Sorrow

This is my favorite piece of classical music bar none. When I am in a sad mood I usually look it up and listen. The first time I heard this, or actually listened to it, I should say, was during a drive to Delaware. Everything was drizzly wet and the huge brilliantly colored fall leaves were falling from the trees often plastering themselves on my windshield. I listened to the cd which contained this piece and was taken away with emotion. It was of sadness but also a special kind of glorification of the majesty which begets that sadness. I had a sense that the sadness in the world, my world, was a natural part of life. I seemed to realize that sadness is indeed the default state of the human condition and that there must be a higher being, or power, or simply an unreachable something that cannot be readily seen.

I just discovered this version.

The notes: "This first recording is from 1978, long before this work became well-known. It is a pure Polish, authentic performance, by far more raw and intense as the more polished western recordings normally are."

That is a good description. It is darker and yet more majestic in its peaks. What an amazing work of art. While the video is indeed the great unspeakable sorrow the piece is about, I advise just listening to the music which is more universal in its appeal.

 

First Movement

My son, my chosen and beloved
Share your wounds with your mother
And because, dear son, I have always carried you in my heart,
And always served you faithfully
Speak to your mother, to make her happy,
Although you are already leaving me, my cherished hope.
(Lamentation of the Holy Cross Monastery from the "Lysagóra Songs" collection. Second half of the 15th century)

Second Movement

No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Support me always.
"Zdrowas Mario." (*)
(Prayer inscribed on wall 3 of cell no. 3 in the basement of "Palace," the Gestapo's headquarters in Zadopane; beneath is the signature of Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna, and the words "18 years old, imprisoned since 26 September 1944.")
(*) "Zdrowas Mario" (Ave Maria)—the opening of the Polish prayer to the Holy Mother

Third Movement

Where has he gone
My dearest son?
Perhaps during the uprising
The cruel enemy killed him

Ah, you bad people
In the name of God, the most Holy,
Tell me, why did you kill
My son?

Never again
Will I have his support
Even if I cry
My old eyes out

Were my bitter tears
to create another River Oder
They would not restore to life
My son

He lies in his grave
and I know not where
Though I keep asking people
Everywhere

Perhaps the poor child
Lies in a rough ditch
and instead he could have been
lying in his warm bed

Oh, sing for him
God's little song-birds
Since his mother
Cannot find him

And you, God's little flowers
May you blossom all around
So that my son
May sleep happily
(Folk song in the dialect of the Opole region)