Polish Instute Brussels

Some dates in the life of Witold Lutosławski

Some dates in the life of Witold Lutosławski

Belgium Witold Lutosławski Poland 1913 The Universal Exposi�on is held in Ghent. Belgium, whose economy is booming, was thus able to hold its seventh Universal Exposi�on.

1913 | 25 January Birth of Witold Lutosławski. His family moved to the family es-tate in Drozdowo, which lies around 200 km from Warsaw, which was at that �me part of the Russian empire.

1913 | 28 January Warsaw inaugura�on (Warsaw was then part of the Russian em-pire) of the Polish Theatre. The Poles, which had not had a state since 1795, had to fight for their culture to be recognised.

1914 Outbreak of the First World War. Invasion of Belgium by German troops. The opening of locks on the Yser provoked an ar�ficial flood which brought their advance to a halt.

1914 Start of the First World War. The Polish Legions, made up of volun-teers, formed in the Austro-Hungarian empire in order to fight the Russians.

1918 | 11 November Armis�ce. The fourth part of the Treaty of Versailles grants Belgium the guardianship of the territories of Ruanda-Urundi. When this treaty expired, the redeemed cantons would be a;ached to Belgium.

1918 | September Józef, Witold’s father, and Marian, his uncle, are shot dead by the Bolsheviks. A@er her husband’s death, Maria Lutosławska and her three sons move to Warsaw.

1918 | 11 November The Armis�ce brings an end to the First World War. Poland regains independence 123 years a@er its territory was last divided up. Józef Piłsudski becomes head of the interim government.

1924 | 3 January The cartoonist André Franquin, who gave the world Gaston Lagaffe and Marsupilami, is born in Brussels. He was to become a famous collaborator on the comic Spirou.

1924 Witold Lutosławski enters the highly renowned Lycée Stefan Ba-tory in Warsaw. He a;ended a concert by Karol Szymanowski for the first �me: there, he discovers the Third Sym-

phony ‘The Song of the Night’.

1924 Władysław Reymont receives the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novel Chłopi (The Peasants). For the first �me, a Polish delega-�on takes part in the Olympic Games which this year are taking place in Paris.

1927 He starts taking classes in music history. He impoves in music theo-ry and piano; he learns composi-�on under Witold Maliszewski at the Warsaw School of Music.

1927 First Interna�onal Chopin Compe-��on which is won by the Russian pianist Lev Oborine.

1929 Publica�on of the first tome of the adventures of Tin�n (Tin�n in the

Land of the Soviets).

1929 First major composi�ons, notably Varia�ons, Poem for Piano, Dance

of the Chimera for piano. He went on to compose the stu-dents’ hymn at the Stefan Batory school using the text of a contem-porary poet, Stanisław Młodozeniec.

1929 Joachim Lelewel’s remains are re-turned to Belgium. The Polish his-torian, bibliographer and ac�vist had joined the wave of Polish emi-grants to Brussels, where he re-mained from 1833 un�l 1861. There, he had set up the Royal Li-brary of Belgium’s Cabinet of Coins and Medals.

1931 Death of the Belgian violinist, composer and conductor Eugène Ysaÿe, a short �me a@er the crea-�on of the Fonda�on Musicale Reine Élisabeth.

1931 A@er receiving his baccalaureate, he began studies in mathema�cs at Warsaw University. The follow-ing year, he enrolled at the War-saw Conservatoire in the composi-�on sec�on. He soon gave up his mathema�cal studies.

1931 In Raszyn, near Warsaw, the most powerful broadcas�ng sta�on in Europe is inaugurated.

1934 | 23 February Leopold III accedes to the throne a@er the death of his father Al-bert Ist, who died one week earlier in a climbing accident at Marche-les-Dames.

1934 | 10 May He took part in the first public per-formance of the composi�ons of Grażyna Bacewicz at the Warsaw Cobservatoire.

1934 | 18 April Crea�on of the Fryderyk Chopin Ins�tute, known today as the Fry-deryk Chopin Associa�on.

1938 Inaugura�on of the Flagey build-ing, built by the architect Joseph Diongre to house the headquar-ters of the INR radio (Ins�tut Na-�onal de Radiodiffusion).

1938 Official debut as a composer: the premiere takes place of his Sym-

phonic Varia�ons conducted by Grzegorz Fitelberg.

1939 He is called up. A@er Poland sur-renders, he comes back to War-saw, where he stays un�l 1944. His brother Henryk dies in the Rus-sian camp at Kolyma.

1939 | 1 September The Nazi troops a;ack Poland. The Second World War begins. 17 September Following the secret Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement, the Soviet troops also a;ack Poland.

1940 Belgium is invaded by Nazi troops.

1940 He forms a piano duo with the composer Andrzej Panufnik. From the beginning of the war, he par-�cipates in the semi-official musi-cal life.

1940 | Juin First convoy of poli�cal prisoners leaves for Auschwitz.

1941 King Leopold III, who stayed in Belgium whilst the Belgian govern-ment had withdrawn to England, had a church wedding with Liliane Baels. This event will bring up the ‘Royal ques�on’ calling into ques-�on the legi�macy of the King of the Belgians.

1941 He composes his Varia�ons on a

theme by Paganini as well as patri-o�c songs. He con�nues to work on his Symphony Number 1. He meets his future wife, Danuta Bogusławska.

1941 | January Premiere of the Quartet for the

end of Time (1940) by Olivier Mes-siaen in the Stalag VIII A, Zgorzelec (Görlitz), on what is now the Ger-man-Polish border.

1942 | August First convoy of Belgian Jews is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau

1942 | 6 August Janusz Korczak, doctor, writer and pedagogue dies in Auschwitz. He was one of the pioneers of child pedagogy.

1943 The acts of resistance increase. One of the most spectacular acts is the arrest of a convoy of Jews bound for Malines. 9 November The Faux Soir is published by the Front de l’Indépendance: the 45,000 copies sold illicitly openly mock the Nazi occupying forces.

1943 | 13 April Radio Berlin puts out a communi-qué on the discovery of the bodies of 12,000 Polish officers in the Katyń forest. 19 April-16 May Warsaw Ghe;o Uprising.

1944 The 1st armoured division of gen-eral Stanisław Maczek goes to war. A@er combat in the North of France, it liberates Flanders and then the Netherlands.

1944 All of the composi�ons wri;en by Lutosławski before the war perish furing the Warsaw Insurrec�on. Only the Varia�ons on a theme by

Paganini escape this fate.

1944 | 1 August-3 October Warsaw Insurrec�on. The Army of the Interior (Armia Krajowa) di-rects armed opera�ons against the Nazi occupying forces before the arrival of the Soviet troops.

1946 | 26 September First edi�on of Tin�n is published. The weekly comic will be pub-lished un�l 1993.

1946 | 26 October Marriage to Danuta Bogusławska. 5 December Premiere of the Symphonic Varia-

�ons at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. The concert marks Lutosławski’s debuts abroad. The same year, he writes the group of Twenty Polish Christmas

Carols.

1946 A decree of na�onalisa�on is put out by the Polish government: en-�re branches of the na�onal econ-omy become the property of the State.

1948 Customs union amongst Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg is born: this is the start of BENE-LUX. Belgium starts to benefit from the Marshall plan, which aims to get its economy back on its feet. 17 March The United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxem-bourg sign the Treaty of Brussels, which gives rise to the Western Union.

1948 | 6 April Premiere of the Symphony Num-

ber 1: the concert, held in Katowi-ce by the Polish Na�onal Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Grzegorz Fitelberg, is rebroad-cast on Polish and Czechoslovaki-an radio.

1948 | 25-28 August Interna�onal Peace Congress held in Wrocław by the Franco-Polish Commi;ee. In a;endance were representa�ves from 45 countries, including Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Georges Duhamel, Vercors, Le Corbusier, Pablo Picasso, Fer-nand Léger, Paul Eluard, Mikhaïl Cholokhov, Ilya Ehrenbourg and Julian Huxley.

1949 First elec�ons by mixed universal suffrage in Belgium.

1949 The Symphony Number 1 is played at the inaugura�on of the IVth Fry-deryk Chopin Interna�onal Piano Compe��on in Warsaw. The Sovi-et representa�on in the jury disap-proves of the work, as a conse-quence of which it was no longer played for many years.

1949 | April Publica�on of the ar�cle-manifesto ‘On the art of Socialist realism’. On the basis of this ar�-cle, those in power reject all forms of art which do not directly serve this purpose. Amongst other char-acteris�cs, Socialist realism has a duty to be ‘close to the people’, which notably involves the im-portance of folklore and rejects all eli�sm. It was only five years later that this situa�on was officially cri�cised.

1951 | 16 July End of the ‘Royal ques�on’: Léo-pold III abdicated the throne leav-ing it to his son Baudouin, who was sworn in the following day.

1951 Crea�on of the Silesian Triptych, a magnificent stylisa�on of Polish folklore. This work brought to life the desires of the Socialist authori�es regarding Polish social realism.

1951 | 23 November First edi�on of the novel Astro-

nauci (The Astronauts) by Stanisław Lem.

1955 Ilya Prigogine, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977, receives the pres�gious Francqui Prize. The same year, King Baudouin vis-its Congo.

1955 | September Lutosławski works on the concer-tante version for chamber orches-tra of his Dance Preludes. These mark a temporary departure from Polish folklore.

1955 | 21 February Opening of the Vth Interna�onal Fryderyk Chopin piano compe�-�on in Warsaw. On this occasion, Queen Elisabeth (the mother of Léopold III) visits Poland.

1956 | 8 August Bois du Cazier mining disaster. 262 miners are killed.

1956 Lutosławski is a member of the jury at the Interna�onal String Quartet Compe��on held in the city of Liège. 14 December At the Liège Conservatoire de Li-ège, he a;ends the performance of the Concerto for Orchestra

(1954) by the Liège Conservatoire orchestra, conducted by Fernand Quinet.

1956 ‘Thawing’ in poli�cal rela�ons in Poland a@er the secret report by Nikita Khrushchev during the XXth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The ‘cult of personality’ is denounced: ‘destalinisa�on’ can begin (Stalin died in 1953). 10-21 October First interna�onal contemporary music fes�val Warszawska Jesień. Lutosławski was to be a member of the fes�val programming com-mission from 1959 un�l 1974 and from1983 un�l 1993.

1957 Signature of the trea�es of Rome which establish the Common Mar-ket of which Belgium is one of the founding members. These trea-�es were to come into force the following year: the EEC and EUR-ATOM are installed in Brussels.

1957 He finishes working on his Five

songs for female voice and a pi-

ano, a0er poems by Kazimiera

Iłłakowiczówna. For the first �me, he employs a twelve-tone harmo-ny.

1957 Polish Radio’s Experimental Studio is born. This is the fi@h studio for electronic music in Europe.

1958 The Universal Exposi�on is held in Brussels. One of the major events is the crea�on of the Atomium.

1958 | Printemps The Concert for orchestra is played in Brussels at the Universal Exposi-�on during the European tour of the Warsaw Na�onal Philharmonic Orchestra, the first since the end of the war, conducted by Stanisław Skrowaczewski. Lutosławski composes Funeral

Music.

1958 First Interna�onal Jazz Jamboree Fes�val (en�tled Jazz 58). Polish jazz develops at home and abroad.

1960 | 30 June Congo gains independence. The Belgian colonial presence in Africa was to stop for good when Burun-di and Rwanda declared their in-dependence.

1960 | 16 March Lutosławski hears a recording on the radio of John Cage’s Concert

for Piano and Orchestra. His thoughts on this piece of work were to influence his later work.

1960 | 30 May Premiere of Ofiarom Hiroszimy —

tren na 52 instrumenty smyczkowe (Thredony for the Vic�ms of Hiro-

shima for 52 string instruments) by Krzysztof Penderecki at the Grzegorz Fitelberg Composi�on Compe��on. The composer was awarded third prize there. The work ini�ally bore the �tle 8’37 (a reference of the length of �me America’s a;ack on Hiroshima lasted).

1961 During winter 1960-1961, the greatest general strike Belgium has ever known took place, caused by the promulga�on of the ‘loi unique’, a programme aiming to relaunch the economy which imposed austerity measures.

1961 | 24 April He presents the first version of Ven�an Games at the Venice Bien-nale. 16 September Premiere of the complete, defini-�ve version of Veni�an Games during the Warszawska Jesień fes-�val. This work features the first ele-ments of randomness in Lutosławski’s work.

1961 The film Matka Joanna od Aniołów (Mother Joan of the Angels) by Jerzy Kawalerowicz is awarded the special prize at the Cannes Film Fes�val.

1963 Belgium has three official lan-guages: French, Dutch and Ger-man.

1963 | 9 May Premiere of Three Poems by Henri

Michaux at the Zagreb Biennale. For the first �me, Witold Lutosławski conducts the orches-tra himself. From now on, he will conduct the performances of his composi�ons.

1964 Belgian composer Pierre Bartholo-mée writes Song for a cello, one of his first works. Two years earlier, he had founded the ensemble ‘Musiques Nouvelles’, which he was to direct un�l 1976.

1964 The String Quartet, the only work of its kind by Lutosławski, is com-posed. This commission from Swe-dish radio was to be played by the famous LaSalle quartet.

1964 | March Le;er to the Prime Minister from 34 Polish writers and intellectuals. This is the first act of group pro-test against the government’s de-mands in the field of culture.

1966 | 18 July Law on the use of languages for administra�ve use.

1966 Ar�s�c trips to Denmark, the Unit-ed States, Sweden and Germany. He composes his Second Sympho-ny.

1966 First Interna�onal Poster Biennale at the Zachęta Na�onal Art Gallery in Warsaw.

1968 The Université Catholique de Louvain is officially split into two separate universi�es with regard to language. The episode went down in hisory as ‘Walen Buiten’.

1968 The Lutosławski family moves to a villa in the Żoliborz district, not far from the old town in Warsaw. That year, he composed the Livre pour orchestre.

1968 | 30 January Last performance of Adam Mickie-wicz’s Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve) at the Warsaw Na�onal Theatre: the play is taken off the billing by the authori�es, which consider it to be an�-Soviet. This led to protests in academic milieux. Those in power took hold of these movements, leading to the ul�mate expulsion of the Jewish intelligentsia.

1970 Revision of the Belgian cons�tu-�on: this is the first reform of the Belgian state, which establishes the Communi�es and the Regions.

1970 The Concert for cello is completed. This commission from the London Royal Philharmonic Society is car-ried out for the first �me by Ms�-slav Rostropovitch.

1970 | 14-22 December Protests by workers at Gdańsk, Gdynia, Szczecin and Elbląg. 20,000 go on strike. 41 of them die. Andrzej Wajda refers to this in his film Człowiek z żelaza (Man of

Iron).

1975 Signature of the law on the mer-ger of Belgian ‘communes’. The merger takes effect on 1 January 1977, leading to the number of ‘communes’ being divided by four.

1975 Lutosławski is made an honorary member of the American Acade-my of Arts and Le;ers and the Na-�onal Ins�tute of Art and Le;ers, joining I. Paderewski, P. Boulez, B. Bri;en, O. Messian, R. Shankar and Y. Xenakis. He composes the Sacher Varia�on

and et Les Espaces du sommeil

(based on verses by French Surre-alist poet Robert Desnos).

1975 Premiere of Umarła klasa (The

Dead Class) by Tadeusz Kantor at the Cricot II Theatre, Krakow. The same year, Krys�an Zimerman wins the IXth Interna�onal Fry-deryk Chopin piano compe��on.

1978 | 9 October Jacques Brel, Belgian writer, com-poser and singer, dies in France at the age of 48 ans. Plas�c Bertrand sings Ça plane

pour moi.

1978 | 31 August Lutosławski directs Polish Radio’s Grand Symphony Orchestra of Ka-towice during the Flanders Fes�val in Ghent. Roman Jabłoński is a so-loist.

1978 | 16 October Cardinal Karol Wojtyła is elected Pope. He choses the name John Paul II.

1980 | 19 April Telex, a pioneering group in elec-tronic music, takes part in the Eu-rovision Song Contest. The audi-ence is disconcerted by the group’s music, humour and use of irony.

1980 He conducts concerts of his music and takes part in workshops in Montreal, Paris, Aix-en-Provence, Lucerne and London as well as in many Polish ci�es. He visits Turkey and Australia. That year, he composed the Dou-

ble concerto and Epitaph.

1980 | 14 August Strikes break out in the Gdańsk shipyards. An inter-enterprise strike commi;ee is set up, led by Lech Wałęsa.

1980 | 8 August The ‘special law of 8 August 1980’, signed as part of the second re-form of the Belgian state, notably governs the transfer of Person-related ma;ers to Communi�es.

1980 | 31 August Signature of the agreements with the strikers. 9 December The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded to Czesław Miłosz.

1981 François Weyergans receives the Prix Rossel for his novel Macaire le

Copte.

1981 | 11-12 December Speech by Lutosławski at the Con-gress for Polish Culture in Warsaw dedicated to ‘truth’ in works of art. A@er the State of Wa ris estab-lished, Lutosławski re�res from public life. This marks his ‘interior emigra�on’.

1981 The Palme d’or is awarded to An-drzej Wajda. 12-13 December A State of War is established in Poland. Unions are banned, as are poli�cal par�es. A curfew is in-stalled, trips abroad are forbid-den, phone lines are cut, poli�cal ac�vists are locked up, etc.

1983 Hugo Claus publishes his great Flemish novel, Het verdriet van

België (The Sorrow of Belgium).

1983 Premieres of the Third Symphony

in Chicago and Chain I in London. The previous year, Lutosławski performed in Liège. The same year, Lutosławski be-comes an honorary member of the UNESCO Interna�onal Music Council.

1983 | 22 July The State of War is li@ed. 5 October Lech Wałęsa receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Since he is in prison, he cannot go and collect the prize in Stockholm. Instead, his wife Da-nuta makes the trip.

1988 Work begins on the third reform of the Belgian state. The Brussels-Capital Region has its own ins�tu-�ons. Gérard Corbiau releases his film Le

Maître de musique which is a global success.

1988 He writes the Piano concerto, which will be played for the first �me the same year in Salzburg, and then once again at the War-szawska Jesień fes�val. Krys�an Zimerman plays the piano part twice. The previous year, Lutosławski had been made a member of the Académie des Sciences, des Le;res et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.

1989 Confe`’s, one of the key groups in the New Beat, releases ‘C in Chi-na’.

1989 Lutosławski enters the Ci�zens’ Commi;ee, led by Lech Wałęsa. He takes part in the Independent Culture Forum at the University of Warsaw.

1989 | 5 April Signing of the agreement which brings an end to the Round Table discussions. May First edi�on of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza is published. June First free elec�ons in Poland since the end of the Second World War.

Calendar based on: • Będkowski S., The Diary of the Life, Works and Ac�vity of Witold Lutosławski, 2007 • Mayer K. & Gwizdalanka D., Witold Lutosławski, 2 t., PWM, Krakow, 2003-2004

English version by Leah Maitland

1990 | 3 April The Belgian government notes that King Baudouin is ‘unfit to reign’ (according to the terms of ar�cle 93 of the Cons�tu�on). The King, loyal to his convic�ons, had not wanted to sign the law de-criminalising abor�on. The law is promulgated on 4 April and the King reinstated the following day.

1990 | 30 March Lutosławski conducts the RTBF orchestra at the Maison de la Ra-dio, place Flagey (Bruxelles), as part of the Ars Musica fes�val. On the programme: the Funeral Mu-

sic, the Piano concerto (played by Piotr Paleczny) and the Third Sym-

phony.

1990 | 22 December Lech Wałesa is elected president of the Polish Republic by universal suffrage.

1992 The film C’est arrivé près de chez

vous, the breakthrough for Benoît Poelvoorde, causes a polemic in Belgium. 7 February Belgium, like the other Member States of the European Economic Community, signs the Treaty of Maastricht, founding treaty of the European Union.

1992 First performance, at the BBC Proms, of Chantefleurs et Chante-

fables based on works by Desnos. Lutosławski conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He becomes a member of the Council of Culture repor�ng to the president of the Republic of Po-land.

1992 Wanda Rutkiewicz, considered as one of the best women mountain-eers, dies in the Himalayas. She had reached 8 of the 14 sumemts exceeding 8000 metres and was the third woman to have scaled Everest.

1993 The Belgian Cons�tu�on is re-vised: the country becomes a Fed-eral State with three regions, Flan-ders, Wallonia and Brussels. The same year, Albert II succeeds his brother Baudouin.

1993 Premiere of his Fourth Symphony

in the United States by the Los An-geles Philharmonic Orchestra. The same year he composes Fan-

fare for Los Angeles Philharmonic, his last work. In Montreal, he con-ducts an orchestra for the last �me. The same year, he receives the Polar Music Prize, the Nobel of music.

1993 European release of the first part of the Three Colours trilogy by Krzysztof Kieślowski. September The last Soviet soldier leaves Polish territory.

1994 Willy Claes, Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs and conductor, be-comes Secretary General of NATO.

1994 | 7 February Death of Witold Lutosławski at the age of 81. A few days earlier, the Polish president Lech Wałęsa had awarded him the highest honour: the Order of the White Eagle. 16 February The composer is buried at Powązki cemetary in Warsaw. 23 April Death of his wife, Danuta.

1994 | 14 April The Polish government officially applies for Poland to join the Eu-ropean Union.