Lutosławski's Mid-Century Harmony

Abstract

Abstract This article proposes to expand our understanding of Witold Lutosławski's chordal space and its relation to formal processes. It argues that the traditional analytical focus on harmonic colors of isolated chords comes at the expense of understanding how chordal interactions shape form. How do individual chords participate in cogent, expressive, and sensuous long-range harmonic processes? The article explores how the arrangement of intervals in twelve-tone chords (especially the ordering, restriction, and modularity of intervals) not only imprint distinct coloristic qualities to single chordal entities but are also implicated in strategies of harmonic progression, relatedness, complementarity, and contrast. These analytical goals prompt a reconceptualization of chordal elements, which are understood as combinations of pitch class and modal quality rather than simply as pitches in register. The analytical focus is on Lutosławski's harmony of the mid- to late fifties, attending in particular to the Five Iłłakowicz Songs, the composer's inaugural effort in the use of vertical aggregates. Lutosławski's chordal space in these pieces is interpreted through a series of cyclic graphs and transpositional networks, prompting a novel understanding between twelve-tone chordal harmony and form. The study proposes to contribute to the analytical reappraisal of a set of pieces that anchor an influential harmonic practice in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music.