Program Notes Lutosławski Fanfare for Louisville Born in Warsaw, Witold Lutoslawski first began composing music at age 22. He studied piano, violin, and composition, graduating from the Warsaw Conservatory in 1937. His early compositions (for example, the Symphonic Variations of 1939) favored folk music themes, perhaps in part because the repression and censorship of the Nazi occupation during World War II frowned on more modern influences. After the war, Lutoslawski began employing the twelve-tone techniques espoused by composer Arnold Schoenberg in works such as Funeral Music (1958), and first experimented with aleatoric music in Jeux Vénitiens (1961). "Aleatory" means "pertaining to luck," and in such music, the composer leaves some portion of the composition up to chance. For example, the composer might notate a particular pattern that a performer must play and indicate roughly how many times the pattern should be repeated, but let the performer decide when and how fast to play each repetition. In 1985, Lutoslawski received the first Grawemeyer Award given by the Louisville Orchestra. As thanks and in honor of the orchestra's 50th anniversary in 1987, the composer wrote his Fanfare for Louisville. The fanfare is very short, and features opening aleatoric sections for brass, followed by marching brass chords contrasted with brilliant trills from the woodwinds. --Barbara Heninger
Program Notes
Born in Warsaw, Witold Lutoslawski first began composing music at age 22. He studied piano, violin, and composition, graduating from the Warsaw Conservatory in 1937. His early compositions (for example, the Symphonic Variations of 1939) favored folk music themes, perhaps in part because the repression and censorship of the Nazi occupation during World War II frowned on more modern influences.
After the war, Lutoslawski began employing the twelve-tone techniques espoused by composer Arnold Schoenberg in works such as Funeral Music (1958), and first experimented with aleatoric music in Jeux Vénitiens (1961). "Aleatory" means "pertaining to luck," and in such music, the composer leaves some portion of the composition up to chance. For example, the composer might notate a particular pattern that a performer must play and indicate roughly how many times the pattern should be repeated, but let
the performer decide when and how fast to play each repetition.
In 1985, Lutoslawski received the first Grawemeyer Award given by the Louisville Orchestra. As thanks and in honor of the orchestra's 50th anniversary in 1987, the composer wrote his Fanfare for Louisville. The fanfare is very short, and features opening aleatoric sections for brass, followed by marching brass chords contrasted with brilliant trills from the woodwinds.
--Barbara Heninger
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