Witold Lutosławski: artistic portrait on the background of world wars

This article examines the life and artistic journey of the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski over the period from 1913 to 1945. Special attention is given to the fate of his father Józef who along with his brother were executed by a firing squad in September 1918, as well as to the fate of the omposer himself and his brother Henryk during the World War II. In the second part of the article, the subject of research becomes the peculiarities of musical language of W. Lutoslawski, as well as his views upon the sound structure and dramaturgical construct of the compositions. The presence of two substantive aspects in Lutoslawski’s music is proven: 1) gradual transformation of harmonious vertical due to progressive changes or addition of sounds (in combination with intonation transformations); 2) dramaturgy of sections and dramaturgy of layers. The author offers a new perspective on the works of Witold Lutosławski as the continuation G. Mahler in the area of the general concept of symphonic style, as well as in the area of intonation plot. At attempt is made to explain the peculiarity of perception of Lutosławski’s music by Russian audience in the context of comparison of the Russian and Polish mentality.

Claudio Santoro e a Polônia

Há muitos escritos sobre a presença do compositor brasileiro, Claudio Santoro na Rússia, Alemanha e França. No entanto, pouco se pesquisou sobre sua passagem pela Polônia em 1955 e posteriormente sobre o uso de uma linguagem bem próxima a do sonorismo, característica do início da obra de Krzystof Penderecki, e a do aleatorismo controlado, presente na criação de Witold Lutosławski. Estes estilos oriundos da vanguarda polonesa estão presentes em muitas composições brasileiras dos anos 1960, incluindo obras de Santoro, como a peça Interações Assintóticas.

Mieczysław Tomaszewski. Muzykolog wolny, niezależny i zaangażowany

The article discusses the culture-creating activities of Mieczysław Tomaszewski (1921–2019) at the Polish Music Publishing House and within the context of Musical Encounters at Baranów Sando- mierski (1976–1981). The text is mainly concerned with Tomasze-wski’s publications relating to twentieth-century Polish composers: Karol Szymanowski, Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Penderecki and Henryk Mikołaj Górecki. The reflections of the Polish musicologist are closely entwined with the theoretical conceptions developed by himself: the conception of Wort-Ton, the method of integral interpre-tation of a musical work, the conception of nodal points in the lives of composers, or intertextuality in music. Applying these conceptions allowed him to describe Polish twentieth-century compositions at different levels and in different contexts: beginning with a synthetic periodisation of creative development, up to masterly analyses and interpretations of individual works that take into consideration their intertextual references. The Polish musicologist also paid careful at-tention to composers’ statements testifying to their original views and inner transformations. The problem of freedom was of particular im-portance to him, both in its personal, artistic aspect and in its histor-ical dimension. Tomaszewski as a person reveals himself throughout his activities as someone both free and committed.

Composition trends in polish vocal lyric. Musical language features in polish songs after the mid-20th century based on selected examples

The subject for analysis were works for voice and piano by selected Polish composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, e.g. Grażyna Bacewicz, Tadeusz Baird, Henryk Czyż, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Henryk Hubertus Jabłoński, Wojciech Kilar, Zygmunt Krauze, Szymon Laks, Witold Lutosławski, Juliusz Mieczysław Łuciuk, Wojciech Łukaszewski, Paweł Łukaszewski, Maciej Małecki, Paweł Mykietyn, Edward Pałłasz, Konrad Pałubicki, Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Rudziński, Marian Sawa, Kazimierz Serocki, Tadeusz Szeligowski and Romuald Twardowski. An important matter for the author was to determine whether there are common features for this creative genre. She also attempted to find an answer to the question if the trends from the second half of the 20th century were reflected in songs. The scope of analysis covered the repertoire the author knew from her performance practice from the standpoint of a pianist. To the general characteristics of selected songs she added a review of famous trends, techniques and styles of composition, such as impressionism, neoromanticism, expressionism, dodecaphony, serialism, punctualism, minimalism, sonorism, spectralism, neoclassicism, vitalism, postmodernism, aleatoricism, bruitism, microtonality, electronic music, musique concrète, stochastic music, references to previous periods, to folklore and to popular music. She compared musical notation of the analysed works. She also confronted forms of songs with contemporary composition techniques. Interesting was the approach of composers to chamber relations in a duo and the way they made texts musical. Most composers distanced themselves from the avant-garde in works for voice and piano which had a specific poetic text because of the clarity of narration. Matching composers unequivocally to just one trend turned out impossible. Various techniques and phenomena may co-exist in one piece and in the same way one creator may search for different means of expression.

Lutosławski, Witold (1913–1994)

The music and life of Polish composer Witold Lutosławski (1913–1994) pivoted around key events in his country’s tumultuous twentieth-century history. The so-called cultural ‘thaw’ at the end of Stalinism in the mid 1950s permitted Poland’s composers to begin experiments in a range of modernist styles. Lutosławski forged a unique voice by exploring tensions between the classicist sensibility underpinning his neoclassical pre-thaw compositions (a style that had brought him into a position of preeminence in Poland) and more radical, avant-garde alternatives. So while he created individualistic and, often, beautiful solutions to post-tonal compositional problems of pitch organization, rhythm, texture, orchestration and long-range musical structuring, his greater contribution was marshaling his technique to compose powerfully affecting musical narratives responding, albeit obliquely, to the events and cultural atmospheres of his life and times. In major works including his Trois poems d’Henri Michaux, String Quartet, Livre pour orchestre, Cello Concerto, Mi-parti, Piano Concerto, Chain 2 and Symphony No. 4 – compositions that brought him international recognition as one of the mid-to-late twentieth century’s finest composers – Lutosławski created (to speak drily) modernist musical narratives exploring the problems of plot and representation in an innovative language, or (to speak more evocatively) structures of feeling and form that transcend the mundane specificity of programme music to offer visceral, spellbinding and moving testimony on the late-modern human experience, and from a distinctive Polish perspective.

Zapis aleatoryzmu kontrolowanego jako instrukcja działania dla wykonawców na wybranych przykładach kompozycji Witolda Lutosławskiego.

The goal of the article is to present the transcription system in Witold Lutosławski’s pieces composed using the technique of controlled aleatorism as a formal language for the transmission of instructions to the conductor and orchestra musicians performing those works. The starting point for my ruminations is to explore controlled aleatorism from the performer’s perspective.The text invokes excerpts from three pieces by Witold Lutosławski: Cello concerto, Chain I, and Piano Concerto. The author presents an account of the controlled aleatorism technique and analyzes the graphic signs used in the aforementioned compositions, along with the ways in which they are interpreted by performers. The author contends that the examined transcriptions are a collection of instructions of varying degrees of complexity, addressed to musicians performing the analyzed pieces. Such a system of notation can be interpreted as a formal language which the composer programmed the work of the conductor and orchestra musicians. Beginning with the simplest instructions, he proceeded to create complex, algorithmic commands.The conclusions drawn from the above analyses point to the essence of controlled aleatorism in music notation and its interpretations. The element of control overrides the element of randomness, and such a state of affairs is attained by using a particular type of transcription.