Composer Witold Lutoslawski

Lutoslawski's father and grandfather were very involved in political and intellectual issues so Witold was exposed to art and learning from a very young age. By 9, he had completed his first fully notated piano piece, and at 11 he heard Karol Szymanowski's Third Symphony, which was to be his first major influence. In 1926, the young composer began studying the violin, which he was to pursue for 6 years. He continued to compose, and at 15, he started the serious study of composition with Witold Maliszewski. His earliest orchestral compositions, a scherzo in 1930 and some incidental music for a play, are both lost, as is most of his early work.

As a student in the 1930s, Lutoslawski was indifferent to tonal harmony and counterpoint, and he was captivated by the impressionist style of composition, which used harmony as color and the juxtaposition of synthetic scales with tonal harmony for coloristic uses.

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at. For Lutoslawski, the intervals used to construct the sonorities are very important. Usually two or three interval classes will be used to give these "chords" their own distinctive flavor, so that a fully chromatic sonority built with intervals of minor seconds and perfect fourths will sound different than one built with major thirds and minor seconds. Of course, orchestration and dynamics play a part in this process as well. The third main aspect of Lutoslawski's compositional aesthetic has to do with texture. As mentioned earlier, coloristic devices have always intrigued the composer and the use of texture as a coloristic expression is central to his music. Textural counterpoint, the practice of setting different textures against each other, is a practice that give Lutoslawski's music so much of its distinctive character. In the Trois PoFmes, the use of an orchestra and a chorus gives the composer many such opportunities. The last main aspect has to do with the macrorhythmic aspects of the music and its overall form. Lutoslawski is clearly very careful in his musical construction, and the overall form of his works has always been one of the more distinctive aspects of the music. While remaining in the European tr
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3509
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)