Totus Tuus (Op. 60) - Henryk Górecki (1933-2010)
Henryk Mikolaj Górecki, the son of amateur musicians, was actively discouraged from developing his musical gifts. He did, however, persevere and subsequently became a leading figure of avant-garde music in post-Stalin Poland. The use of serialist, or twelve-tone techniques and the resulting dissonance characterized his early music but he later turned to a more romantic and minimal sound, driven by his own faith as well as traditional Polish music in the 1970s.
Górecki was largely unknown outside Poland until the late 1980s. In 1992, 15 years after it was composed, a recording of his Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) was released to commemorate the memory of those lost during the Holocaust. This recording became a worldwide commercial and critical success, selling more than a million copies and exposing a whole new audience to Górecki's music.
Totus Tuus was composed in 1987 for the third visit of Pope John Paul II to his homeland. The text comes from a poem by Maria Boguslawska;
Totus Tuus sum, Maria
Mater nostri Redemptoris,
Virgo Dei, Virgo pia,
Mater mundi Salvatoris,
Totus Tuus sum, Maria!
I am entirely yours, Mary,
Mother of our Redeemer,
Virgin of God, pious Virgin,
Mother of the world's Saviour,
I am entirely yours, Mary!
The music moves slowly and makes great use of repetition, both of the simple text and the main four-bar theme on which the work is built. The middle section revisits the word ‘Maria’ with each repetition becoming more and more intense after which the entire text is repeated once again. The piece ends with the cries of 'Maria' growing ever quieter and calmer until they finally fade away.
