W. Lutosławski – N. Paganini: the dialog in the playing context of the musical culture.
The “my” – “somebody else’s” antinomy, interpreted in the con-text of the music background, appears as a kind of a creativity process controller. In the “composer-tradition” coordinate system, it acquires either protagonist-like character on conditions that the existing standards are followed, or antagonist-like character if these standards are actively reconsidered, or demolished as obsolete concepts. Either variants carry agonic nature of the creativity, which realizes itself in the playing performance as a unique kind of activity. The playing performance logic prevails when another com-poser’s opus, created earlier, becomes the “theme” of another music piece. An undimin-ishing interest to the world-shaking “Caprices” by N. Paganini is driven by the artistic-masterful peculiarities of this music, which provoke struggle and competitiveness. This so-called challenge was taken by the most outstanding musicians, who achieved the great heights as pianists and composers. One of them in particular, W. Lutosławski, the author of the “Variations on a Theme of Paganini” for two pianos, who was one of powerful groundbreakers of the radically minded 20 th century, did not stay on the sidelines either. The appearing dialog of “two cultures”, two artistic minds, and two partners-performers after all, reveals to a researcher as a massive field of knowledge, identifying the goal of this article. The individual approach to the “somebody else’s” music more distinctly outlined when using the comparative analysis method, which allows comparing the new authors conception with the existing models. The idea of creating this opus belongs to I. Markevich, a harpist of the Warsaw phil-harmonic, who encouraged composing a paraphrase to the Caprice Nr. 24 by N. Paga-nini. On the one hand, a sharp appoggiatura on the strong beat catches the variation find-ings of Paganini himself, who adds coquettishness to the etude-like thematic invention of the 2 nd variation with its help, amplifying the effect by means of the metric change. On the other hand, it refers to the piano part in the music adaptation made by K. Szy-manowski, where the appoggiatura embellishes the restrained harmonic sustain, resem-bling the string thrumming. This method widens the circle of the associative bounds, absorbing Liszt’s experience, who used arpeggiato within the strong beat, empowering the theme with the rhapsodic character. W. Lutosławskientrusts the theme itself to the part of Piano I, keeping quite a rare but a distinct mode-tonal vertical structure in it. Piano II has another part in this play. It bears a harmonic function only visually; in fact, it has a new harmonic sequence which goes along with its logic of development. The ‘harmonic theme’ gives a modern look on the original theme, acting as one of dialog participants. The artistic initiative of W. Lutosławski asserts itself in creating ‘a varia-tion on a variation’ techniques; developing his own harmonic ideas and their interaction with the source material; using the counterpoint techniques; interpreting the meaning of ensemble and the roles each piano part has. W. Lutosławski follows the structure of Pa-ganini’s cycle without changing any variation by an essentially new interpretation of the theme. Going deeper into the cycle, the composer engages the counterpoint technique, creating either an additional variant of a previous variation, or simultaneously combin-ing different parts of the same variation. For example, in the 6 th variation Piano I plays the second part of Paganini’s variation, changing only its ending; accordingly, Piano II plays the first part of the variation, enforced only by the octave doubling. Using the tone-harmonic means, the composer highlights the coloring of a-moll key, which is common to the Caprice. Following the structural logic of the borrowed content, the 2 nd ‘sentence’ of the variation is characterized not only by using the vertical-invertible counterpoint technique, but also by shifting to a modern soundscape. In a quite different way, the so-called ‘dance of the structures’ asserts itself in the 8 th variation. The aspiration for transforming the original version was drawn by Lutosławskifrom Paganini, who uses the chordal exposition to create ostinato tones, tritone confluxes, parallel movement of third-sixth intervals, rich vertical structures through melodic progression of voices. The polish composer complicates a task, pronouncing his intentions in the first sentence. Here, the part of the Piano I corresponds to the source material, differentiating by a quite massive chordal exposition. The Piano II part is entrusted with the variation on the keynote-dominant expression of Paganini’s theme, with the difference that these func-tions are vertically aligned, forming a homophone texture of the etude-like type. Similar to Paganini’s breakaway from the main tonality by the number of modulations in the second sentence, W. Lutosławski amplifies the destructive aspects through unlimited po-tential of the twelve-tone system. Dealing closely with music pieces of other composers as a pianist, W. Lutosławskireacts to the similarity of the 1 st and the 9th variation from Paganini’s cycle by combining different elements within a single one. The contempora-neity of the author’s way of thinking is shown not only by the harmonic context, but also by using different rhythmical structures within the distinctly specified metric space. The desired effect is achieved through ‘subito’ contrast. Summing-up the analytical observations, we can say in the conclusionthat the com-binative inventiveness of W. Lutosławskiis based on a delicate work with the struc-tural elements. Being projected onto the twelve-tone space, they acquire an unexpected shape, sometimes even shading any genetic relations within the original text. Within “my” – “somebody else’s” playing context, the composer reveals the new performance ca-pabilities of the Caprice No. 24 by N. Paganini as well as the ways to apply his artistic ideas. As a result of such an interaction we can observe the effect of “moving towards” – “moving away from” which reflects the general functioning principles of the classic pieces in the modern music culture, when the early music coexists in a single sound continuum, or gives a way for searching of an authentic reproduction.