This paper, written on the occasion of the performance of the string quartet (third composition in using the element of chance) describes the composer's attitude towards the role of aleatorism in his music. As opposed to the approaches taken by other composers (he mentions Boulez, Cage and Nono), the essay neglects the use of absolute aleatorism or the aleatorism of form in his music . Lutoslawski defines the role of chance in his music as "limited" aleatorism, or "aleatorism of texture." In this case, the composer controls the form and the character of the particular sections and, at the same time, "enriches the resources of means of expression." For the author, the most typical form of this kind of aleatorism is "collective ad libitum" in which the pitch materials and the whole structure has been designed in such a way that all of the possible versions correspond to the composer's intention.
After defining some of the characteristics of this technique, he points out some possibilities of its applications in the field of rhythm. As a result of their "no common pulsation," the shifts in time and the "shortening and lengthening of the particular compositional elements," opens the possibility to the performers of playing group pieces with the freedom of solo pieces. That is what he calls "collective ad libitum".
By the end of the article, Lutoslawski mentions the concept of "aleatoric
counter-point" as a further step in controlled aleatorism.
(Juan Cuellar, 1997)
This notes are excerpts of letters from Lutoslawski to the first violinist of the La Salle Quartet. The text has two parts. At the beginning the composer explains the idea of the piece in terms of "a sequence of mobiles" where "each particular player is supposed not to know what the others are doing." In addition, he explains why, for this reason, he did not intempted to write a score, and how the cueing and all the system of signals and directions in the parts are used to warrant that the final result is the one "foreseen by the composer", especially in those places where the duration of the sections can be lengthened or shortened by the performers.
After some information regarding the way to read the score, the second
part is a description of each small section, in terms of what is expected
to happen. They can be seen as indications for the performers and they
are directed to help them reading and understanding the function of each
part in the whole structure of the quartet.
(Juan Cuellar, 1997)
The book in which this commentary is written consists of a series of short writings about works by Lutoslawski. Some of them, as this one, are written by the composer. The Introduction, written by the editor, places the works annotated in the book in their historical context, is an illustrative survey of Lutoslawski's evolution as a composer. The "Notes and Commentaries on Works" include short writings on "Concerto for Orchestra," "Five Songs (1956-57/1958)," "Musique funebre," "Three Postludes," "Jeux Venitiens," "trois Poems d'Henri Michaux," "String Quartet," "Paroles Tristes" and "Symphony No. 2". The book closes with an article by Lutoslawski titled "The Composer and the Listener," a catalogue of works up to 1967 and a short biography.
In the article about his String Quartet, Lutoslawski explains the soloistic, ad lib character of the piece as directed by the indication "Each performer should play his part as if alone." The only importance of this article in regard to an analysis lays on three remarks: the first deals with the formal structure. In it, according to the composer, the transitions between sections seem to play a significant role, since "the independence of the parts holds good only for particular sections." The second is the use of the concept "Aleatory Counterpoint" to define the compositional procedure applied by the composer in the piece. The last is Lutoslawski's statement that in his Quartet "the element of chance does not play an important role as far as the organization of pitch is concerned."
(Juan Cuellar, 1997)
The introduction of this book is a biographic note on the personality of Lutoslawski, and touches aspects of his musical style and his aesthetic, placing them in a political and historical context.
The body of this large interview comprises three parts. The first section is about biographical issues dealing with the composer's experiences with teachers, family, colleagues, performers and friends. The second chapter is related to aesthetical concepts. The author addresses questions of different kind: musical predilections, influences, cultural inclinations, Lutoslawski's attitude towards intuition, perception and systematicism, etc.
The central part of the book is the third chapter, since it is focused in the technical elements of the composer's musical language. Genres, harmony, polyphony, form, melody, rhythm, aleatorism, tonality, dodecaphony, twelve-tone harmony, are some of the topics of this chapter. Lutoslawski's answers give a light to the comprehension of particular and general elements of his music.
The concluding chapter continues the previous, but in a kind of retrospective synthesis of some prominent technical and aesthetical issues.
The work contains a section with the musical examples that are discussed by the composer during the whole book. In addition, there are: a comprehensive catalogue of works, a list and brief description of "some honorary degrees" and, finally, a complete discography (up to 1993).
(Juan Cuellar, 1997)
Departing from the premise that changes in Lutoslawski's style are of an evolutionary rather than of a revolutionary sort, this book is organized in eight chapters that cover the evolution of the composer's compositional technique from his youth to almost his death. In each chapter the author presents particular analytical issues, that were crucial or significant for Lutoslawski during each period, and that together (particularly those from the middle 50s to the 80s) form what we can differentiate as Lutoslawski's style.
The first chapter shows how Lutoslawski achieved a particular domain of the traditional harmonic, counterpointal and orchestral techniques, and how his admiration for composers such as Debussy, Stravinski and Bartok can be traced as strong influences in works like the Sonata for Piano and the Symphonic Variations, which are briefly analyzed in this chapter, and in works of the other stages of his career. The second chapter, "Functional Music and Formalism" (1945-1956) reveals some of the difficulties the composer faced trying to develop his own style under the impositions of the socialism - Stalinism. The author talks about the way the composer in this period works with some folkloric elements and at the same time experiments with some harmonic and timbrical aspects that lead him to revise his sound language from 1947 to the late 50s. The works analyzed in this chapter show some of Lutoslawski's new ideas in harmony and formal construction (some of them related to other composer's influence), and particularly shows how he finds a particular orchestral sound of his own, as seen in the Concerto for Orchestra, the last work of this stage.
The most interesting chapters, in regard to an analysis of the String Quartet, are the third and fourth. The third, "Sound Language and Harmony" discusses the twelve-tone pitch organization as the main harmonic principle that governs verticality (chords and harmony), horizontallity (lines and melody) and "a plane tangential to chords and lines that can be described as 'oblique'." The ways of constructing twelve-tone chords are classified in two main groups: (1) those constructed according to the number of intervals: 'elementary' (formed only by one type of interval class), 'simple' (formed by pairing of intervals) and 'complex' (containing 3 or more intervals). (2) chord aggregates as the superposition of three 'strands' of tetrachords composed mainly by thirds. The analysis of "Five Songs" illustrates this concepts. Before the analysis of "Musique Funebre" Rae explains how the horizontallity is organized in the music of Lutoslawski (from the 60s), by the concept of interval parings, and points out the symmetric characteristics of this technique (the author complements the explanation providing a chart with the melodic interval pairings used in all the works from the Concerto for Orchestra to the Piano Concerto). In addition, some techniques such as a very unorthodox use of twelve-tone row are mentioned. From this point of the book these techniques are mentioned in all the subsequent analysis.
The fourth chapter, "Chance and Polyphony" discusses all the issues related to limited aleatorysm, the importance of a system of cueing or conducting, and the role of aleatoric rhythmic sections in the form of a piece. Other aspects touched in this chapter are related to notation, harmonic control of ad lib sections (static and changing harmonic content), and finally the use of textural subdivision of twelve-tone harmonies (disposition and interaction of subsets).The analysis of Jeux VŽnitiens stands out the role of symmetry in the piece (intervallic and rhythmical symmetries), the novelty of the ad liibitum sections and the orchestration as overlapped and superimposed instrumental blocks.
In the analysis of the String Quartet, the author spends half of the essay in discussing external issues, such as the meaning of the word "mobile" (used by Lutoslawski when referring it to the variable length of some sections) and the problems related to the existence of the score. The analysis is focused in four of its characteristics: the use of horizontal pairing of interval-classes, as exemplified by the opening violin solo passage; the definition of the form in the Introductory movement by means of the recurring motive of repeated Cs (this signal is viewed as static in harmonic terms but very dynamic in its rhythmic and motivic development); the application of the method of subdivision of the chromatic whole into complementary subsets, and finally, the formal and proportional aspects in the construction of the final portion of the piece.
The subsequent chapters show, in the same way of establishing particular aspects of the style and demonstrating them through analytical writings, the evolution, and new directions of Lutoslawski's compositional maturity. Many of the technical issues discussed in this sections are applications and transformations of the harmonic, formal and polyphonical style of the sixties. However, some aesthetical changes, and the revision of some of those techniques mark a new stage that has been called "the late style". In it, melody seems to have an important role as one of the matters of concern of the composer in those years. These chapters' titles are: "Mastery of a Mature Language," Emergence of the Late Style," "Concertos and Chains" and "Catching up with Arrears", and the analysis include the Cello Concerto, Preludes and Fugue, Les espaces du Someil, Mi-parti, Novelette, Epitaph, Grave, Symphonies 3 and 4, Chains 1, 2 and 3, Epitaph, Double Concerto, Piano Concerto, and Chantefleurs et Chantefables.
The book includes a list of works by Lutoslawski and selected discography and bibliography.
(Juan Cuellar, 1997)
Selleck's article is an analysis of the Introductory Movement of Lutoslawski's String Quartet. The author focuses in pitch, intervallic and rhythmic features, to find how those elements provide a measure of unity and organization. While he accepts that "changes in other aspects, whether duration, timbre, dynamics, or register placement, are much more important in determining the structure of the movement," those, in his words, "are, nevertheless, logically related from section to section."
The article describes, rehearsal number by rehearsal number, the pitch and the rhythmic content of the piece. The first is analyzed as related to four types of pitch material, and the second - the rhythmic or durational content - is described in terms of interactions of short and long note values.
(Juan Cuellar, 1997)
The first four chapters of this book trace Lutoslawski's growth and development as an artist. Considering the most important changes in his musical style, the author finds four stages or periods: "the early years" (up to 1948), "the dark years" (1949-54), "the years of transition" (1955-60) and "the years of maturity" (1960-79).
The central chapter of the book, "Elements of the Late Style," is a valuable guide for an analytical comprehension of Lutoslawski's compositional techniques, as developed in his works from the early 60s to the present (1981). This chapter examines four aspects of his style: The first, "Microrhythmic organization and the technique of limited aleatorism," deals with the technique of applying a limited degree of chance in the realization of rhythm. Chance only affects rhythm, and is used to achieve a great deal of rhythmic complexity, relieving the performers from absurd difficulties. The second, "Pitch organization and the technique of aleatory counterpoint," calls for the vertical and horizontal importance of pitch control. It focuses on the one hand in harmonic concepts such as "twelve-tone aggregations" (chords arranged distinctively by the combination of limited interval-classes), "informal pitch-sets" (combinations of twelve or less number of pitches, manipulated in classic twelve-tone technique) and "complementary unordered hexachords", and on the other hand in horizontal concepts like the technique of aleatory counterpoint. In explaining the third aspect, "Texture," Stucki explains how textural units interact in an analogous way to the concept of voices in traditional music and classifies those interactions into 5 different kinds of texture. The last aspect examined in this chapter is "Macrorhythm and form: music as drama". It is related to Lutoslawski's aesthetical conception of the listener's perceptive experience. The concept of closed form "as a process in time and as an architectonic object out of time," and Lutoslawski's preference for simple and direct formal schemes, direct the author to find some techniques of form organization such as: Hierarchical organization of rhythm, macrorhythmic accelerandos, directional motions, etc. Finally, the author relates the compositional techniques described in the chapter, to the composer's intention of creating or shaping his musical materials in a dramatic way.
The last section of the book, before a catalog of works, a discography and a select bibliography, includes brief analytical essays on the following works: Jeux vŽnitiens, Trois poemes d'Henri Michaux, String Quartet, Paroles tristŽes, Second Symphony, Livre pour Orchestra, Cello Concerto, Preludes and fugue, Les espaces du sommeil and Mi-parti .
In his analysis of the String Quartet, Stucki focuses primarily in the formal, pitch and ryhthmic construction of the piece as a whole. The author seems to be interested chiefly in "the projection of pitch and gestural relationships on both foreground and deeper levels and the projection of a powerful formal structure." In its deepest macrorhythmic level, the two movement quartet is viewed as a four-part design, where the first acts as one of its divisions. In hierarchical order, groups of sections, sections and microrhythmic structures comprise the other three levels of its formal structure. Pitch relations are analyzed as interactions of two basic pitch motives in the construction of different twelve-tone harmonic collections, the same as the rhythmic structure is conceived as combinations and derivations of two main microrhythmic gestures. At this respect, one of the sections is analyzed to show its "arithmetically controlled microrhythm". The last and the longest part of this analysis deals with the construction of the form. In terms of dramatic control as manipulation of tensions, the form, in general, is described as a process of change, where the transformation of the textures create different and opposing tendencies that are finally synthesized and reconciliated by the end of the climatic section of the piece. To conclude his analysis, the author provides a structural synopsis of the Main Movement's form.
(Juan Cuellar, 1997)