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.
[60-sec clip, Kronos Qt, 1.4MB MP3]
[60-sec clip, Kronos Qt, 1.4MB MP3]
[60-sec clip, Kronos Qt, 1.4MB MP3]
W hilst the slow, mournful music fully articulates the weight of death and grief, instead of being catapulted into corresponding misery, it has the surprising effect of throwing the listener into a state of contemplation, reverie and even hope.”
— Charlotte Gardner, BBC Online.
I f Górecki’s works are informed by suffering and grief, they also chronicle courage and vision. There’s an unmistakably political component alongside the music’s spirituality. Górecki, after all, touches on some of the pivotal events of the 20th century: World War II, the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, Pope John Paul’s return to his native land in the closing years of the Cold War. But if Górecki is resolutely Polish and Roman Catholic, his music surely transcends cultural and spiritual barriers.”
— Cate Hagman, Olsson’s Classical Corner, Bethesda.
L ike the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Henryck Górecki’s music seems cerebral almost to the point of insularity. Stevens wrote: ‘Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.’ Of course, no art exists in a vacuum, carrying as it does an inherent quality of communication. Yet, there are those artists who, through their use of symbolism, create an atmosphere that leads to a profound sense of contemplation and loneliness.”
— ArtAndCulture.
I s my death possible?’ How is this question to be understood? ... One of the aporetic experiences—my own impossible yet unavoidable death—can never be subject to an experience that would be properly mine—an experience that I can have and account for. Yet there is, at the same time, nothing closer to me and more properly mine than ‘my death’.”
— Jacques Derrida, Aporias.
DSM: Melancholy and aporias are, of course, perennial subjects in the Arts. For example, you can see melancholy and creative despair in the works of such disparate artists as Peter Brueghel, Albrecht Dürer, Edward Hopper, Jörg Immendorf, Sigmar Polke and Caspar David Friedrich. Suffering and alienation inform Art across all cultures and all centuries. The sublime melancholy Górecki achieves in this Quartet is another masterpiece in that tradition.
CMT: The term ‘melancholy’ comes from the ancient Greek melas (black) and chole (gall). The Greeks believed that it was bile in the body that produced the despair and depression that so characterized the poets and artists of their time. In medieval times, scholars and artists formed ‘melancholy Clubs’ and in 1621, Robert Burton wrote ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ the first systematic review on the subject.
M elancholy characterizes those with a superb sense of the sublime.”
— Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feelings of the Beautiful and Sublime, 1764.
DSM: For Susan Sontag, the ‘mind as passion’ and the body in pain were central motifs. Her last book, Regarding the Pain of Others, considers how images of war and violence mediate our responses to human suffering. Like Górecki, she favored disjunctive forms of
argument; she liked silences. She used aphoristic modes of critical expression and used epigrams not as mere decorations but as encapsulations of the meaning she intends in her text; so does Górecki with his Khlebnikov epigram, although he tries to deny it in his interview with Norman Lebrecht.
CMT: In his delicate portrayal of indelicate aspects of human life—this Quartet with its complex network of multiple surprises and ironies, Górecki achieves a level of authenticity that one rarely encounters in depictions of life. Normal, canonical existence is always suspect, a temporary armistice. . . these fears bleed into successive generations, so that a war or defeat or forced labor or internment are not over when they are ‘over’ but are carried around as this inchoate melancholy the listener recognizes as the backdrop of Górecki’s work.
T he forests were on fire—
they however
wreathed their necks with their hands
like bouquets of roses
People ran to the shelters—
he said his wife had hair
in whose depths one could hide
Covered by one blanket
they whispered shameless words
the litany of those who love
When it got very bad
they leapt into each other’s eyes
and shut them firmly
So firmly they did not feel the flames
when they came up to the eyelashes
To the end they were brave
To the end they were faithful
To the end they were similar
like two drops
stuck at the edge of a face.”
— Zbigniew Herbert, Collected Poems, 1956-1998.
DSM: You mean that melancholics often keep mental ledgers of help received and given, feel deprived, begrudge others their successes. The elderly in nursing homes keep such ledgers—tend to resent those who are not maintaining their accounts in good standing, resent the family members who are not visiting as frequently as they would like. Yes, there is no ledger-keeping in Górecki. There is the nostalgia, though, that permeates this music. It remits in the Third Movement (Allegro) briefly. And it remits transiently when the tense, dissonant passages give way to sudden, gentle major chords. But even those affirmative moments are fleeting and seem fueled by memories, rather than durable new developments. This reinforces the realistic sense that the character Górecki creates—the individual that this Quartet evokes—is failing, beset by a series of ongoing morbid problems that are incurable and terminal, as with someone in hospice.
CMT: In other words, the nostalgia is not narcissistic. It’s propelled by the morbidities that are driving the rest—spontaneous and organic, not of the character’s choosing.
DSM: Flickering life, belly-up. The sageing flesh, a wrinkled vicedom. The veined reverberation of a life consumed. On corneas imprinted with a thousand dreams, now penumbral plays directed by a sight receding and a brain enraged.
CMT: It’s hard to believe this is the same Górecki who composed serialist music in the 50’s and 60’s. This is the music of a post-modern Romantic.
DSM: His earlier works are sharp, biting; this latest Quartet is sadly, warily wise.
CMT: I wonder why, given that he completed the composition of this Quartet in 1995, he withheld it from Kronos Quartet (who had commissioned it) until 2005. That has got to be unique. Very strange. And the story behind it would, I bet, be worthy of a novel or a screenplay.
DSM: A 10-year hiatus is not explicable in terms of mere editing. Was it that he was waiting, to see whether this Quartet in the end truly said what he intended it to say? Was it that events in Poland or events in Górecki’s life during those years were altering and re-altering what he felt truly needed to be said?
CMT: Or was the delay due to some frailty or health problems of his own?
DSM: No, my hunch is that—as with Polish poets like Zagajewski and Milosz—he wanted to be sure this Quartet did not contain anything that would, in hindsight, diminish it. This is a highly introverted, meditative piece—and there is a risk that compositional gestures in
such a piece could be precious or trite. To create such an inward-looking piece as this is a very subtle, risky thing—it’s deceptively simple-looking on the face of it. But I think it’s inherently harder to be sure when you are ‘finished’ with such a piece—harder, that is, if you deeply care about your decision being right. ‘Ten years hard,’ I don’t know. But hard, anyway.
W rite what you like about the quartet. I am always interested in what people write about my work. I put notes on paper, you put words. What I think about the music, my philosophy, that does not leave my work room. But I am curious to know what others see in it. [...] [W]hat goes into my music stays in my [work] room. The world can hear in it what it likes.”
— Henryk Górecki, interview with Norman Lebrecht, La Scena, 28-FEB-2007, about Quartet No. 3.
I ask why he waited so long before bringing it [Quartet No. 3] out. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ he sighs. ‘It’s like wine, some bottles you leave for two years, some for five. This one had to lay a little bit longer.’ ”
— Norman Lebrecht, interview with Henryk Górecki, La Scena, 28-FEB-2007, about Quartet No. 3.
- Kronos Quartet. Henryk Górecki: String Quartet No. 3 ... songs are sung. (Nonesuch, 2007.)
- CUNY Interest Group on Music and Disability
- Górecki H. Interview with Norman Lebrecht, La Scena, 28-FEB-2007, about Quartet No. 3
- Górecki bio on Naxos.com
- Górecki page on ArtAndCulture.com, with javascript tagcloud
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- Lerner N, Straus J, eds. Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music. Routledge, 2006.
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- 'Hello, Melancholy: Writing for Central- and Eastern Europe.' APA-CEE, 2005. [1MB pdf]
- European Conference of Promoters of New Music
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