Music in Two Parts: Lutosławski’s Development of a Signature Form

Grant Coughlin

Dr. Monchick

MUS 603E

May 12, 2017

 Heavy is the Head Which Composes

Do you feel the weight of the twentieth century on you? This is a question which if a

composer does not ask himself, another composer inevitably will. The dissolution of tonality and

heterogenization of styles in the early 1900s both contributed to a musical environment of

unprecedented transition. It is arguable that not since the birth of Western music have creative

artists had to rely so greatly on their own instincts for guidance. The obstacles encountered by

composers of this century is eloquently detailed by Joseph Auner:

There are many dangers that hedge round the unfortunate composer: pressure groups that
demand true proletarian music, snobs who demand the latest avant-garde tricks; critics who
are already trying to document today for tomorrow, to be the first to find the correct
pigeonhole definition.1

Fortunately, there always has been, and hopefully, always will, a composer who is able to unify

the seemingly irreconcilable differences between compositional practices of the past and

compositional practices of the present, ensuring the continued progress of music history.

Establishing a Foundation

It’s a familiar story, a musical family, a cultural home visited by artists, and a child

prodigy absorbing the stimulating environment around him. Compelled by an “inner desire,”2

six-year old Witold Lutosławski insisted that he learn the piano, a plea which his mother obliged.

He began as most students do, practicing pedagogical compositions by the Classical masters, and

of course, as a Pole, was raised on the “Poet of the Piano,” Fryderyk Chopin, but the composer

within him was not satisfied by merely performing the music of others, he was compelled to

create. Improvisation was his first attempt, then at the age of nine, he composed the first notated

1 Auner, Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, 180

2 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 3
composition of his life, a short piece for solo piano. Two years later, a revelation was introduced

to him, music of the twentieth century. Although Warsaw was not as up-to-date as Paris or

Vienna in regards to current trends, Poland had a modern composer of its own who represented

the aesthetic of Lutosławski’s generation, Karol Szymanowski, whose Third Symphony affected

the budding, young composer significantly.3 Lutosławski recalls that he “spent days trying to

recapture those sounds at the piano,” and “for weeks he could think of nothing but this work.”4

Szymanowski’s influence would become important to Lutosławski, being both a model, and

eventually, a dead-end to which he turned away from in search of a new direction.

1928 was a formative year for Lutosławski. With a newly composed Poème for piano, he applied

to study with the esteemed pedagogue, Witold Maliszewski, a student of Rimsky-Korsakov at the

St. Petersburg Conservatory.5 After being accepted, Lutosławski began a rigorous study of

orchestration and form, the latter made an indelible impression, which he credited part of his

technique to throughout his life.

The thing that was maybe most important in my conservatory studies: the course on musical
forms by Maliszewsi … It was absolutely a revelation-something that opened to me the very
mysterious way of treating the musical form by Beethoven. I think that Beethoven was a
composer before whom and after whom there was nobody to treat the psychological side of
musical form in this way. I think he was the only one, and Maliszewski was able to show us
everything because he based his course on the piano sonatas that he played himself and
analyzed for us. I think that Maliszewski's form class was the most important thing I learned
in school, and it still plays a certain role in my own work even now.6

3 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 4

4 ibid.
5 ibid.
6 Rust, “Conversation with Witold Lutosławski” 207
The “psychological side” Lutosławski is referring to is what Maliszewski described as

“character,”7 a term with programmatic association, but used by him to describe sections such as

introductions, transitions, etc. This method of teaching, that is, emphasizing the function of parts

and their relationship to the whole, instead of focusing on chord-to-chord harmonic analyses is

why Lutosławski felt the Russian perspective more holistic than its Germanic counterpart, which

could be argued, does not see the forest for the trees. Ironically, however, it was a German who

served as the example for these lessons.

In Beethoven's sonatas there are many ways that the character changes. For instance, only in
narrative character is the musical content more important than the role that the section plays
in the form. All other characters consist of music whose content is less important than the
role-the formal role … Musical action is important for all those who want to approach the
large-scale closed form. Otherwise, if they compose one section after another and they don't
carefully consider how it is perceived during the performance, then it doesn't work.8

This quote is an insight to Lutosławski’s view of the division/interdependence of material and

function, and the valuation he attributed to each of them. It is comparable to what Arnold

Schoenberg referred to as a composer’s “sense of form,” an enigmatic sensitivity to proportion,

which if it is able to be taught, must be nurtured by an astute teacher, such as Maliszewski, who

required “responsibility for every note one wrote.”9 With this ideal in mind, Lutosławski

composed a prolific amount, including a piano sonata, a scherzo for orchestra, and two settings

of text from the Requiem Mass. All of this was proving ground for his next three compositions,

compositions which would define his early period.

7 Rust, “Conversation with Witold Lutosławski” 207

8 Rust, “Conversation with Witold Lutosławski” 208-209
9 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 5
 Neoclassicism and a Break with Tradition

Revisiting traditional forms with modern techniques was a fashion of the time, a style made

popular by composers such as Stravinsky, whose international fame and influence was

ubiquitous among young, impressionable composers. Although Lutosławski’s production during

his early period elevated more than it innovated, it would be a gross simplification to classify the

Symphonic Variations, Symphony no. 1, and the Concerto for Orchestra as “neoclassical,” a label

which Steven Stucky writes is “deficient,” and “does not begin to account for many facets of

distinctive musical personality.”10 The latter of the three, the concerto, is the most mature, and

the composition which best foreshadows the advancements he would make in the years to come.

From the appearance of it, the three-movement form bearing the titles Intrada, Passacaglia, and

Toccata e Corale conjure up baroque connotations deserving of the term “neoclassical,” but this

is superficial, because its modernity is not about it being ternary, it’s about the shift of musical

gravity from the first movement to the last, 11 hence the epithet, “end-accented.”

Although a complete analysis of the concerto would be impractical to include, the finale should

be discussed in-depth. It serves simultaneously as a continuation and culmination of ideas

presented in the Intrada and Passacaglia. After mirroring the opening F# pedal point with an

emphasis on its dominant, C#12, a transformation of several themes ensues, and even the

transformation of a transformation, a technique perhaps related to his Symphonic Variations, in

10 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 33

11 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 49
12 This implies tonality, but pitch centricity is more precise.
which each variation is based upon the preceding variation.13 As the climax of the “exposition” is

in progress, a pair of oboes and clarinets marked dolce enter with no preparation and state the

chorale. The overlap of these two sections is not groundbreaking, Beethoven prematurely

recapitulated the horn part while still in the development section of the Eroica, but it is a

technique Lutosławski mastered to propel the musical energy forward, a device analogous to the

condensing of a phrase before a cadence. The movement closes with a coda steadily increasing in

texture and dynamics towards a climax which seems to try to conclude not only the Toccata e

Corale, but the concerto as a whole. Stucky, a composer first and musicologist second, did not

think the effort was successful. He intimately knew the difficulty posed by this challenge,

writing, “managing a carefully controlled and long-sustained ascent to a single most important

climax is a problem.”14

The decisive restructuring of Classical convention, specifically, where “the proper place of

dramatic and emotional weight in the large-scale cycle”15 belongs, is why Stucky considers this

aspect Lutosławski’s “distinctive contribution to the evolution of the closed form.”16 In the 30

minutes it approximately takes to perform the concerto, the Toccata e Corale lasts more than 16

minutes, roughly 54% of the total duration. Placing the tension at the end instead of the

beginning was a pivotal experiment Lutosławski tested after struggling to revise the finale of the

13 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 13

14 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 58
15 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 130
16 ibid.
first symphony. 17 The result obviously pleased him, as he would refine it and use it again in the

decades to follow.

Music in Two Parts

Most chronologies would probably cite Jeux venitiens as the highlight of Lutosławski’s work of

the early 1960s. It was the composition which debuted his embracement of limited aleatory, a

technique indebted to John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra,18 but for the purpose of

delineating his development of form, Symphony No. 2 is more pertinent.

Upon completion of his Trois poèmes d’Henry Michaux and String Quartet, the second

symphony marked Lutosławski’s return to pure orchestral music since the Concerto for

Orchestra. 19 The seed planted twenty years prior germinated into a clear-cut two-part form: 1.

Hesitant, 2. Direct. The first movement is similar to a rondo, consisting of a recurring theme

interspersed with seven contrasting episodes, each scored for a unique combination of

instruments to articulate their division from the refrain. 20 Pitches are derived from a twelve-tone

set organized as a collection of interval classes 2 and 5 (i.e. major seconds and perfect fifths),

but are not subjected to strict rules, or to put it in his own words, he does not allow “the pre-

emincence of the system over ear control,” 21 a point of contention he had with the Second

Viennese School and their disciples. This chromatic aggregate is partitioned into subsets, which

17 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 130

18 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 84
19 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 159
20 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 160
21 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 108
are then assigned various roles. A series of crescendos try in vain to reach their destination, but

ultimately fail. The endeavor gives up, only to be attempted again in the second movement.

Without hesitation, or even a moment’s rest, the second movement, Direct, commences with the

double basses interrupting the final statement of theme 1. As the title indicates, it is the antithesis

of everything that has come before it. What was compartmentalized in the winds and brass is

now consecutive in the strings, and what was insecure and tentative has now been overcome by a

newfound confidence. Lutosławski, in one of the rare analyses of a composition by its composer,

validated the general opinion that the music grows over the course of five stages. 22 Each stage

builds in intensity by “macrorhythmic acceleration,”23 the same technique from the concerto, but

used here in a new way. Instead of overlapping sections, the same effect is achieved by

superimposing fast and slow tempi, then phasing out the latter so only the former remains. The

composer compared the consequence of this action to the process of creation and destruction:

The climax of the whole movement occurs when the simple rhythm, which has been
achieved gradually over a considerable period, is transformed suddenly into an extremely
complex rhythmical structure when the whole orchestra begins to play ad libitum. It is as if a
building which has been painstakingly put together over a long time suddenly shatters into
thousands of fragments.24

With the benefit of hindsight, it is amazing to put the composer’s previous comments regarding

the “psychological side of musical form” into perspective. As the dramatic arc of the second

symphony evinces, Lutosławski is a master of manipulating the listening experience.

22 Rust, "Two Questions of Perception in Lutosławski's Second Symphony.” 214

23 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 162
24 Rust, "Two Questions of Perception in Lutosławski's Second Symphony.” 215
 Innovation Refined

Often praised as the magnum opus of his career, Mi-Parti, is the refinement and coalescence of

all the advancements Lutosławski had made in his career. Loosely translated, Mi-Parti is a french

idiom meaning “something divided into similar but not identical parts.”25 This is not a reference

to the composition’s two-part form, but rather the compositional procedures used to generate

both horizontal and vertical space. One of the procedures is an array of eight twelve-note chords,

in which select pitches are transferred via octave transposition while the remainder preserve their

register through the cycle. Interestingly, Stucky recognized the commonality of this technique

with the melodic/harmonic color of an isorhythmic motet, but either did not recognize, or did not

think it necessary to mention the similarity this feature also shares with Olivier Messiaen’s so-

called “stained glass window effect.” It seems worth mentioning, as Messiaen was a composer

whose modes of limited transposition Lutosławski occasional incorporated into his own music,

and could possibly be the source of this technique. The eight twelve-note chords are constructed

in such a way that with each repetition the sequence is transposed up by interval class 1 (i.e. a

minor second),26 This attribute of the system has far-reaching implications in the overall form,

which like the second symphony, is a singular composition conceived as two parts. Each part is

subdivided into a tripartite form: an introductory phrase followed by a varied repetition, and a

third phrase linking it to a climatic ad libitum orchestral tutti.

25 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 189

26 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 190
In part 1, the articulation of each phrase does not lineup evenly with the eight twelve-note

chords, they are out of phase with each other, similar but not identical, thus, mi-parti. The first

phrase presents a group of instruments in the following order: bass clarinet, horn, clarinet, oboe,

flute. The second phrase reverses the order, and whether we are aware of it consciously or

subconsciously, the mirroring of instrumentation, or orchestrational retrograde, if you will, is

another facet of Lutosławski’s compelling formal architecture. The third phrase combines the

first two, pairing them off until they all join together at the climax of part 1.27

As with Symphony no. 2, the second part of Mi-Parti contrasts with its first part in more ways

than one, but there is still a connection in the notes themselves, which derive from the

aforementioned wind phrases and their neighbor-tone embellishments. These pitches are

arranged in a row comprised solely of interval classes 1,3,4.28 The row is never stated outright,

Lutosławski believed that it is “supplemented by our memory and imagination.”29 The row is

once again partitioned into subsets and assigned various roles, the entrances of which become

closer and closer together as the ending draws near. A crescendo which has been gaining

momentum is suddenly halted by a dramatic silence, a brilliant juxtaposition of textural, registral,

and dynamic extremes. The music then picks up where it left off, climaxing directly into the

coda, where a dissipation of energy is brought about by Lutosławski’s signature exit strategy,

“suddenly one of the musicians and then others as I imagine, realize that there is no use

continuing it any more, and they start playing something else, each one going his own way. The

27 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 190

28 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 191
29 ibid.
musical culmination is collective, the way out is individual.” As modest as he was, this particular

solution to one of the many compositional problems he solved made him especially proud. and

was a contribution he considered to be truly original. 30 Mi-Parti concludes with a cantilena

played heterophonically by a dozen violins, punctuated by nostalgic fragments from the past

movement, which by now have become a distant memory.

Coda

Lutosławski was a composer whose musical personality enabled him to perceive the difficult

challenges faced by twentieth-century composers as an opportunity, not a weight.

When I was very young I was fascinated by the means of expression that were found in the
first half of our century. It was something like miracles to me, but I always thought that it
was used for nothing very important, and my purpose from then on was always that there
must be a way of using all those riches offered by the imagination of twentieth-century
composers and using them for something more important.31

He would make good on his purpose by internalizing Western musical tradition and building

upon it to yield a signature form, a form which integrated with the additional complimentary

traits of his maturity is responsible for one of the most, if not the most, coherent bodies of work

in the recent past.

30 Stucky, Lutosławski and His Music, 129

31 Rust, “Conversation with Witold Lutosławski” 218
 Bibliography


Auner, Joseph. Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. New York: W.W. Norton,
2013. Print.

Klein, Michael. “Texture, Register, and Their Formal Roles in the Music of Witold Lutosławski.”
Indiana Theory Review, vol. 20, no. 1, 1999, pp. 37–70., www.jstor.org/stable/24044509.

Rust, Douglas. “Conversation with Witold Lutosławski.” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 1,
1995, pp. 207–223., www.jstor.org/stable/742522.

Rust, Douglas. "Two Questions of Perception in Lutosławski's Second Symphony." Perspectives

of New Music 42, no. 2 (2004): 190-220. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25164562.

Stucky, Steven. Lutosławski and His Music. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981. Print.