• WL100/26: Notebook, 13 March 1961 (2)

Lutosławski on Electronic Music

It might be said that, in the works which I am now writing, the influences of electronic music are evident. Maybe.  One thing is clear to me, that electr. and concr. music realises, to a certain degree, timbral and rhythmic elements which from early on have imposed themselves on my imagination.

Mozna by mówić, że w utworach, które teraz piszę, widać wpływy muzyki elektronowej.  Być może.  Jedno jest dla mnie pewne, że muzyka elektr. i konkr. realizuje w pewnym stopniu elementy dźwiękowe i rytmiczne, które od dawna narzucają się mej wyobraźni.

Witold Lutosławski, 13 March 1961  [my translation]

Lutosławski, who was in the middle of composing Jeux vénitiens at the time, was not alone among his generation in the early 1960s in sensing parallels between his music and the new sound-worlds of electronic music and music concrète.  In 1960, the year of her Sixth String Quartet and a year before the orchestral Pensieri notturni, Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-69) made a similar observation: “I am struck by electronic music: it invents new sound colours and new rhythms”.