Composer dies, age 76

POLISH composer Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, has died in his home city of Katowice following a serious illness. He was 76.

Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa, director of Polish Radio orchestra in Katowice, said Gorecki died in the cardiology ward of a hospital in the city, in southern Poland. He was suffering from a number of ailments, chiefly a lung infection, she said.

Gorecki was best known internationally for his Symphony 3, Sorrowful Songs, for soprano solo and orchestra. In the second movement, the composer set to music a prayer inscribed by a prisoner on the wall of her cell in a Nazi police prison during World War II.