Tanglewood

Witold Lutosławski first travelled to the United States – in the company of his wife – in 1962. He was invited to Tanglewood, where since 1935, at the initiative of Serge Koussevitzky, summer courses for musicians had been organised. The invitation to give a series of lectures and seminars with students motivated the almost fifty-year-old composer to pursue an intense course in English. He had to refresh what he had been taught as a child by his mother, who had an excellent command of English. When travelling around Europe at that time, Lutosławski used French. In America, however, that was completely useless. In Tanglewood, he gave five lectures on the following themes: theory and practice in the work of a composer, general reflections on musical form, harmony and rhythm, and to end he spoke about his aleatory technique, which with time was to become the most frequent subject of his lectures.