This should end all the speculation...

   Telegraph 30 May 1999

   Vatican tells composer to cut Millennium work
   By Jo Knowsley

   THE world's most successful living composer is furious with the Vatican
   after being told to shorten a piece of music he is writing for the
   Millennium by 15 minutes.

   Henryk Gorecki, 65, a Polish composer and friend of the Pope, has
   spent five years working on the Mass of Joy, a large-scale choral and
   orchestral score to mark 2,000 years of Christianity.  The work was
   planned as part of the Vatican's concert celebrations and Mr Gorecki
   was told that it should run to at least 50 minutes.

   He has finished entire sections of the piece, but now the Vatican wants
   it to last only 35 minutes so it can be incorporated into the Christmas
   Eve Mass at St Peter's.  Mr Gorecki was so distressed that his
   London-based publishers, Boosey & Hawkes, fear that he will abandon
   the work.

   Susan Bamert, of Boosey & Hawkes, said: "When I told him the news it
   seemed as if he might explode.  He was really very disturbed.  He said
   it would 'ruin the parameters'.  It is difficult for him to be caught
   midstream.  He has finished sections of the piece, which makes it very
   awkward."

   Michael Berkeley, a leading British composer, said: "Asking a composer
   to cut his work is like castrating something conceived as an overall
   arch.  Artists conceive things as a whole.  It's not like buying floor
   tiles - you can't just cut bits off." Some scores have been improved
   by being shortened, he said, but the decision was always taken by the
   composer.

   Another composer, who asked not to be named, said: "Some composers
   are more flexible about this than others.  Crafting a piece of music
   is all about balance and a sudden change of length can utterly ruin
   that."

   Mrs Bamert said Mr Gorecki's piece will feature a choral section and
   a soloist.  She said: "The deadline is Sept 1 and no one has yet heard
   a note of it."

   The publishers are now in frenzied negotiations with the Vatican
   and the composer.  Mrs Bamert said: "We think the happiest solution
   is for a 35-minute section to be played during the Mass and for a
   performance to be scheduled a few days later for the work in full."
   The Vatican has not commented on the dispute.

   Mr Gorecki, who lives in obscurity on the Silesian border, shot to
   international fame with his Third Symphony, The Symphony of Sorrowful
   Songs in 1992, which sold more than 600,000 copies worldwide.  The
   phenomenal sales of the Third Symphony, which was also used as a
   soundtrack to the Hollywood film Fearless, made him the best-selling
   living composer of classical music.

   Mr Gorecki has written more than 60 other works since his first concert
   as a student in 1958.  In 1979, he performed his Beatus Vir, a cantata
   about a Polish saint, before the Pope.

   Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 1999

James Kearney
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