Livre pour orchestre
for Symphony Orchestra
The piece was commissioned by Berthold Lehmann, head of the orchestra in Hagen, and the premiere took place on 18 November, 1968 during the ''Hagener Musiktage'' festival. It belongs to the composers so-called aleatoric period and it immediately won acclaim and entered the concert repertoire.
The title of the piece (in translation: Book for Orchestra) refers to the famous Livres pour clavesin by François Couperin and Jan Sebastian Bachs Orgelbüchlein amongst others. As the composer himself said ''the title of the piece was in fact to refer to different 'Livres', and suggest a loose relationship between different movements of the piece. Originally it was to be a cycle of pieces of varying length, which would be drawn together in a more expansive finale. That's how I imagined it when I first talked with Berthold Lehman. I suggested the title Livre pour orchester and both the title and the compositional idea were been eagerly adopted by Lehman. But after a long time, when I finished the score, the original concept of the piece was so transformed that Livre pour orchestre was no longer justified (...) so I shyly asked in a letter to change the title, but as a reply I received a printed program ''Hagener Musiktage 1968'', in which my piece was announced under the title ''Livre pour orchestre''. So it was too late!'' (''Polish Music'' 1969 No. 1).
The Polish premiere took place on September 20, 1969 at the inaugural concert of the XIII Warsaw Autumn. The piece was enthusiastically received by critics. Tadeusz A. Zieliński wrote, for example, that it was ''a masterpiece, one of the greatest that we happened to hear at all the Autumns that have been'' (Ruch Muzyczny No. 23, 1969), S. Krukowski considered it ''one of the finest works of contemporary music.'' ( Gazeta Robotnicza, 1969).
Livre pour orchestre consists of four movement played attacca and linked by intermedia. With reference to the title, the composer called the movements Chapters (Chapitres). The composer uses controlled aleatorism here, but in a way more limited than in previous works such as Jeux vénitiens or Three Poems by Henri Michaux
(Based on the book: Danuta Gwizdalanka, Krzysztof Meyer, Lutosławski. Droga do mistrzostwa)
- Number of pages: 76
- Cover: softcover
- Type: score
- Size: A4 vertical (210x297 mm)
