Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

The Musical Timespace

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a collection of orchestral pieces of various lengths and forms, like

Couperin's "Livre pour clavecin" or J.S.Bach's "Orgelbüchlein". He aban-

doned this idea, however, because the movements grew so long and

became so linked together that there was no room for any other pieces.

Livre pour Orchestre is recorded on an EMI Classics CD with the

composer conducting The Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra. It

is divided in chapters, separated by short interludes:

Livre pour Orchestre

Chapters and Interludes Timing Duration

First Chapter: 0'00-4'06 4'06

First Interlude: 4'07-4'21 0'14

Second Chapter: 4'23-7'20 2'57

Second Interlude: 7'24 - 7'41 0'15

Third Chapter: 7'41 -9'35 1'54

Third Interlude and Final Chapter: 9'37-21'10 11'33

The First Chapter of Livre pour Orchestre is music rich in color and movement,

of great emotional power for an ear sensible to the nuances of saturated Polish

string sound, music that fills the space around you, and grabs your heart.

Livre pour Orchestre, First Chapter

0'00-2'32 Prevailing falling motion in a flow of large and small waves

of sound:

0'00-l'15:

Gently gliding stream falling and rising wave-like, appearing three

times; 0'22 continued in a rising melodic line, flowing onward, turning,

growing and spreading, 0'47 expanding in space; 1'02 interrupted;

deep fall and violent gestures; 1'11 gently rising...

1'15-2'32:

Re-emergence of the initial gliding stream, this time continuing in one

long, descending wave, slowing down, flattening out; 1'47 regaining

energy, 1'50 reactivated by a polyphony of violent, downward-directed

gestures; 2' 00 the polyphonic mass gradually rises in register, increasing

in speed and density; 2'20 outburst of brass and percussion... dispersing

in deep, scattered sounds ...2'32

2 – States, Events and Transformations

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2'32-4'06 Predominating rising motion, flowing into a transparent

chord of soft, sustained sound:

232-3'00:

Building up to a climax: massive strings followed by rising

waves of brass instruments, growing and culminating in an eruption

of percussion (2'56-3'00)

3'00-4'06:

Revelation of a transparent sustained string chord set in gentle motion

internally by slowly falling, sliding voices;

3'45 piano figures appear, strings gradually disappear; piano finally

slows down to a standstil.. 4'06

The music is a rich polyphony of internal streams, in which each voice is not

clearly separated from the other voices. This creates an over-all impression

of a living stream of sound moving flexibly and multi-directionally in

space.

Lutoslawski achieves this impressive effect through a refined use of

quarter-tones. It is his intention to overcome and transgress the musical

limitations of the chromatic scale, which restrict the choice of pitch to the

twelve fixed pitch height steps obtained by the division of the octave in

equal parts. Lutoslawski explains his technique in a conversation with

Tadeusz Kaczynski;

The use of quarter-tones seems quite natural today, when there is a

general tendency to go beyond the traditional twelve-note scale. In my

case it came about not just because of my interest in any new non-

twelve-note scale: It reflects my interest in something quite different,

namely in notes whose pitch changes continually. The choice of the

quarter-tone scale was dictated here by the need to adapt my original

idea to the existing set of instruments. The idea was to achieve a

continuous change of pitch in the most precise way possible. It is better

therefore to use definite pitch, even if that can only be approximate.

One can't expect a perfect rendering of notes on the quarter-tone scale,

especially from instruments like the violin. The majority of these

quarter-tone sequences (incidentally, you must have noticed in the

score that there are no sequences which employ notes other than adja-

cent ones in the quarter-tone scale) are in fact heard as notes which

change their pitch in a continuous way. They aren't the same as gliss-

ando, especially as one can sometimes hear the individual steps of the

quarter-tone scale. But not always. Sometimes I deliberately employ

bundles of voices from a number of strings which move along the

quarter-tone scale in such a way as to give the impression of the

quarter-tone cluster moving in space. (Lutoslawski/Kaczinsky, 1972)