Zbigniew SKOWRON

The brilliance of

Witold Lutosławski’s music

The brilliance of Witold Lutosławski’s music

The work of Witold Lutosławski owes its special place in the music of the

XXth

century to the fact that it combines the modern and the tradi#onal. This is

how the composer was able to create his own, individual style, which found its

fullest expression once he had reached maturity, star#ng with composi#ons

such as the String quartet (1964) and the Second Symphony (1967). The path

which led him towards developing this style took in on the way the Symphonic

Varia�ons of his youth (1938) as well as the works inspired by neoclassicism,

such as the Symphony Number 1 (1947) and Concerto for orchestra (1954),

which also made use of elements of Polish musical folklore.

The key turning point in Lutosławski’s work was marked by two pieces of

music. In the first, en#tled Five Songs, from texts by Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna

(1957), he used a twelve-tone harmony for the first #me. It was this, which

was a veritable crea#ve alterna#ve to the Vienna School’s dodecaphony, which

imbued his works with their trademark sound (as much in a ver#cal as a

horizontal dimension), making it a dis#nc#ve alterna#ve to a tonal system

which underwent a complete reevalua#on in the music of the XXth

century.

The second work, which also marked a rupture in Lutosławski’s pursuit of his

own sound language, is the Veni�an Games (1961), in which he combined the

precision of organising the pitch of sound to the work of chance, the effect of

which was to create a sound structure with an incredibly subtle, almost

sparkling, rhythmic character.

Thinking of a piece of work as a whole submi:ed to ra#onal control allowed

Lutosławski to avoid the radical nature of a lot of western ar#sts. The more the

la:er, in their desire to outmanoeuvre the complica#ons of integral serialism,

fell into the trap of an omnipresent indeterminism, the more Lutosławski,

making the most of the new possibili#es offered by randomness, retained total

control over the form and expressiveness of his music. His talent did not

merely consist of precisely arranging the sound material and organising #me

within the work, rather it also appeared in the field of macroform, as

evidenced in his four symphonies. If the Symphony Number 1 s#ll has clear

references to classical models, the following three were projec#ons of an

original idea of grand form, made up of a preliminary part, introducing the

fundamental material and a central part in which the la:er undergoes

development and transforma#on. This idea found its most complete form in

the Third Symphony (1983), in which the two-part form is associated with the

classical model of the sonata form. The rough scores by Lutosławski conserved

in Paul Sacher’s archives in Basel are proof of the extent to which a clever plan

presided over the construc#on of small as well as large scale forms which he

honed to perfec#on, in line with the principle which holds that even the most

subtle musical element is meaningful when it forms part of a whole.

In Lutosławski’s music, the precision in the organisa#on of the pitch of his

sounds and rhythmic structures blends with the combina#on of tones and

sounds in an organic way. Seen from this angle, he remains faithful to the

solu#ons put forward by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, something which

the composer stressed several #mes in interviews and in his aesthe#c

declara#ons, thus indica#ng where his aesthe#c loyal#es lay. His fascina#on

for the sensual value of sound found its expression in his vocal-instrumental

composi#ons derived from texts by French poets: in Trois poèmes d’Henri

Michaux (1963), in Paroles �ssées (1965) from a text by Jean-François

Chabrun, in Les Espaces du sommeil (1975) from a text by Robert Desnos, and

finally in Chantefleurs et Chantefables (1989-1990), once again from

poetry by Desnos, which date from the last phase of his working life. In these

works, the lines sung by the solo voice intermingle with the instrumental base

harmony, producing a rich and a:rac#ve sound.

Unlike representa#ves of the radical avant-garde, Lutosławski was not

looking to blow people away or surprise his audiences with a kaleidoscope of

sound effects. On the contrary, he wished to create a deep bond with them by

filling his music with a richness of expression replete with nuance. The sensual

func#on (by which I mean the listening experience) of his sound solu#ons

merge in Lutosławski’s music with the projec#on of emo#ons which find their

voice over the course of a piece of work with what appears to be an

underlying drama#c scenario.

In the music of the XXth

century, Lutosławski’s music is one of several

examples of a produc#on which is directly in line with the heritage of the

tradi#on of absolute (purely instrumental) music of the previous century.

Whichever way the sound choices of his works go beyond tradi#onal tonal

language (even if they contain dodecaphonic material, we also entounter

microtones), in his aesthe#c concep#on, Lutosławski stayed faithful to the idea

of music as a pure sound model, with absolutely no reference to the

surrounding reality. It is an incredibly black-and-white world in the realms of

atmosphere and expression, in which, alongside the subtle lyricism of the

melodic lines and modulated sounds, dynamic sound construc#ons appear,

filled with tension pushing the whole to a powerful climax. The ac#on which

takes place in the works of Lutosławski intends to dumbfound the audience,

pull him into the fabric of the sound much like the plot of a drama. In this

regard too, his music is brilliantly thought out: it forms a kind of emo#onal

script in which space is afforded, alongside those areas where the musical

ac#on takes on a par#cular intensity, for moments of decompression where

the listener can let his mind wander. This is notably the case in Livre pour

orchestre (1968).

Against a background of the incredible crea#ve wealth of XXth

century music,

the work of Lutosławski does not just demonstrate perfec#on in terms of

form, the en#re mé�er of the composer and the depth of his expression. What

is so incredible about this music is also contained in its aesthe#c message, in

the passing on of beauty in its purest sound form.

Zbigniew Skowron

English version by Leah Maitland