Cambridge

On 11 June 1987, Cambridge University awarded Witold Lutosławski an honorary doctorate – the tenth such honour that he had received. The occasion was marked by a performance of the miniature piece Fanfare for CUBE, the composer’s token of gratitude for the distinction bestowed upon him. The word CUBE is the abbreviation of the ensemble that played the fanfare (the Cambridge University Brass Ensemble), but it also refers to the six-sided shape and the power three, which is appropriate given that Lutosławski, who studied mathematics for a year, ingeniously combined here music with maths. In the first bar, each instrument plays eight notes; eight is the number two cubed. The whole fanfare contains twenty-seven crotchets; twenty-seven, in turn, is three cubed. In the Fanfare, the composer’s nationality was emphasised: the work is to be performed at a Tempo di polonaise.