O komponowaniu percepcji. Casus Witolda Lutosławskiego
On Composing Perception. The Case of Witold Lutosławski

Summary/Abstract: The paper is an attempt to grasp and to portray certain perceptive procedures from the perspective of composing techniques (mostly those of the 20 th century) in the context of the ever-growing present insights into these phenomena made possible by the development of auditory perception research. The point of reference and the inspiration comes from the perceptive area in composing, raised by Witold Lutosławski to the status of the decision-maker in creative work. Lutosławski’s statement that he composes perception rather than phenomena of sound opens a less-rarely-discussed space in the reception of musical work and is an incentive to attempts at a closer look at, and a classification of, perceptive phenomena both in general and in the more specific context of the composer’s technique. This fairly original idea is more than mere technical stance and strategy: by relating to the particular listener “living inside the composer,” a listener independent of the aesthetic sympathies of the world at large, it also touches upon Lutosławski’s own artistic credo associated with his considerable ethical idiosyncrasies.In fact, this is an attempt at pointing out technical and artistic means – and the effects thereof – as confronted with some aspects of auditory perception; an attempt at grasping certain peculiar means that deserve a comprehensive study and their own place in a broader spectrum of works. These include perceptive procedures (sometimes those of Lutosławski’s own invention) associated with, time, space, tone-colour, colour harmony or form-building.The paper presents not only phenomena and perceptive strategies found in Lutosławski’s music (at times in the context of the achievements of other 20 th -century composers); it also proposes various aspects of “playing with perception” in a more general sense. Some if not most of the phenomena present in Lutosławski were not produced by the composer in any awareness of the interpretation proposed here. The examples in this paper have been taken from the score of Symphony No. 3, chosen for the artistic synthesis it contains.With the development of disciplines that study phenomena of auditory perception, it has been possible to relate, obviously in a general and selective sense, to such fields as psychoacoustics as represented by its pioneer Fritz Winckel or to the cognitivism and Gestalt psychology of Albert S. Bregman (the author of the streaming concept) and Wolfgang Köhler (the co-creator of Gestalt psychology and theory). The final paragraph highlights the pioneering quality of Lutosławski’s music in relation to the art of perhaps quite a distant future.

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