„Tote aber leben länger“. The Second Viennese School and its Place in the Reflections of Selected Composers from the Second Half of the Twentieth Century (Lutosławski, Ligeti, Lachenmann, Harvey)
Keywords:
the Second Viennese School, Witold Lutosławski, György Ligeti, Helmut Lachenmann, Jonathan Harvey, historical appropriation, contemporary composers’ writingsAbstract
The juxtaposition of classicism and actuality is a good description of the ambiguous position occupied by the Second Viennese School not only in the eyes of the scholars who research it, but also of composers who can be regarded as its successors. However, in the works and writings originating from the Second Viennese School we find a concentration of problems encountered by contemporary composers, especially the modernist ones. The aim of this article is to examine the role played by the representatives of the Second Viennese School in the reflections of selected twentieth-century composers, concerning their place in music history, the expressive categories present in their work, and their ambiguous attitude to tonality. A separate subject to be explored is the discourse used by contemporary composers to describe the music of their predecessors, full of both analytical categories and vivid metaphors. The quoted composers (Witold Lutosławski, György Ligeti, Helmut Lachenmann and Jonathan Harvey) may be identified with more-or-less radical modernist views. This article is guided by the thinking of Gianmario Borio and the idea of “historical appropriation”, according to which analysis of the works of the past helps composers to create their own artistic identities and to define their own place in the history of music.
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