© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
Lutos
awski, ‘Akcja’ , and the Poetics of Musical Plot
*Keele University.
Correspondence: Email: n.w.reyland{at}keele.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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Hitherto unknown or, at best, forgotten lectures delivered by Witold Lutos
awski in the early 1960s contain revelatory passages concerning his attempts to inculcate substance and plot-like directionality in his music: what the composer, through the development of his personal compositional poetics, came to term his music's akcja (‘plot’). The revelations contained in the lectures ‘Problems of Musical Form’ and ‘Pitch, the Interval and Harmonic Aggregate’ are outlined in this article in the hope that scholars, musicians, and listeners concerned with Lutosawski's music will find it both useful and stimulating to engage critically with each lecture's key concepts and the interpretations offered herein. The article then makes a number of suggestions concerning ways in which one might begin to adapt ideas derived from the recoverable traces of Lutosawski's poetics of musical plot to the analysis and interpretation of his music, before presenting analytical sketches of scores including his Concerto for Orchestra (1950–4), Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1969–70), Chain 2 (1984–5), and Symphony No. 4 (1988–92). It concludes by assessing the potentially revisionist implications of a fuller understanding of akcja for the wider critical debates concerning the scope and successfulness of Lutosawski's art.
Exx. 3 and 8: Chain 2. Music by Witold Lutosawski. © Copyright 1988, 1996 Chester Music Limited for the World except Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, the territories of former Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, the whole territory of the former USSR, Cuba, China, North Vietnam, and North Korea where the Copyright, 1985, is held by Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne – PWM Edition, Kraków, Poland. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission.
Ex. 4: Concerto for Orchestra. Music by Witold Lutosawski. © Copyright 1956 by Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne – PWM Edition, Kraków. Copyright renewed 1985 by Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne – PWM Edition, Kraków. Transferred to Chester Music Limited. © Chester Music Limited for the World except Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, China, the territories of former Czechoslovakia, the territories of the former Yugoslavia, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Rumania, Hungary, and the whole territory of the former USSR. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by permission.
Ex. 6: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. Music by Witold Lutosawski. © Copyright 1989 Chester Music Limited for the World except Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, the territories of former Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, the whole territory of the former USSR, Cuba, China, North Vietnam, and North Korea where the Copyright, 1970, is held by Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne – PWM Edition, Kraków, Poland. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by Permission.