Count me among the millions who fell under the spell of Polish composer Henryk Gorecki’s “Symphony No. 3,” (a.k.a. “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”). Gorecki has died, reportedly of a lung infection.

Symphony No. 3 (1976), explores the gradations of a single mood: somber, introspective reflection, conveyed in three long, slow, quiet movements that last nearly an hour. Scored for orchestra and soprano, the work’s vocal sections include settings of a 15th-century sacred lamentation, a simple prayer (“Oh Mamma do not cry — Immaculate Queen of Heaven support me always”) scrawled by a young girl on the wall of a Gestapo prison in southern Poland, and a plaintive Polish folk song in which a mother grieves for a son lost in war.

A moving video of the symphony’s “Lento e Largo” section can be seen here: