 The creative path of Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, possibly more than that of any other composer, ran to the rhythm of change taking place in Poland since the Polish October of 1956 and Górecki’s debut at the Warsaw Autumn Festival the following year. Poland’s history in the latter half of the 20th century headed through a series of crises towards its climaxes in 1978, when the Polish Pope was elected, and in 1979, when John Paul II came to Poland on his First Pilgrimage. It then continued through the events of the martial law until freedom was won in 1989. It seems that the composer’s oeuvre ran in parallel towards a similar significant moment in his greatest masterpieces with a clearly religious message: his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (1976) and his Psalm Beatus vir (1979). The time of enthusiasm in modern Polish history gave way to that of the martial law. In Górecki’s art of the period, the culmination of the idea of the sacrum gave way to a reduction of means, a retreat into the sphere of modest simplicity (folk and sacred songs for a cappella choir, chamber music), typical of late output as defined by Mieczyslaw Tomaszewski: when the artists are confronted with a premonition of existential jeopardy, with their own “shadow line.” Almost thirty years later, we obtain, in the first recording of the twenty Church Songs for a cappella Choir adapted by Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, a true testimony to those times. The adaptations, the greatest group of which consists of Marian songs, were mostly written in May and June 1986 (one in February; two are undated). The creative process was particularly intense in May; the subsequent songs were separated, at times, by one or two days; two were adapted on May 13th, the Feast of the Virgin of Fatima. In comparison, the composer’s work on the songs was less frequent in June. The Rev. Wojciech Kalamarz helped pinpoint the sources of the adaptations. Most of the original old melodies (some dating back to the 14th century) were taken from Spiewniki koscielne (“Church Songbooks”) by Rev. Jan Siedlecki (of 1928 and 2001); writings by Revs Michal Marcin Mioduszewski, Józef Mazurowski, Szczepan Keller and Jan Zmijka were helpful too. The songs to the Holy Virgin (for this is how they are described in the “Church Songbooks”) are highly varied; there is an Advent song, an Hours fragment, there are songs typical of the May devotions to Mary. From among the Lenten songs, the composer chose those well known (including Ludu mój ludu, “People, my people”) as well as a fragment of Gorzkie Zale, Lament duszy nad cierpiacym Chrystusem (“Soul’s Lamentations on the Suffering Christ”). Three songs are associated with the cult of saints; that choice is of some significance. St Anne (in Witaj Pani, Matko Matki, “Welcome Lady, Mother of the Mother) and St Joseph (in Szczesliwy, kto sobie patrona… “Fortune is he who has as his protector…”) are both figures closest to the Virgin and thus these songs, too, can be interpreted as part of the Marian sphere. St Nicholas is the patron saint of the composer’s birthday and of his son (in Krzyknijmy wszyscy, “Let us shout together”). Easter songs were adapted too and on the holy Trinity and the Blessed Sacrament. The texts were adopted by the composer with a few modifications, usually by shortening their length; more often than not, the first couple of stanzas and the final one remained of the originals. More extensive deletion was performed on Ojcze, Boze Wszechmogacy (God the Father Almighty) : of its seventeen stanzas, only the first three and the last one were used. Other songs are written to short texts; some of these are only two lines long. They serve as frequently repeated appeals and thus approach the prayer category (e.g. Swiety, Swiety, Swiety, “Holy, holy, holy,” or Pozdrawiajmy, wychwalajmy, “Let us praise, let us hail”). Some songs contain repetitions of single lines or of their fragments. The most visible modifications have been made to the songs of the “Catholic Hymnal,” Tysiackroc badz pozdrowiona (“Be praised a thousand times”). The composer deleted many stanzas and added a new one. He also significantly added “Kalwaryjska” (“of Kalwaria”) to references to the Holy Virgin and, perhaps even more importantly, he turned the line in question, “Ksiezna niebieska, Pani Anielska, Maryja Kalwaryjska” (Princess of the Heavens, Lady of the Angels, Mary of Kalwaria), into the song’s refrain. This undoubtedly connotes with the fascination the composer had for Karol Wojtyla, John Paul II, himself a frequent visitor and pilgrim at the Via Crucis in Kalwaria from in childhood to his election as Pope and later, in his papal visits to Poland, where he would contemplate and pray for the most difficult blessings. The m u s i c a l adaptations of the church songs are particularly interesting in the relationship that occurs between the sources and the composer’s individual style. Górecki’s versions are strongly connected to their originals by their melodics, metrorhythmics and formal structure; the composer’s style is chiefly visible in the characteristics harmony and choral texture. Most melodies were taken from the original, although significant modifications were made in a few cases; the extreme example is that of the song Ojcze Boze Wszechmogacy (“God the Father Almighty”), which is a paraphrase rather than an adaptation. The more numerous metrorhythmic changes, often combined with accelerated or decreased tempo, lead to changes in the type of narration. The stanzaic structure of the original songs, together with its principle of repetitive musical material, meets, in “Church Songs”, Górecki’s characteristic repetition as the basis of his form-building. Yet the numerous “interventions,” such as those that bring short introductions that foreshadow the songs’ basic systems of texture and harmony and, consequently, their prayerful atmosphere, as irregular repetitions of single phrases, their endings or sentence fragments, all serve to “explode” the regularity, indeed the formulaic character of the originals. In most of his adaptations, the composer preserved the keys of the originals. The few changes are of a technical nature (the scale of the particular voices); sometimes, however, they have their significant impact on expression. In the song on St Anne, the Mother of the Mother of Jesus, the change of the original G major to A flat major in the adaptation may be of a symbolic nature. A flat major is the key in which the keyword “light” of the Copernican Symphony resounds; in some interpretations of 19th-century theorists, it was associated with the category of infinity, piety, nobility. This is the closest possible association with the attributes of the Holy Mother. The composer’s peculiar harmonic language that had established itself in the 1970s was also audible in the songs. The modal-tonal structuring of polyphonic choral texture (from two to ten voices) was a constant feature of the adaptations. In many cases, the multi-voice chords were complemented by foreign tones, mostly dissonant; in combination with the interchangeability of scales characteristic for folk music, this produced an effect of tonal instability and also, as in Ludu mój ludu, a remarkable Easter feeling. But then there are songs dominated by simple chords, at times of fifth and fourth, and this gives them a truly archaic character (e.g. Wstal Pan Chrystus, “Lord Jesus in now risen”). The musical-harmonic aura of the songs is clearly derived from the composer’s experience gained from his greatest sacred music masterpieces. The song Zdrowas badz Maryja (“Hail Mary”) contains chord passages much like those in the Psalm Beatus Vir.
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