Witold Lutoslawksi

Born: June 25, 1913, Warsaw, Poland Died: February 7, 1994, Warsaw - Biography - Musical Examples - Works - Links - Twentieth Century Composer Index

Polish composer. He was a leader in the Eastern-European avant-garde.

Witold Lutoslawski received his training at the Warsaw Conservatory (1932–37). His early music showed a strong affinity with the music of Béla Bartók, and was generally conservative in nature. In the mid- to late 1940s, his compositional output was slowed by the tight restrictions put on music by the Stalinist-controlled Polish regime. Rather than capitulate to government demands, he turned instead to writing children's pieces, where a simpler style served pedagogical and not political ends. He resumed composing orchestral and chamber music in the 1950s, and with the gradual loosening of artistic controls in the Soviet Bloc (especially in Eastern European countries), he began to explore more modern techniques. His Funeral Music from 1958 (a moving memorial to Bartók) uses twelve-tone techniques.

In the 1960s Lutoslawski visited the West and was greatly influenced by American composers such as John Cage. He incorporated much of what he heard, resulting in what he called "aleatoric counterpoint." What this meant was that he wrote the individual parts of a piece with distinct pitches, but left the durations of the notes and the temporal relationship of the parts, to the discretion of the performer and conductor. An important work in this style is his Venetian Games (1961). In his later works, the alternation of free sections and more carefully notated ones is a basic structural device. Lutoslawski spent the last years of his life teaching and conducting his own works.

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Musical Examples:

• Symphony No.3

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Works:

• Orchestral works, including 4 symphonies (1947, 1967, 1983, 1993), Concerto for Orchestra (1954), Funeral Music (1958),
  Jeux vénitiens (Venetian Games, 1961)
• Vocal music, including Three Poems of Henri Michaux (with orchestra, 1963), Chantefleurs et Chantefables (soprano and orchestra, 1990)
• Chamber music, including String Quartet (1964)
• Piano music, including Bucolics (1952)

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Links:

• A Basic Biography
  This site, from the Classical Music Pages, provides a biographical essay taken from The Grove Concise Dictionary
  of Music. It also includes a picture gallery and a list of compositions.

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