Born in Czernica, near Rybnik (Silesia) in 1933, he studied composition with Bolesław Szabelski at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice. He is one of the most original voices in contemporary music. His works first made their mark in the mid-1950s when he found himself at the forefront of the Polish avant-garde at the time of the post-Stalin cultural thaw. His early pieces show a clear development from the folk-influenced worlds of Szymanowski and Bartók in the Four Preludes for piano (1955) and Songs of Joy and Rhythm (1956) to the modernist techniques of Webern and Boulez in Epitaph (1958) and Symphony No. 1 (1959). During the 1960s he continued in a radical direction in the Genesis (1962–63) and Muzyczka (La Musiquette) I, II and III for various instrumental line-ups (1967–70; Muzyczka IV dates from 1971). At the same time Górecki pared down his compositional material and explored the folk music traditions in such works as Three Pieces in Old Style (1963) and Old Polish Music (1967–69).
The simple yet monumental style for which Górecki is today renowned became fully established in the 1970s with such works as Symphony No. 2 Copernican (1972), Symphony No. 3 Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (1976) as well as the Psalm setting Beatus vir (performed in Kraków to mark Pope John Paul II’s visit to Poland in 1979).
In the early 1980s, following the imposition of martial law in Poland, Górecki withdrew from public life and concentrated on choral settings and chamber music (Recitativa e ariosa ‘Lerchenmusik’, 1984–85). In the second half of the decade, as a result of Poland’s increasing political emancipation, Górecki’s music attracted new performers and audiences in the West. This renewed interest led to the composition of two string quartets, Already it is Dusk (1988) and Quasi una fantasia (1991, both commissioned by the Kronos Quartet). Górecki’s music is performed throughout the world – at subscription concerts, concerts devoted exclusively to his works and at prestigious festivals. Many choreographies have been devised to his music. A series of new recordings on the Nonesuch label proved a great success.
Górecki’s most noted recent compositions include Concerto-Cantata for flute and orchestra (1992) and Kleines Requiem für eine Polka (1993), recorded by both the Schönberg Ensemble on Philips and the London Sinfonietta on Nonesuch. Over the last six years Górecki has completed two new choral works, Salve, Sidus Polonorum (1997–2000) for chorus, percussion and keyboards, and Lobgesang (2000) for chorus and glockenspiel. In March 2003 the Kurpie Songs for a cappella choir was premiered in Warsaw. The Kronos Quartet is soon to give the first performance of Górecki’s Third String Quartet.
Górecki has received numerous honorary doctorates, including those from the Academy of Catholic Theology in Warsaw (1993), Warsaw University (1994), the Catholic University in Washington, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Victoria University in Victoria, Canada, and the University of British Columbia in Montreal.

Selected works: Songs of Joy and Rhythm for two pianos and orchestra (1956–60), Sonata for Two Violins (1957), Concerto for Five Instruments and String Quartet (1957), Epitaph for mixed choir and instrumental ensemble to words by J. Tuwim (1958), Five Pieces for Two Pianos (1959), Three Diagrams for solo flute (1959), Monologhi per soprano e tre gruppi di strumenti (1960), Scontri per orchestra (1960), Diagram No. 4 for solo flute (1961), Genesis (Elementi per tre archi, 1962), Canti strumentali per 15 esecutori (1962), Monodram per soprano, metalli di percussione e sei violbassi 1963), Choros I per strumenti ad arco (1964), Refrain for orchestra (1965), La Musiquette 1 for trumpets and guitar (1967), La Musiquette 2 for 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 2 pianos and percussion (1967), La Musiquette 3 for 3 violas (1967), Cantata for organ (1969), Canticum graduum for orchestra (1969), La Musiquette 4 for clarinet, trombone, cello and piano (1971), Two Sacral Songs for baritone and orchestra (1971), Ad Matrem for solo soprano, mixed choir and orchestra (1971), Symphony No. 2 Copernican for soprano, baritone, mixed choir and large orchestra (1972), Euntes ibant et flebant for a cappella choir (1973), Amen for a cappella choir (1974), Symphony No. 3 Symphony of Sorrowful Songs for solo soprano and large symphony orchestra (1976), Beatus vir, psalm for solo baritone, choir and orchestra (1979), Concerto for Harpsichord (or Piano) and String Orchestra (1980), Miserere for a cappella choir (1980), Recitativa e ariosa ‘Lerchenmusik’ for clarinet, cello and piano (1985), O Domina nostra for solo soprano and organ (1985), For you, Anne-Lill for flute and piano (1986-90), Aria for tuba, piano, t0m-t0m and bass drum (1987), Totus Tuus for a cappella choir (1987), Already it is Dusk – String Quartet No. 1 (1988), Good Night for soprano, alto flute, piano and 3 tam-tams (1990), Quasi una fantasia – String Quartet No. 2 (1991), Concerto-Cantata for flute and orchestra (1992), Kleines Requiem für eine Polka for piano and 13 instruments (1993), Przybądź Duchu Święty (Come Holy Spirit) for unaccompanied mixed choir (1993), String Quartet No. 3 (1999), Kurpie Songs for a cappella mixed choir (1999), Salve Sidus Polonorum, cantata about St Adalbert for large mixed choir, two pianos, organ and percussion ensemble (1997–2000), Lobgesang for choir and glockenspiel (2000).

Choros I
In his 1962 interview [with Leon Markiewicz for the biweeekly ‘Ruch Muzyczny’ No. 17, 1962], Górecki spoke of ‘subjecting myself to strict self-control’, indicating his intention to discipline his technical and creative impulses in the service of controlled composition, an overarching desire to eschew the looseness and listlessness he observed in musical developments elsewhere. In the search for his ideal of a harmonically compact and precisely worked-out piece, Choros I, Op. 20, for strings (1964) became a milestone, not least because of the great struggles Górecki had in bringing it to fruition. He withdrew and abandoned the preliminary version shortly before its premiere at the 1963 Warsaw Autumn. When he returned to the score in early 1964, he dropped most of his carefully devised effects in harmonics because of notational and practical problems. The subsequent ‘first’ version, premiered at the 1964 Warsaw Autumn, was itself renotated and edited after the festival: the published score [...] shows further substantial revisions and a final jettisoning of the harmonics which had been such an important part of Górecki’s original concept.
From early in his career, Górecki has shown a love for titles which recall ancient musical forms and procedures. This may be observed especially in the headings he gives to individual sections or movements, as in Epitafium and the First Symphony. Choros I overtly provokes expectations of the verse and refrain patterns which had underlain the evolving structures of preceding works. And certainly the ‘choral’ alternation between the four instrumental groups (violins, violas, cellos, and double basses) is one of the work’s main rationales. The antiphonal writing, however, is far from confrontational: the music moves at a measured pace, apart from a sequence of accelerandos which constitute the emergence of the principal motivic material from the opening unison A sharp. One of its most significant aspects is the wholesale return to precise pitches: from the A sharp a narrow chromatic cluster emerges, releasing a tight three-note chromatic motivic cell which stalks the texture in an almost menacing way. Combining and turning in on itself in parallel and contrary motion, it excites the accompanying sustained clusters into trills.
Most of the introductory section of Choros I is in triple metre, its highly structured phrases shaping the genesis of this most basic material in an almost Baroque fashion. The main body of the work [...] throws off some of this caution by introducing what seem to be rhythmically aleatoric versions of the three-note cells. The general level of activity increases, with more altercations between the hocketing textures and sustained clusters, all enlived with frequent crescendos. In a guarded criticism of Choros I, Leon Markiewicz wrote of the music ‘having something about it of a dance on a volcano’.
Several Polish critics in 1964 found Choros I’s obsession with limited pitch resources and repetitive motivic-rhythmic strata monotonous. That is to misunderstand the reality as well as the intention. The octave displacement of the three-note cell at the start of the main section highlights whole-tone figurations rather than the cell’s constituent semitones. This anticipates the second part of the main section [...], where Górecki begins his motivic exploration anew, this time deep in the lowest strings. This regeneration stumbles upwards until the cellos take over what is now in itself a whole-tone motif, bringing light and harmonic space into the obscurity. The reintroduction of the upper strings is co-ordinated with a recapitulatory coda based on the original three-note semitonal cell, initially in duple metre and coloured by connecting glissandos, but as the texture thins the triple metre re-emerges before the final tutti cluster.
These last pages are in their way the most conventional aspect of Choros I, rounding off a process which somehow seems incomplete. But Górecki’s intention does not seem to have been geared to a neat structure, just as it had not been in previous works, especially the Genesis cycle, of which Choros I is an honorary member. His time-scale and the severely pruned timbral and motivic resources perhaps have their closest counterparts not in the medium of music but in that of meditation or contemporary abstract painting. We may, in these works of 1962–64, find more meaningful parallels in the saturated colour of a canvas by Mark Rothko.

(Adrian Thomas, Górecki, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1997, pp.47-51)