Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, composer

Born: December 6, 1933 in Czernica, Poland

Died: November 12, 2010 in Katowice, Poland

Education: while his parents were amateur musicians, he was not allowed to take music as a child; eventually began violin lessons and studied composition with Boleslaw Szabelski at the Music Academy in Katowice

Awards: 1st prize at the 1961 UNESCO Youth Biennale for his First Symphony; 1st prize at the 1973 UNESCO Composers’ Rostrum for Do Matki; received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor

Commissions: received 1st foreign commission for Refren; two West German Radio Commissions: Canticum Graduum and the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs; Lerchenborg Festival; Already it is Dusk commissioned by Kronos Quartet; Beatus Vir commissioned by Cardinal Wojtyla in 1977 (Pope John Paul II); Epitatium commissioned by Warsaw Anthem Festival

Fame: largely unknown outside Poland until the 1980s, he finally gained worldwide fame in the 1990s when David Zinman conducted Dawn Upshaw and London Sinfonietta in a recording of Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, which became a worldwide phenomenon