The Music of Lutoslawski Paperback – December 1, 1999

Charles Bodman Rae has done a magnificent job assmebling and detailing the development of the late great 20th century Polish composer, Witold Lutoslawski. Breaking his compositional output into several periods and musical examples from the pieces of those periods, Rae covers the early folk inspired workds of the 40s and 50s to the radical discovery of aleatorism in 1960 which helped cement his compositional voice. His unique use of controlled aleatorism would be a trademark of all of his works from 1960 through his last work in 1992. Lutoslawski was one of the very few composers who was able to find a harmonic system which was non-tonal and non-2nd Viennese school i.e. twelve-tone system. (the others who had unique harmonic systems were Messiaen and Ligeti). Rae goes through some of the evolution in his harmonic thinking, but I would recommend Steven Stucky's "Lutoslawski and his music" for more detailed harmonic analysis of his work. The Stucky book does not cover all of the works up to Lutoslawski's death, but does get a significant number of the larger ones. Unlike the Stucky book, Rae's book (part of the Faber and Faber music series) also gives the reader biographical insight which isn't too dry. In this respect, the faber series continues to excel giving readers of differing musical knowledge straws to pick at; those not too interested in the themes and workings of particular pieces can focus on the tidbits of historical working behind the pieces.