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The Strategy of “Controlled Reception” in Witold Lutosławski’s Commentaries on His Own Works 1 MARCIN KRAJEWSKI Institute of Musicology, University of Warsaw Email: [email protected] The Polish Composers’ Union 70th Anniversary events are co-organised by the Institute of Music and Dance and co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage 1 This paper takes advantage of the results of my library research conducted in the Archive of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel between September and December 2015, and co-financed by the National Science Centre (NCN) in the form of the grant no. 2014/12/T/HS2/00441 (The Texture of the Musical Work: General Theoretical Approach and the Adequate Method of Analysis). The Strategy of “Controlled Reception” in Witold Lutosławski’s Commentaries on His Own Works Musicology Today • Vol. 12 • 2015 DOI: 10.1515/muso-2015-0009 ABSTRACT or sources are studied, but the task of what a modern author calls “extracting from them a grain of truth about Witold Lutosławski’s commentaries on his own music are often the world”2 is not taken up. Consequently, the history of defective in many regards. These defects could be explained as resulting philosophy is taking the place of philosophy proper, and from a strategy according to which the aim of a commentary is not the history of musical thought replaces reflection about to provide a truthful description of musical phenomena but to form a desired image of a composition or a musical style in the minds of music. the listeners. This idea of ‘controlled reception’ was clearly outlined Lutosławski’s commentaries (including those that by the famous Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz (whose writings reflect on his own works) have been the subject of Lutosławski knew and highly appreciated) and is especially noticeable valuable publications, in the areas of both philological in the composer’s remarks on “controlled aleatoricism”, “thin textures” research and content analysis. The latter type is and the connections between his music and the twelve-tone technique. 3 The view of reception of art common to Gombrowicz and Lutosławski represented, among others, by the works of Steven Stucky, 4 could be characterised in the writer’s own words: A style that cannot Krzysztof Meyer and Danuta Gwizdalanka. All these defend itself before human judgment, that surrenders its creator to the ill researchers studied the relation between the composer’s will of any old imbecile, does not fulfil its most important assignment. [...] views and his compositional practice, indicating where the idiot’s opinion is also significant. It also creates us, shapes us from inside (and sometimes also – why) they encountered puzzling out, and has far-reaching practical and vital consequences. [...] Literature [art in general – note by M.K.] has a dual significance and a dual root: incongruities. I would also like to focus on similar it is born of pure artistic contemplation [...], but it is also an author’s cases. I will take up topics already partly described personal settling of accounts with people, an instrument in the battle waged in the literature of the subject, analysing some rather for a spiritual existence. randomly selected statements that Lutosławski made concerning his own music and that for many reasons Keywords: Lutosławski, reception, Gombrowicz, serialism, aleatoricism can be considered as inconsistent, false, or seriously incomplete. A brief analysis of their contents will confirm INTRODUCTION this initial opinion, and the incorrect character of those statements will be explained in a new and hopefully more Witold Lutosławski sometimes confessed that he convincing manner. I also hope that my analyses will shed had wasted much time in his life, because external light on the reasons why Lutosławski dedicated so much circumstances made it difficult for him to focus on what of the limited time which external circumstances allowed he saw as the most important: improving his composition him to use for composition – to public self-reflection. technique and composing new works. It may therefore My key thesis in this context is that the composer adopted seem the more surprising why he dedicated so much time an attitude which (in the title of this paper) I called – to explaining and commenting upon different aspects by reference to his well-known composition technique – of his music – an activity that could be considered as the strategy of “controlled reception”. of secondary importance in this hierarchy. This secondary aspect of Lutosławski’s activity CASE STUDY NO. 1: INSPIRATIONS as a composer has long been the subject of academic WITH CAGE’S ALEATORICISM research, most of which concentrated on the basically philological-contextual tasks of documenting, Lutosławski commented on his invention of the summarising, establishing the chronology, origins and ad libitum technique in the following words: reception of these texts. This kind of research ought to be seen as preliminary in relation to proper contentual studies, i.e. to analyses of the logical structure 2 B. Wolniewicz, (2001). Naukowość i przewidywanie of Lutosławski’s statements (most of all, of their internal [Scientific Knowledge and Prediction]. In: Filozofia i wartości II cohesion) and their adequacy with regard to the musical [Philosophy and values II]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, p. 128. phenomena they purport to describe. The latter type of studies are at a much less advanced stage than the 3 S. Stucky, (2001). Change and Constancy: The Essential Lutosławski. In: Z. Skowron (Ed.), Lutosławski Studies. Oxford: preliminary research, which is not surprising, but it is Oxford University Press, pp. 129–131. also unfortunate. Contemporary research into any kind 4 D. Gwizdalanka, K. Meyer, (2004). Lutosławski, Vol. II: Droga of ideas and concepts demonstrates the same kind of do mistrzostwa [The Road to Mastery]. Kraków: PWM Edition, general regularity. For instance, the views of philosophers pp. 159–170; D. Gwizdalanka, K. Meyer, (2014). Witold are often treated as documents or as literary fiction, which Lutosławski. Wege zur Meisterschaft. Ch.M. Hauptmeier means that they are only summarised, and their origins (transl.). Saarbrücken: PFAU-Verlag, pp. 320–323. 81 The Strategy of “Controlled Reception” in Witold Lutosławski’s Commentaries on His Own Works […] I heard on the radio a short fragment of John’s Cage second to specific octaves (i.e. register disposition). This was Piano Concerto [i.e. the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, completed the essence of the type of aleatory technique invented in 1958 – note by M. K.]. The use of the element of chance opened for me a way to use a lot of musical ideas that were kept “in stock” by Lutosławski. That the composer thought along similar in my imagination without any way to use them. It was not a direct lines is suggested not only by the above-presented “profit influence of Cage’s music, but the impulse, which enabled me to use and loss account”, but also by his own statement on the my own possibilities. So I wrote to him that he was a spark thrown rhythmic structure of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s serialist on a barrel of gunpowder inside me. In fact my music is not at Klavierstück I: all similar to Cage’s. No wonder, bearing in mind my approach to the role of the element of chance in music, which is just opposite of Cage’s.5 One can admire the precision of the composer’s rhythmic vision, which differentiates so subtly the durations of a module within such a short segment. […] The musical text poses difficulties that There is indeed very little similarity, and one could are almost impossible to surmount in a live performance […]. hardly imagine how the sophisticated “mobile” structures One can assume, however, that the composer cared not so much could be inspired by a piece in which for an absolutely precise realization of complex rhythmic structures as for causing an impression of irregularity and of non-modular The solo is sixty-three pages long, with fragments of music scattered character of these structures, that is about a result that was possible 7 throughout and frequently crossing page boundaries. The location to obtain in spite of a not entirely precise performance. of the notations on the pages was randomly determined, as was the rectangular space allowed for each. The process of composing If Lutosławski was inspired, as it seems, by Stockhausen the piano solo was based on the premise of continuously inventing rather than Cage, why did he decide to emphasise the new notations and new methods of composition. For each musical fragment in the score, the first decision made (via the I Ching) influence of the latter? was whether it would use a wholly a new method of composition, a repeat of a method already used, or a variation on a method already used. As a result of this procedure, Cage was forced to invent new CASE STUDY NO. 2: LINKS TO methods of composition as he went along, and through the course DODECAPHONY of the sixty-three pages, some eighty-four different types appear.6 Shortly after the first performance of Musique funèbre It might seem that the source of inspiration (“negative,” in 1958, Bohdan Pilarski asked Lutosławski about the so to speak) ought to be sought somewhere else. That source links between his current work and the twelve-tone was most likely total serialism, with its characteristic effect technique. The composer answered: “No, I do not of a static, restless sound achieved thanks to painstaking see any relationships to twelve-tone technique. But if technical work and a level of rhythmic complication that they should exist, they are secondary and superficial.”8 usually exceeded the possibilities of both the performers Thirty years later, while describing the linear organisation and the audience.

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