to remember. As the circulation begins to fail, as the perfusion of the brain diminishes—the person has less and less ability to keep up the effort to be wakeful and lucid. In fact, this Quartet as a whole seems preoccupied with the elusiveness of memory, with the mind’s ability to repeat ideas but to lose itself in them through that very repetition, through its periodic development and both exact and inexact recall. An excellent example is the rather sweet, rising melodic idea just after the start of the only fast movement (III Allegro, sempre ben marcato), which at the end falters and flickers and fades away. Its closing cadence barely registers. The symbolism is so strong—the resemblance to the process of dying is so unmistakable—it’s impossible to think that this idea was not behind Górecki’s writing.
DSM: Your example also reveals Górecki’s symphonic style—the lack of expressive closure in the Allegro third movement propels the listener forward. Then he quotes from the first movement of Szymanowski’s Second Quartet. This quotation—a technique we see in Górecki’s earlier music—also suggests that the person—the singer, the narrator of this Quartet—is remembering or trying to recall specific things that are outside this Quartet; is successfully remembering the Szymanowski snippet and then losing it.
CMT: Besides the Szymanowski quotation, the features of Górecki’s String Quartet No. 3 include its strategic use of melodic thirds, both minor and major; its chordal patterns with strong diatonic and sometimes cadential features; its conflictual dissonances between melody and harmony.
DSM: Górecki’s slow tempi produce moments of peace and resolution, introspective meditations during periods of lucidity. The music makes you urgently hope that the subject of the Quartet can somehow sustain the peaceful state of such moments. But no such luck—for the most part the work is characterized by an organic restlessness—like the agitation of an elderly person who has a cognitive disorder, like Alzheimer’s Disease. In effect, the Quartet is like the memorial testimony of a family member or other caregiver, summarizing the progress of their loved one’s prolonged deterioration and eventual death. It is a memorial to the person, but the person who gives this account is ennobled by the act of giving it. It is an unsentimental testimonial to the nature of the human condition, and to the innate goodness in humankind as members of our species try in extremis to cope with our condition. In the sense that the four string voices are rendering what amounts to a song or story of one person, this Quartet is far less discursive or conversational than most other string quartets.
CMT: Having cared for people at the end of life, including dementia patients, I identify viscerally with the expressive world that this Quartet evokes—the music transports me far beyond the literal musical content of the Quartet.
DSM: This String Quartet No. 3 convinces me that Górecki’s retreat from serialism in his earlier work to his more recent minimalism was really a positive move. The Quartet’s underlying morbidity somehow carries optimism. The writing is well paced and unrelentingly intense.
CMT: In terms of pacing, the length of the first movement, and maybe the fourth, would be a bit much for a listener who is not grasping or identifying with the morbidity-mortality themes, I think. The minimalist violin sighing-inspiring-expiring might annoy such a listener, especially when it continues for more than 10 minutes. This Quartet is 56 minutes long, after all. Most of the sections feature cadential silences—very meaningful, if one accepts the interpretation we’re applying to the Quartet—but easily misunderstood by others who are not in a receptive mood, who might feel the silences are gratuitous.
DSM: There are these slow pulses in the viola and cello parts that signify uncertainty and inability to act. Why do you think that ‘agency’—the human capacity to make choices and to act in the world—matter to us and to Górecki?
CMT: You mean why is it so important that our intentions have effects in the world and that they embody what we value? Well, the final, terminal phase of life when we are totally dependent on others and are unable to perform even the simplest activities of daily living like feeding ourselves or bathing or toileting represents a diminution of all of the means we have of establishing our identity and sense of self. It is a period of tremendous loss. With thoughtful end-of-life care, it need not mean the erosion of dignity or worth or integrity as a person. But it is undeniably a time of loss. Vegetables do not have ‘agency’ or intentions. Individuals in a persistent vegetative state do not have ‘agency’. Personhood—being fully alive—is inseparable from ‘agency’. That’s why ‘agency’—the ability to decide and act—is so important, to us and to Górecki. But, beyond that and given that Górecki is Polish, given that he experienced all manner of repression under the old regime, and given that he more or less completed this Quartet in 1995, I wonder whether this Quartet embodies his motivations for political agency and judgment in an age that lacks much enthusiasm for civil rights.
DSM: What are the conditions for being an impactful citizen when the meaning of democracy has become less transparent and nominally democratic governments are filled with corrupt plutocrats? David Kyuman Kim has published a book recently that addresses these issues. He specifically examines the political, moral, philosophical, and religious dimensions of human agency. Kim treats agency as a form of religious experience that reflects implicit and explicit notions of the Good. Kim considers ‘projects of regenerating Agency’ or critical and strategic responses to loss—very relevant to the subject of Górecki’s String Quartet No. 3. Moreover, he says that agency is ‘melancholic freedom’. Such freedom persists through the moral and emotional losses associated with a broad range of experiences, including alienation experienced by those who suffer the indignities of racial, ethnic and gender discrimination.
CMT: Here are some excerpts from the fifth movement (Largo, Tranquillo) of this Quartet.
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