Sunday, May 26, 2013

Sunday morning with composer Witold Lutosławski


1913 - 1994


From Steven Stucky's essay "Remembering Lutosławski":
...the ravishing beauty of Lutosławski’s French-Slavic sound world, his rich harmonic language, his expressive melodic voice, his lucid forms, his attention to dramatic tension and release, and, underpinning everything, his drive to communicate.
And on a larger level, there is Lutosławski’s intense interest in the psychology of the listener:
‘I understand the process of composing above all as the creation of a definite complex of psychological experiences for my listener…I try never to lose sight of my basic aim, which is to compose the particular aesthetic experiences of my listener.’ 

From Zbigniew Skowron's essay "Lutosławski's Aesthetics and Their Sources":
His openness towards concepts of musical form and process inherited from the Classical and Romantic period, together with his ability to create their modern equivalents, is surely one of the most important characteristics both of Lutosławski’s music and of his creative consciousness.
What awakened some of Lutosławski’s doubts and hesitations about the ultramodern attitude and aesthetics was what he called a ‘terror of the avant-garde’: ‘I totally reject all absolutism; and the utter certainty with which the dogmatic followers of Webern proclaim their own rights to dispose of the future awakens my reluctance and suspicion. Someone who is not modest enough to admit that he doesn’t know everything, exposes himself, in fact, to the risk of knowing nothing.’

And here is Steven Stucky's essay "Lutosławski: Les espaces du sommeil". This composition, as the essay describes, is based on the poem by surrealist Robert Desnos.


Lutosławski -- Les espaces du sommeil







Earlier this year, I posted Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra, a work I really, really like.







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