Witold Lutosławski - Music - Encyclopedia II

Lutosławski described musical composition as a search for listeners who think and feel the same way he did — he once called it "fishing for souls".

Lutosławski's works up until and including the Dance Preludes clearly show the influence of Polish folk music, both harmonically and melodically. Part of his art was to transform folk music, rather than quoting it exactly. In some cases, folk music is unrecognisable as such without careful analysis, for example, in the Concerto for Orchestra. As Lutosławski developed the techniques of his mature compositions, he stopped using folk material expicitly, although its influence remained as subtle features until the end. As he said, "[in those days] I could not compose as I wished, so I composed as I was able", and about this change of direction he said, "I was simply not so interested in it [using folk music]".

In Muzyka żałobna (1958) Lutosławski introduced his own brand of twelve-tone music, marking a departure from the explicit use of folk music. His twelve-tone technique allowed him to build harmony and melody from specific intervals (in Muzyka żałobna, augmented fourths and semitones). This system also gave him the means to write the dense chords he wanted without resorting to tone clusters, and enabled him to build towards these dense chords (which often include all twelve notes of the chromatic scale) at climactic moments. Lutosławski's twelve-note techniques were thus completely different in conception from Arnold Schoenberg's tone-row system, although Muzyka żałobna does happen to be based on a tone row. The twelve-note intervallic technique had its genesis in earlier works such as Concerto for Orchestra.

Although Muzyka żałobna was internationally acclaimed, his new harmonic techniques led to something of a crisis for Lutosławski, during which he still could not see how to express his musical ideas. Then he happened to hear some music by John Cage. Although he was not influenced by the sound or the philosophy of Cage's music, Cage's explorations of aleatory music set off a train of thought which resulted in Lutosławski finding a way to retain the harmonic structures he wanted while introducing the freedom for which he was searching. His Three Postludes were hastily rounded off (he originally intended to write four) and he moved on to compose works in which he explored these new ideas.

In works from Jeux vénitiens, the parts of the ensemble are not to be synchronised exactly. At cues from the conductor each instrumentalist may be instructed to move straight on to the next section, to finish their current section before moving on, or to stop. In this way the random element implied by the term aleatory is carefully directed by the composer, who controls the architecture and harmonic progression of the piece precisely. Lutosławski notated the music exactly, there is no improvisation, no choice of parts is given to any instrumentalist, and there is thus no doubt about how the musical performance is to be realised. The combination of Lutosławski's aleatory techniques and his harmonic discoveries allowed him to build up complex musical textures.

The aleatoric style of Lutosławski's mature period is clearly illustrated by the excerpt from the score of his Third Symphony. Instead of printing every instrumental part across the page whether sounding or not, here there is white space when instruments are silent. The wind and brass instruments, on the top half of the page, are each given a short fragment of music followed by a wavy line; this indicates that they should each play their fragment again and again in their own time, resulting in an atmospheric texture devoid of pulse and with a cloud-like sense of melody and rhythm. After the brass and wind figuration is established, the conductor gives four successive beats for the string section, notated on the lower half of the page. At each beat (signified by a downward arrow on the score) first the violins, then the violas, then the cellos and finally the basses enter with downward motifs, themselves repeated and unsynchronised apart from their entries. In some works of this period, this controlled freedom given to the individual musicians is contrasted with sections where the orchestra is asked to synchronise their parts conventionally, in passages notated with a common time signature.

In his later works Lutosławski evolved a more harmonically mobile, less monumental style, in which less of the music is played with an ad libitum coordination. This development resulted from the demands of his late chamber works, such as Epitaph, Grave and Partita for just two instrumentalists; however it may also be seen in orchestral works such as Piano Concerto, Chantefleurs et Chantefables, and the Fourth Symphony, which require mostly conventional coordination.

Lutosławski's formidable technical developments grew out of his creative imperative; that he left a lasting body of major compositions is a testament to his resolution of purpose in the face of the anti-formalist authorities under which he formulated his methods.

A detailed and thorough discussion of Lutosławski's music and technique can be found in both Stucky (1981) and Rae (1999).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Music", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page