Górecki Symphony III for Acoustic Guitar

As part of my University course I played first violin for a concert performance of several pieces of music in a New Music Ensemble, One of these pieces was "The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" by Górecki. The opening to this piece is one of the most stunning pieces of music I have heard and I decided to create an arrangement of it just on one guitar using layered tracks. The piece is based off of a folk song melody which is layered in cannon in each musical mode of the major scale starting on Aeolian and moving up a 5th within the key every repeat. I had to lower the final two parts by an octave as the guitar does not extend into the range that the violin has, but these parts were panned a touch to help clear the mix from the melodies that are near in pitch.

This piece is an example of how something very simple in music can be turned into something truly stunning and complex through a simple process. The melodic line is carefully crafted such that the resulting harmony is never too dissonant.

Henryk Górecki was born in Czernica, Poland in 1933 and died in Katowice, Poland in 2010.