Immaculate Queen of Heaven Support Me Always

Songs on an Island list continues with a sad but gorgeous one:

4) Henryk Gorecki - Symphony No.3 (Symphony of Sorrow)

This was only composed in 1976 (just a year after Muskrat Love came out!..). I didn't know too much about it before I recently read up on it, knowing it was on my list. I've found the piece, especially the 2nd and 3rd movements to be some of the most hauntingly gorgeous music I know. The focus is a minimal ebbing of strings and some woodwinds with a woman's Soprano singing in Polish. I knew it had something to do with sadness and, presumably, the Holocaust which turns out to be sorta the case. The second movement (my favorite) is based on the text that an 18 year old girl wrote on the wall of her cell in a Gestapo prison - "O Mamo nie płacz nie—Niebios Przeczysta Królowo Ty zawsze wspieraj mnie" (Oh Mamma do not cry—Immaculate Queen of Heaven support me always). Gorecki spoke of how he was moved by the tone of the plead...
"In prison, the whole wall was covered with inscriptions screaming out loud: 'I'm innocent', 'Murderers', 'Executioners', 'Free me', 'You have to save me'—it was all so loud, so banal. Adults were writing this, while here it is an eighteen-year-old girl, almost a child. And she is so different. She does not despair, does not cry, does not scream for revenge. She does not think about herself; whether she deserves her fate or not. Instead, she only thinks about her mother: because it is her mother who will experience true despair. This inscription was something extraordinary. And it really fascinated me."

The first and third movements are from the perspective of a mother who lost a child, one a lament of Mother Mary and one a mother who's son died in a war. The restraint and gentle ebb and flow of the music seem to speak of a resignation and acceptance of the sadness - maybe a coming to terms with it - and then, as the piece comes to a close, a quiet peace is all you're left with as the violins so softly fade out, repeating their note like a mantra.

If you listen to some more contemporary 'post-rock' types of music like godspeed You! black emperor, Mogwai, or Explosions In the Sky, you'll hear a very familiar swell and atmosphere to Gorecki's music. All the loaded history of the symphony aside, it is mournful but absolutely moving and undeniably beautiful to listen to.