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About
Witold Roman Lutosławski was a Polish composer and orchestral conductor. He was one of the major European composers of the 20th century, and one of the preeminent Polish musicians during his last three decades. He earned many international awards and prizes. His compositions (of which he was a notable conductor) include four symphonies, a Concerto for Orchestra, a string quartet, instrumental works, concertos, and orchestral song cycles.
During his youth, Lutosławski studied piano and composition in Warsaw. His early works were influenced by Polish folk music. His style demonstrates a wide range of rich atmospheric textures. He began developing his own characteristic composition techniques in the late 1950s. His music from this period onwards incorporates his own methods of building harmonies from small groups of musical intervals. It also uses aleatoric processes, in which the rhythmic coordination of parts is subject to an element of chance.
During World War II, after escaping German capture, Lutosławski made a living by playing the piano in Warsaw bars. After the war, Stalinist authorities banned his First Symphony for being "formalist"—allegedly accessible only to an elite. Lutosławski believed such anti-formalism was an unjustified retrograde step, and he resolutely strove to maintain his artistic integrity. In the 1980s, Lutosławski gave artistic support to the Solidarity movement. Near the end of his life, he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour.
Music
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".
A complete list of Lutosławski's compositions in chronological order can be found at The Polish Music Center.
Folk influence
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 in transforming 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 explicitly, 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]". Also, Lutosławski was dissatisfied with composing in a "post-tonal" idiom: while composing the first symphony, he felt that this was for him a cul-de-sac.
Pitch organisation
In Five Songs (1956–57) and Musique funèbre (1958) Lutosławski introduced his own brand of twelve-tone music, marking his departure from the explicit use of folk music. His twelve-tone technique allowed him to build harmony and melody from specific intervals (in Musique funèbre, augmented fourths and semitones). This system also gave him the means to write dense chords 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 Musique funèbre' does happen to be based on a tone row. This twelve-note intervallic technique had its genesis in earlier works such as Symphony No. 1, and Paganini Variations.
Aleatory technique
Although Musique funèbre 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.[23] Then on 16 March 1960, listening to Polish Radio broadcast on new music, he happened to hear John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra. Although he was not influenced by the sound or the philosophy of the music, Cage's explorations of indeterminacy 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 had intended to write four) and he moved on to compose works in which he explored these new ideas.
In works from Jeux vénitiens, Lutosławski wrote long passages in which 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 elements within compositionally controlled limits defined by the term aleatory are 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.
For his String Quartet, Lutosławski had produced only the four instrumental parts, refusing to bind them in a full score, because he was concerned that this would imply that he wanted notes in vertical alignment to coincide, as is the case with conventionally notated classical ensemble music. The LaSalle Quartet, however, specifically requested a score from which to prepare for the first performance.[28] Bodman Rae relates that Danuta Lutoslawska solved this problem by cutting up the parts and sticking them together in boxes (which Lutosławski called mobiles), with instructions on how to signal in performance when all of the players should proceed to the next mobile. In his orchestral music, these problems of notation were not so difficult, because the instructions on how and when to proceed are given by the conductor.
Lutosławski's called this technique of his mature period "limited aleatorism". This controlled freedom given to the individual musicians is contrasted with passages where the orchestra is asked to synchronise their parts; the score for these passages is notated conventionally using bars (measures) and time signatures.
Both Lutosławski's harmonic and aleatory processes are illustrated by example 1, an excerpt from Hésitant, the first movement of the Symphony No. 2. At number 7, the conductor gives a cue to the flutes, celesta and percussionist, who then play their parts in their own time, without any attempt to synchronise with the other instrumentalists. The harmony of this section is based on a 12-note chord built from major seconds and perfect fourths. After all the instrumentalists have finished their parts, a two-second general pause is indicated (P.G. 2" at top right of the example). The conductor then gives a cue at number 8 (and indicates the tempo of the following section) for two oboes and the cor anglais. They each play their part, again with no attempt to synchronise with the other players. The harmony of this part is based on the hexachord F♯–G–A♭–C–D♭–D, arranged in such a way that the harmony of the section never includes any sixths or thirds. When the conductor gives another cue at number 9, the players each continue until they reach the repeat sign, and then stop: they are unlikely to end the section at the same time. This "refrain" (from numbers 8 to 9) recurs throughout the movement, slightly altered each time, but always played by double-reed instruments which do not play elsewhere in the movement: Lutosławski thus also carefully controls the orchestral palette.
Late style
The combination of Lutosławski's aleatory techniques and his harmonic discoveries allowed him to build up complex musical textures. According to Bodman Rae, in his later works Lutosławski evolved a more mobile, simpler, harmonic style, in which less of the music is played with an ad libitum coordination.[32] This development first appeared in the brief Epitaph for oboe and piano, around the time Lutosławski was struggling to find the technical means to complete his Third Symphony. In chamber works for just two instrumentalists the scope for aleatory counterpoint and dense harmonies is significantly less than for orchestra, but these developments also influenced his orchestral style in late works including the Piano Concerto, Chantefleurs et Chantefables, Chain 2 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.
Lutosławski's life, as well as detailed and thorough discussion of Lutosławski's music and compositional techniques, can be found in both Stucky (1981) and Bodman Rae (1994, 1996, 1999), but also in Witold Lutosławski – Guide to Warsaw (2013) by the National Institute of Fryderyk Chopin.