Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T07:10:42.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Witold Lutosławski and the Ethics of Abstraction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2013

LISA JAKELSKI
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scholars have struggled to reconcile the expressive immediacy of Witold Lutosławski's works with his claims that he wrote absolute music. This article seeks a more nuanced understanding of the place of abstraction in Lutosławski's creative practice by exploring connections between his 1981 speeches on artistic ethics and his approach to melodic construction in Chain 2 (1984–5). Lutosławski's words and music both rely on convention, and recycle rhetoric from his past. But these are not their only correspondences. They also engage with a trio of concepts – withdrawal, integrity, and autonomy – that are at the heart of a moral code Lutosławski articulated in response to the volatile political conditions of 1980s Poland. The article thus sheds new light on the entanglement of modernism, ethics, and politics in the late twentieth century, while illuminating what the idea of abstraction may have meant in a particular time and place.

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , September 2013 , pp. 169 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berger, Karol. A Theory of Art. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Będkowski, Stanisław and Hrabia, Stanisław. Witold Lutosławski: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, CN and London: Greenwood Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Bohlman, Andrea. ‘Activism and Music in Poland, 1978–1989’. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2012.Google Scholar
Bylander, Cindy. ‘Responses to Adversity: The Polish Composers Union and Musical Life in the 1970s and 1980s’. The Musical Quarterly 95/4 (2012): 459–509. First published 30 December 2012, doi:10.1093/musqtl/gds027.Google Scholar
Carroll, Mark. ‘Commitment or Abrogation? Avant-Garde Music and Jean-Paul Sartre's Idea of Committed Art’. Music and Letters 83/4 (2002), 590–606.Google Scholar
Casken, John. ‘The Visionary and the Dramatic in the Music of Lutosławski’, in Lutos ławski Studies, ed. Skowron, Zbigniew. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 36–56.Google Scholar
Chodkowski, Andrzej. ‘Na początku był Kraków’, in 50 Lat Związku Kompozytorów Polskich, ed. Erhardt, Ludwik. Warsaw: Polish Composers' Union, 1995. 39–47.Google Scholar
Chomiński, Józef. ‘Zagadnienia formalizmu i tendencje ideologiczne w polskiej muzyce współczesnej na tle rozwoju muzyki światowej’. Ruch Muzyczny 4/20 (October 1948), 2–6.Google Scholar
Chua, Daniel. Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Dahlhaus, Carl. The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Lustig, Roger. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Fosler-Lussier, Danielle. Music Divided: Bartók's Legacy in Cold War Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Garton Ash, Timothy. ‘Does Central Europe Exist?’ (October 1986), in The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe. New York: Random House, 1989. 179–213.Google Scholar
Groys, Boris. ‘A Style and a Half: Socialist Realism between Modernism and Postmodernism’, in Socialist Realism Without Shores, ed. Lahusen, Thomas and Dobrenko, Evgeny. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. 76–90.Google Scholar
Gwizdalanka, Danuta. ‘Trzy postawy wobec totalitaryzmu: Roman Palester – Andrej Panufnik – Witold Lutosławski’, in Muzyka i totalitaryzm, ed. Jabłoński, Maciej and Tatarska, Janina. Poznań: Ars Nova, 1996. 169–184.Google Scholar
Gwizdalanka, Danuta, and Meyer, Krzysztof. Lutosławski. Droga do mistrzowstwa. Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 2004.Google Scholar
Havel, Václavet. al.The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the state in Central-Eastern Europe, introduction by Lukes, Steven and edited by Keane, John. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1985.Google Scholar
Jakelski, Lisa. ‘Górecki's Scontri and Avant-Garde Music in Cold War Poland’. Journal of Musicology 26/2 (2009): 205–239.Google Scholar
Jarociński, Stefan. ‘Ogólne spojrzenie na twórczość muzyczną 25 lat Polski Ludowej’, in XIII Międzynarodowy Festiwal Muzyki Współczesnej ‘Warszawska Jesień,’ Warszawa 20–28 września 1969. Warsaw: Związek Kompozytorów Polskich, 1969. 5–12.Google Scholar
Kaczyński, Tadeusz. Rozmowy z Witoldem Lutosławskim. Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1972.Google Scholar
Kemp-Welch, Anthony. Poland under Communism: A Cold War History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khrennikov, Tikhon. ‘O nowe drogi twórczości muzycznej’. Ruch Muzyczny 4/18 (15 September 1948), 2–6.Google Scholar
Kisielewski, Stefan. ‘Czy muzyka jest niehumanistyczna?’ Znak (April 1948). Accessed 24 January 2011, http://www.stefan_kisielewski.republika.pl/felietony/czy_muzyka_jest_niehumanistyczna.html.Google Scholar
Kisielewski, Stefan. ‘Czy w muzyce istnieje formalizm?’ Ruch Muzyczny 4/22 (November 1948), 2–6.Google Scholar
Kisielewski, Stefan. Dzienniki. Warsaw: Iskry, 1996.Google Scholar
Klein, Michael L.Intertextuality in Western Art Music. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
‘Konferencja Kompozytorów w Łagowie Lubuskim w dniach od 5.VIII do 8.VIII.1949’. Ruch Muzyczny 5/14 (October 1949), 12–31.Google Scholar
Kubik, Jan. The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: the Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Lutosławski, Witold. Zapiski, ed. Skowron, Zbigniew. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego and Towarzystwo im. Witolda Lutosławskiego, 2008.Google Scholar
Machcewicz, Paweł. Rebellious Satellite: Poland 1956. Washington, DC and Stanford: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Markowska, Elżbieta. ‘“Muzyka jest domeną świata idealnego”: Witold Lutosławski rozmawia z Elżbietą Markowską’. Ruch Muzyczny 34/23 (1990), 1 and 6.Google Scholar
Masiulanis, Władysław, ed. Kongres Kultury Polskiej 11–13 grudnia 1981. Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnictwa Volumen Instytut Kultury, 2000.Google Scholar
Metzer, David. Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Mycielski, Zygmunt. ‘O zadaniach Związku Kompozytorów Polskich’. Ruch Muzyczny 5/14 (October 1949), 6–10.Google Scholar
Nikolska, Irina. Conversations with Witold Lutosławski, trans. Yerokhin, Valeri. Stockholm: Melos, 1994.Google Scholar
Notley, Margaret. Lateness and Brahms: Music and Culture in the Twilight of Viennese Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Paczkowski, Andrzej. The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom, trans. Cave, Jane. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Paja-Stach, Jadwiga, ed. Witold Lutosławski i jego wkład do kultury muzycznej XX wieku. Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 2005.Google Scholar
Rae, Charles Bodman. The Music of Lutosławski. 3rd Edition. London: Omnibus Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Reyland, Nicholas. ‘Livre or Symphony? Lutosławski's Livre pour orchestre and the Enigma of Musical Narrativity’. Music Analysis 27/2–3 (2008), 253–94.Google Scholar
Reyland, Nicholas. ‘Lutosławski, ‘Akcja’, and the Poetics of Musical Plot’. Music and Letters 88/4 (2007), 604–31.Google Scholar
Rudziński, Witold. ‘Związek w pierwszym dziesięcioleciu po wojnie’, in 50 Lat Związku Kompozytorów Polskich, ed. Erhardt, Ludwik. Warsaw: Polish Composers' Union, 1995. 49–61.Google Scholar
Scherzinger, Martin. ‘In Memory of a Receding Dialectic: The Political Relevance of Autonomy and Formalism in Modernist Musical Aesthetics’, in The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology, ed. Ashby, Arved. Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2004. 68–100.Google Scholar
Shreffler, Anne C. ‘Ideologies of Serialism: Stravinsky's Threni and the Congress for Cultural Freedom’, in Music and the Aesthetics of Modernity: Essays, ed. Berger, Karol and Newcomb, Anthony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. 217–45.Google Scholar
Skowron, Zbigniew, ed. and trans. Lutosławski on Music. Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Sokorski, Włodzimierz. ‘Formalizm i realizm w muzyce’, Ruch Muzyczny 4/23–24 (December 1948), 2–5.Google Scholar
Sokorski, Włodzimierz. ‘Ku realizmowi socjalistycznemu w muzyce’. Ruch Muzyczny 5/14 (October 1949), 3–5.Google Scholar
Strzelecki, Paweł. ‘Nowy romantyzm’ w twórczości kompozytorów polskich po roku 1975. Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 2006.Google Scholar
Stucky, Steven. ‘Change and Constancy: The Essential Lutosławski’, in Lutosławski Studies, ed. Skowron, Zbigniew. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 127–62.Google Scholar
Tejchma, Józef. W kręgu nadziei i rozczarowań. Notatki dzienne z lat 1978–1982. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo ‘Projekt,’ 2002.Google Scholar
Tompkins, David. ‘Composing the Party Line: Music and Politics in Poland and East Germany, 1948–1957’. Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2004.Google Scholar
Thomas, Adrian. ‘File 750: Composers, Politics, and the Festival of Polish Music (1951)’, Polish Music Journal, 5/1 (Summer 2002): http://www.usc.edu/dept/polish_music/PMJ/issues.html.Google Scholar
Thomas, Adrian. Polish Music Since Szymanowski. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Trochimczyk, Maja. ‘“Dans la Nuit”: The Themes of Death and Night in Lutosławski's Oeuvre’, in Lutosławski Studies, ed. Skowron, Zbigniew. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 96–124.Google Scholar
Verdery, Katherine. National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceaușescu's Romania. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Wilson, Elizabeth. Rostropovich: The Musical Life of the Great Cellist, Teacher and Legend. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008.Google Scholar