Past and present

Musical Times, Spring 2003 by Bayley, Amanda

Past and present AMANDA BAYLEY Lutoslawski studies Edited by Zbigniew Skowron Oxford UP (Oxford, 2001); xviii, 370pp; 65. ISBN 0 19 816660 5.

As the two major English-language monographs on Lutoslawski Steven Stucky's Lutoslawski and his music (CUP, 1981) and Charles Bodman Rae's The music of Lutoslawski (Faber, 1994, 3rd edition, 1999) - were written while he was still alive, this volume benefits greatly from the collection of the composer's statements, writings and manuscript sketches which were transferred to the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel following his death in 1994.

An international team of composers and scholars contribute to the two sections of this book ('Aesthetics' and `Style and compositional technique'), which makes a welcome addition to the Lutoslawski literature. The various analytical approaches are usefully referenced and supported by appropriate footnote explanations, which allows the book to be accessed by a reader not already familiar with writings on Lutoslawski.

Among the documents deposited at Basel is the previously unknown Zeszyt mysli [Notebook of ideas] which strongly informs the editor's own chapter `Lutoslawski's aesthetics: a reconstruction of the composer's outlook. Distinct from what Skowron identifies as the composer's formulated aesthetics' are his `immanent aesthetics', discussed in the remaining four chapters of this section. Charles Bodman Rae's approach is based on the synthesis of conceptual and compositional contrasts, whereas the dramatic and visionary aspects of Lutoslawski's compositions are examined by John Casken, and the poetic and dramatic pursued by Benoit Aubigny. Maja Trochimczyk investigates the persistent themes of death and night in his music. She carefully acknowledges the individual and personal nature of the composer's treatment of death, compared with the social and political representations of death publicly portrayed in the music of his Polish contemporaries.

The three volumes of conversations with Lutoslawski - Balint Andras Varga's Lutoslawski profile (Chester Music, 1976), Irina Nikolska's Conversations with Witold Lutoslawski (1987-1992) (Melon, 1994), and Tadeusz Kaczynski's Conversations with Witold Lutoslawski (revised and expanded edition, Chester Music, 1995) - are already well known among scholars and they still form an important and constant source of reference throughout this book. However, the reliability and usefulness of Lutoslawski's comments, assertions and omissions within these conversations are now questioned. For example, despite Lutoslawski's reticence on the subject of neoclassicism, Skowron suggests that `this influence can hardly be denied' (p.6, n.9). Indeed, Steven Stucky relates Lutoslawski's neoclassical and Baroque allusions to form (pp. 139-40), and Jadwiga Paja-Stach pursues the theme of neoclassicism throughout her chapter on `The stylistic traits of Lutoslawski's works for solo instrument and piano'. She claims that `Lutoslawski inherited his "intervallic structuralism" from neoclassical sources, making it one of the crucial elements of his compositional technique' (p.277, original emphasis).

From a consideration of symphonic form in Lutoslawski's music, James Harley promotes the idea that `Lutoslawski simply remained a neo-classicist [...] as neo-classicism metamorphosized into a form of post-modernism' (p.192). This point might usefully be compared with Arnold Whittall's observations on Lutoslawski's relationship to modernism and neoclassicism, especially on p.258, where he argues that the Piano Concerto (1987-88) has a pivotal role in `Lutoslawski's exploration of the path leading back from modernism to "classicizing" integration'. Adopting a more analytical approach than Harley, Whittall investigates the composer's relationship to modernism - in the Piano Concerto and in the Concerto for Cello (1969-70) - `not just as radical innovation, but as the site of particular intense interactions between opposing tendencies: connection and fragmentation, progressivism and conservatism, polarity and synthesis' (p.245).

In the context of the composer's attitude towards tradition and modernity, Irina Nikolska analyses Lutoslawski's chain technique in his late works from his compositional sketches. Chain technique (defined as `the overlapping of different musical layers so that they do not start or end at the same time', p.305) `helped him to order, or to structure, perfectly his idea of modern polyphonic texture characterized by constant flow and change' (p.323). With reference to Lutoslawski's own comments Nikolska concludes that the richness of texture he obtained in his Chains and the multifarious constellations of the elements enclosed within the network of chain connections fully testify to [his] 'adventurous' spirit of searching for new compositional and expressive means (p.323).

In her erudite chapter on `Lutoslawski's studies in twelve-tone rows', Martina Homma (author of the oftencited Witold Lutoslawski: ZwolftonHarmonik, Formbildung, 'aleatorischer Kontrapunkt': Studien zum Gesamtwerk unter Einbeziehung der Skizzen (Bela Verlag, 1996)) believes that the composer's own comments can be taken too literally and can too strongly influence opinions about his music. The fact that Lutoslawski frequently `underlined how alien the Schoenbergian system was to him' could help to explain `why musicologists [...] have shown so little interest in a central part of his thinking' (p.194, n.3). The evidence for revisiting this subject comes from the composer's sketches. Homma's 1996 book presents the character and function of twelve-note rows in the sketches and scores of specific works, but here she focuses on Lutoslawski's work in progress which developed the techniques he would subsequently use in his compositions. `The chronology may be blurred' because Lutoslawski used to add earlier sketches to later conceptions, but Homma nevertheless concludes that `there is more "twelve-tone logic" and more consistency in Lutoslawski's oeuvre than its surface may suggest' (p.210).