I may have been one of the more pretentious teenagers around, but many Saturday evenings ended in one of my friends houses, where we would put on what was always just called ‘Gorecki’. It has the only piece of classical music that was allowed, and was often sandwiched between the Pixies and Jane’s Addiction and other more fitting for a drunk teenager!

Polish composer Henryk Gorecki died at the end of 76 in Katowice over the weekend. His ‘Symphony of sorrowful songs’ is the piece I was familiar with, and it even made it as far as number 6 in the album charts. It was based around the Holocaust, and included words written by a teenage girl on the walls of her Gestapo prison cell. This may have been a little lost on  my teenage self, but it always sounded the saddest music I’d ever know.

I wonder what they’ll play at this funeral? Nah, it’s too obvious.