Remembering The World Trade Center and 9/11 (Gorecki Symphony #3)

This is a video I created several years ago to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy. I used an excerpt from the 1st movement of Gorecki's Symphony #3. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use Gorecki's Symphony #3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) for this video. Most people are familar with the David Zinman recording with Dawn Upshaw. In the original version of my video, I used that version. But one day I was listening to the version by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra featuring soprano Susan Gritton, and I found that I liked it better. There's an urgency in the strings that's reminiscent of bells ringing, and it reminded me of the poem by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Bells," which contains this verse: Hear the loud alarum bells - Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor Now - now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling And the wrangling, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells - Of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells - In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! This was NOT an easy video to create. It was borne from the sorrow in my heart. Perhaps someone else will also find comfort in it, too.