Saturday, July 03, 2010

Marc Chagall's Bible illustrations set to Henryk Gorecki's Sorrowful Songs: Chagall created most of these lithograph drawings for the Bible in the mid-twentieth century. In this series, he presents well-known and lesser-known stories from the Bible from the Garden through to the Final Judgment.

The music is a selection from Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, II Lento e Largo, tranquillissimo, also called "Sorrowful Songs," performed by David Zinman, Dawn Upshaw, and the London Sinfonietta. The music was inspired by the story of an 18-year-old prisoner WWII, Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna, who wrote the following message on "wall 3 of cell No. 3 in the basement of the "Palace," the Gestapo headquarters in Zakopane:

"No, Mother, do not weep
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Support me always
"Zdrowas Mario."