Lutoslawski and His Music

by Steven Stucky

The composer Witold Lutostawski (born 1913) is one of the outstanding musical personalities of the twentieth century. In this critical biography Steven Stucky traces Lutostawski's development from the Stravinsky-influenced music of his student days to his emergence in the 1960s as a leading avant-gardist. Since the vicissitudes of cultural life in his native Poland have profoundly affected the composer's career, the book includes detailed accounts of Lutostawski's official censure for 'formalism' in the late 1940s and the leading role he later played in a flourishing Polish modernist movement. Both well-known works, such as the Concerto for Orchestra, Trois poemes d'Henri Michaux and the Second Symphony, and the lesser-known early music are considered in detail. Fragments of many compositions never before published in the West are included. There are also analytical summaries of each major work from Jeux véitiens (1961) to Mi-parti (1976).

Genres: Music

Hardcover

First published June 11, 1981

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

In studying with two composers who were students of Steven Stucky, I've come to appreciate not only Stucky's genius for composition, orchestration, and scholarship, but also the reverence for Lutosławski's life and music that Stucky passed on to his students and colleagues. I'm sure this context must have biased me in favor of the subject and author of this book, but I am also confident that Stucky's work on Lutosławski warrants five stars.

My main goal in reading Lutosławski and His Music was to gain a better appreciation of Lutosławski's expertly-developed harmonic and orchestrational techniques. Stucky engages Lutosławski's work with the interests of the student composer at heart, presenting a clear explanation of Lutosławski's interval-based treatment of pitch as well as a description of how limited aleatoricism can allow for precise control of the musical texture. Furthermore, Stucky investigates Lutosławski's concern with form and musical narrative, tracing a career-long concern with macrorhythm andend-accented forms in which the most substantial musical arguments are reserved for the conclusion of the work.

These concepts (interval-based pitch material, textural techniques, and formal schema) are woven as independent threads throughout the six chapters of the book. The first four chapters deal with the the four periods of Lutosławski's career that were complete at the time of writing. They carefully trace the development of Lutosławski's compositional technique from early experiments to later masterpieces in the context of war and totalitarianism in Poland and Eastern Europe. Chapter five outlines "elements of the late style," and chapter six proceeds to provide analytical commentary on some of Stucky's late works.

In the course of reading Lutosławski and His Music, I benefited from watching the tremendous archival footage of Lutosławski's visit to the University of Southern California: "Open Rehearsals with Witold Lutosławski," as well as the series that Philharmonia Orchestra released with Stucky and Esa-Pekka Salonen hosting: Witold Lutosławski: Esa-Pekka Salonen and Steven Stucky in Conversation.

I also benefited from taking the last chapter (the last 62 pages of the book) slowly, allowing for time to absorb recordings of the works in tandem with Stucky's analysis.

As another reviewer has noted, it is unfortunate that Stucky did not provide a second edition on the works written after 1979; the chapters on the "late style" and "late works" surely would have been revised to include additional insightful commentary. However, readers (and especially composers) can be grateful for the detailed analysis of the works that Stucky does address in addition to the clear explanation of Lutosławski's compositional techniques, musical philosophy, and artistic genius.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steven Stucky's LUTOSLAWSKI AND HIS MUSIC, published in 1981, is a biography of the great Polish composer and an analysis of his work up to "Mi-Parti" of 1976. It covers briefly the earliest works, divided in the juvenille period up to 1948, the years under Stalinism of 1949-1955, and the years of transition of 1955-1960. The writer's main interest, however, is the music of Lutoslawski's "maturity", from "Jeux venitiens" of 1960 to "Mi-Parti".

Nearly a hundred pages are dedicated specifically to these later works. In a chapter "Elements of the late works", Stucky tries to explain some general characteristics of these pieces, and then he explores a number of pieces individually. These are "Jeux venitiens", "Trois poems d'Henri Michaux", the String Quartet, "Paroles tissees", the Symphony No. 2, "Livre pour orchestre", the Cello Concerto, Preludes and Fugue, "Les espaces du sommeil", and "Mi-Parti". Stucky's work is a detail musicological investigation of Lutoslawski's oeuvre, with numerous illustrations taken from the scores, but it can be a useful resource for all fans of the composer's work, even if they have no formal musical training. One will understand the String Quartet much better after seeing a breakdown of its sections here.

The downside of the work is that it was written before the composer's Symphony No. 3 appeared in 1983. The piece not only came to be widely regarded as his masterpiece, but inaugrated a new style in a highly accessible neo-romantic vein that was to continue until his death in 1994. The material here is very helpful to any fan of the composer, but it is a pity that no second edition was ever issued.