Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
Mon, Feb 7 2011, 12:04PM
Monday again, that big wheel keeps on turning. One of the great composers in my book, I can´t think of any of his works that I don´t like, some don´t do as much for me as others, but in general I find his music endlessly fascinating. His mastery of extended big-boned structures, the assured craftmanship and transparency of his orchestration. Those strange harmonies and massive blocks of sound, that give his music a sonority all of its own, something all the great composers share.
His most famous work the Concerto for Orchestra I think suffers from the fact that the last movement doesn´t possess the necessary weight to justify its length in relation to the first two movements, and thus the overall structure is imbalanced for me. I know Simon Rattle thinks his Third Symphony is his masterpiece, but personally there are two works that I think slip under the radar somewhat and are very rarely, if ever, talked about. They are both from the late sixties, his Second Symphony, and most of all his LIvre pour Orchestre, startling orchestral works.
Lutoslawski is very well served on record, probably because he was a fine conductor of his own music. If anybody wants to sample more of Lutoslawski I would recommend the Naxos series to start.
Mon, Feb 7 2011, 10:17PM
#2
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
Concerto for orchestra, cello concerto, Funeral Music, Venetian Games are all good starting points.
P
Tue, Feb 8 2011, 8:05AM
#3
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
John, the Naxos set is spread over 6 or 7 discs, so as an introduction I would heartily recommend two double CD compilations on EMI, one blue and one yellow, if I had to choose one I would recommend the blue one as it has the first two symphonies, Funeral Music, Venetian Games, Livre pour Orchestre, Mi- Parti, and the Concerto for Orchestra, all indispensable Lutoslawski for me. It was very fairly priced when I bought it some years ago.
Tue, Feb 8 2011, 7:38PM
#4
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
Although he changed styles over time his music is always easily recognizeable. Lots of percussion, intriguing sonorities. Even tougher Lutoslawski is appealing to the ear. He writes very well for voice, colouring texts subtly, not overdoing it as Britten tends to sometimes. I also like his choice of texts.
For an easy entry into Lutoslawski I'd recommend symphony 1 and the Concerto for Orchestra. Later symphonies are still excellent but a bit spikier. Chantefleurs et Chantefables is a later work but very approachable and a good example of his writing or voice. I enjoy his 20 Polish Christmas Carols, which dubrob probably uses as a coaster. It's too schamltzy to take all at once and there's perhaps not enough variety, but a nice change from the usual Christmas fare.
The Cello Concerto is his one major work I don't know. Any recommendations, anyone? I hear there's a fine Rostropovich.
Tue, Feb 8 2011, 8:35PM
#5
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
Lutoslawski´s concertos are his works I know least, so I´ve been listening to what I could get in the library over the last few days (Cello Concerto, Partita, Chain 2). At the moment I have to say they don´t do as much for me as his other works, but I´ll give them a few more listens. I would second the recommendation of his vocal works especially Les Espaces du Sommeil. I also love his String Quartet which I have on a Wergo LP played by the LaSalle Quartet, and a Naive CD with string quartet works by Kurtag and Gubaidulina, a wonderful combination.
Tue, Feb 8 2011, 9:00PM
#6
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
The Cello Concerto is a very uncomfortable listen, and I don´t mean that as a value judgement; I think the composer fully intended it to be so. I don´t know if Lutoslawski said so or not, but I can´t help feeling that a lot of anger and despair at what was happening in Poland and Eastern Europe in general at the time(the late sixties) consciously or subconsciously went into the writing of this work. The orchestra seems to be literally trying to kill the cello. The fact that the cello has the last say may be taken as a sign of hope or human determination to fight against and overcome oppression, but to me it sounds like a dying scream of agony. Would be interested to know how others view it.
Wed, Feb 9 2011, 7:18AM
#7
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
This evocative description, and the rest of the discussion above, is tremendously helpful. Thanks to you all for your advice - I shall duly invest and investigate!
Fri, Feb 11 2011, 2:07AM
#8
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
Took another listen to the Naxos disc of the Symphonic Variations, Little Suite, Concertino for Piano and Second Sym. It struck me how the music of so many 20th Century composers followed the same pattern: Stage 1 - emerging, influences perhaps evident, connections with tradition, voice developing (Symphonic Variations, 1st Symphony). Stage 2 - everything out the window, radical departure, uncompromising (2nd Symphony). Stage 3 - realization that tradition had its points after all, a kind of amalgam of the previous two stages (Concertino, Symphonies 3 and 4). Stage 4 - finished impressing everyone intellectually, confident they've said what you needed to say and produced some great music in the process, no longer care if the cognoscenti call them wimps because they're reaching out to a wider audience (Lutoslaw orchestrates his Christmas Carols and writes a few more to round them off to 20). The development, fruition and sometimes decline of a composer's music (and today's rock bands) is a fascinating process. It also seems to me that so many jazz musicians go on developing til they drop.
Fri, Feb 11 2011, 7:46AM
#9
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
Very interesting thoughts, Tagalie. I don't know enough Lutoslawski (or rather, if I'm honest, any Lutoslawski) to be able to comment on his case (though following advice here I have just bought the recent 2-CD EMI set with the first two symphonies and the Concerto for Orchestra etc). Do you think it's a specifically 20th century thing? I've no doubt that the historical circumstances of being a composer in the 20th century, with that tremendous rift with the past (tonality, the very concept of accessibility) around the time of the 1st World War, is something all composers have to square up to.
I remember watching an interesting interview with John McCabe in which he reflects on growing up as a British composer in the post-war years, and the challenge of finding a voice, which may be even worse now. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u121-057we8
I suppose finding a voice must always be difficult for composers (look at Brahms and the ghost of Beethoven, for instance!), but the particular colouring of the problem with the issue of accessibility seems to me a modern one.
Not long ago I remember reading an essay on Tchaikovsky (and our modern attitude to him) in which it had to be explained - explained! - that Tchaikovsky subscribed to an idea (in Russian I seem to remember called prelest' - something like pleasingness) about the composer's role in society as a communicator, entertainer and inspirer through music which all could access and listen to with pleasure just as sound. Strikingly, that didn't make the intellectual content of the music necessarily any worse (consider Tchaikovsky finest works, like the 6th Symphony). Intellect in the sense of being consciously intellectual seems to be a modern phenomenon (and curse?) for composers (and listeners?).
Fri, Feb 11 2011, 8:13AM
#10
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
Fascinating post Tagalie. You could argue that a lot of us follow the same path as the composers you mentioned. As teenagers we emulate our idols, when we get a bit more independence we do our own thing not bothered what others think, and finally we end up embracing the world of our parents, and one day you wake up and realise you are your father. It doesn´t happen to everyone, but it´s very common. Your point about jazz is very pertinent, if ever there was a form of music that attracts people whose only reason for living is to play music, I feel it must be jazz. When you find out the personal life stories of so many jazz greats, it´s heartbreaking how much they suffered and yet were able to produce so much beauty through their music, it really seems this was the only thing that kept them going. So much rock music is about posturing, self congratulation, trying to get laid or rich that it attracts a lot of mediocrity and lukewarm talent that just wouldn´t cut it in the jazz world. Jazz is a tough world with no place for easily bruised egos, suspect musical ility, iability to handle criticism. This is why I think a lot of rockers once they make their money lose interest, because the music was never the sole motivator from the start if they´re honest with themselves, and they never possessed that flame of originality and single minded obssession with the music. A lot of musicians are incredibly gifted, but that´s not the same. Compare Eric Clapton to Rory Gallagher for example. The same I think is true of Lutoslawski, as great a composer as he was, he was no Beethoven; Webern, Stravinsky or Xenakis, not quite that hardcore if you will.
Fri, Feb 11 2011, 8:46AM
#11
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
Very interesting post John. I agree that intellectualism for intellectualism´s sake is a modern curse, under which a lot of what I think is frankly garbage gets talked up and fawned over. This is why a lot of people have problems with so many aspects of modern culture, it´s the fear of being had, being taken in by charlatans. So much modern philosophy, art, music, literature over which so many, oh so knowing, people wax lyrical, is so incredibly vacuous, inane and pedestrian to me. The problem is to sort the wheat from the chaff, and not to throw the baby out with the bath water. This need to filter is the biggest problem facing the public of today, with our seemingly ever limited free time and energy to devote to such things. To somebody used to Tchaikovsky 20th century music can all sound equally unintelligible and moreso equally unenjoyable. This is their loss, but I can understand their predicament. As to intellectualism; I firmly believe that if anything is worth expressing it can be done so clearly, openly and more or less accessibly(you can argue about what that means). This is something alll the great artists share. All the 20th century music I love Stravinsky, Bartok, Webern, Xenakis all first made their impression on me viscerally, it stopped me in my tracks, I didn´t understand what was happening, but it was always an incredible experience. It was only later when I learned more that my experience of this music was enriched, but I never would have bothered to find out more if that initial sense of wonder hadn´t aroused my interest. I like to think that over time you develop a radar for what´s wheat or chaff. I saw a BBC Discovering Music programme on Sibelius´ 5th, absolutely fascinating how much thought, intellectual organisation, tinkering, and total reorganisation went into the composition of this work, but would you ever know it just by listening? As Horace said true art conceals the art.
Fri, Feb 11 2011, 6:20PM
#12
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
Very interesting points, you guys. Dubrob, I hope you don’t mind these diversions in your weekly composer thread. It’s genuinely a case of focus on one topic raising a whole bunch of others. I’ve re-listened to all my Lutoslawski this week and that in itself prompted a train of thought. Consideration of jazz was raised by his aleatoric episodes but it’s this whole question of the waxing, transformation and waning of the creative flame that fascinates me.
John G., the McCabe clip exactly echoes a discussion I heard on the radio this week on the question of whether or not music is a universal language. For reasons too lengthy to go into here, one of authors of the History of Western Music (it may have been Grout, I can’t remember) says it isn’t and he went on to talk about trends in classical music over the past 100 years, saying much the same as McCabe. In his view all serialism did was replace old dogma with a new, and even more restrictive, set of rules. He went on to more or less paraphrase your point on Tchaikovsky: if music focuses on dogma at the expense of communication, it risks losing its raison d’etre.
For me, jazz is the form of music that pays least attention to class (middle or otherwise, dub!), age, race or anything other than the music itself. The range of people, on stage and in the audience, at a jazz concert is enormous. As for classical, try as it might it doesn’t seem to be able to totally escape that crooked little finger on the teacup syndrome, at least not in the English-speaking world. I agree with your point about the inbuilt-radar, dub. No classical music lover wants to be the person sucked in by Zac’s Mobile on the one hand or, on the other, the horn player calling to his mate across the orchestra five minutes into the prem of Schubert’s 9th, asking if he’d been able to find a tune in this mess yet. Perhaps we should rely on our own intuition. To paraphrase Stravinsky talking about Boulez, we don’t have to understand what a piece ‘means’ as long as we like the sound it makes.
Incidentally, and back to our composer of the week: if you have the Naxos series of Lutoslawski cds, take a gander at the notes by Andrej Chlopecki. In fairness to the man, they’re translated so perhaps the tone has been refracted but boy, does he come across as the kind of person you dread being seated next to on a 9 hour flight. Or at a concert.
Fri, Feb 11 2011, 9:14PM
#13
RE: Composer of the week : Witold Lutoslawski
First of, any posts no matter how tenuously related they may be to the original are more than welcome. It´s fascinating where these tangents can lead to, long may it continue.
The idea of communicability in music is I think very hard to pin down, what exactly is it? Does that mean you have to use tonality, there must be tunes(whatever they are). What if what a composer wants to communicate is a very complicated set of emotions, or he or she just wants to write a piece of music for the joy of working out an idea with sound, form, texture and structure. Are these any less valid ways to communicate? As someone who loves trying to get to grips with the structure of a piece of music, or loves the wild juxtaposition of sounds, the colour of particular sounds and harmonies in themselves, the answer is no. I agree that dogma goes against any kind of artistic expression, but you´ll find the great composers or artists for that matter are never purely dogmatic in their thinking. I can´t help feeling that a lot of people who claim that serialism goes against the essence of music are just lazy. Why should any of us have the right to expect a piece of art to be easy to understand and appreciate when the artist in question spent days, nights, months and years writing the thing. The 20th century was the century when the world lost all its certainties, norms and reference points, and any art relevant to the age will express that, for that reason to communicate anything can´t be like before. For any one willing to engage with their time honestly and openly, there´s plenty of music out there that will speak volumes if you stand up and use your ears like a man as Ives said.
I don´t have the lutoslawski CDs handy, in fact I´d have to get on a plane to retrieve them, but I can only imagine it´s the usual sycophantic drivel, where these guys must be paid on commission for the number of stupid adjectives they can squeeze in every noun alla any rock magazine you care to mention, and still manage to say absolutely nothing comprehensible about whether the record is any good or not.
I want say anything about jazz because I´ll probably end up sounding like that guy you dread sitting next to.
An impressive post, Durob! Lutoslawski is effectively a name to me. One, at most two, disc recommendations, please.
John