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Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, also known as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Polish: [Symfonia pieśni żałosnych] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)), is a symphony in three movements composed by Henryk Górecki in Katowice, Poland, between October and December 1976. The work is indicative of the transition between Górecki's dissonant earlier manner and his more tonal later style.
A solo soprano sings a different Polish text in each of the three movements. The first is a Silesian folk song, the second a message written on the wall of a Gestapo cell during World War II, and the third a 15th-century Polish lament of Mary, mother of Jesus. The first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, and the second movement from that of a child who has lost a parent. The dominant themes of the symphony are motherhood and separation through war. (More...)