While Lukaszewski’s output includes music in a wide variety of genres, including four symphonies, it is for his choral music that he is best known in the UK. I called Warsaw, where he is based, to find out more about his inspirations.
When I mentioned to Pawel that his choral music is known in the UK, he commented that choral music, notably sacred music, was the goal of his life. He virtually always writes Latin settings and is aware of following the fantastic composers of the past.
Lukaszewski has been writing sacred music for 30 years, and clearly differentiates between sacred music (which is how he refers to a lot of his repertoire) and liturgical music.
Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki (1933–2010) is one of Lukaszewski ’s notable predecessors, yet Gorecki did not write a lot of sacred Latin music, though there are some titles such as “Beatus Vir“ and ”Miserere.” But it isn’t just this variety in output that reflects the difference between the two composers. Lukaszewski feels that he composes with a bigger, more varied difference in harmony and melody to Gorecki, who is more of a minimalist.
Lukaszewski adds that he takes inspiration from a lot of sources, not just the music of his great predecessors. Gothic architecture is one notable inspiration, particularly cathedrals such as the one in Rouen, France.
But in writing sacred choral music, Lukaszewski is aware of his relationship with the music of great masters of the past.
The Tenebrae Recording
Tenebrae’s new disc includes Lukaszewski’s settings of the “Tenebrae Responsories” [originally composed for Holy Week observances by Tomás Luis de Victoria as a set of 18 motets for four a cappella voices] and “Lamentations,” which are both very popular Latin texts with a significant musical history behind them, but also “The Beatitudes,” which are rarely set.The text is very important to Lukaszewski, as the selection of the text can contribute strongly to the formal structure of the resulting piece. In fact, the text can give rise to the idea for the music. Having chosen a text, he looks at the important words and will assign special intervals to particular words. And he finishes this part of our discussion by saying that it might be better to say that he did not start with the whole text, but that he began with individual words.
For sacred music, he always sets the Latin text, frequently taken from “Liber Usualis.” It contains the complete Latin settings of Gregorian chant for every Roman Catholic Mass of the year.
As a Conductor
Lukaszewski is also a conductor of the Musica Sacra choir at St Florian’s Cathedral in the Praga district of Warsaw, and he has conducted the group for 15 years. The choir is part of a bigger project, including an international composition competition, which has conductor Stephen Layton on the jury, and it also publishes CDs and music.
For Lukaszewski, conducting and composing feed into each other. He is always thinking about conducting when composing. When writing something, he is thinking whether it is good for performance, and when he is conducting, he looks at the score with a composer’s eye, seeing what is good and what is bad.
He feels that some composers are theoretical rather than practical. For Lukaszewski, it is important to have had the experience of being a member of a choir and a conductor, important for his composing activity.
When I ask about his composer heroes, the first name mentioned is something of a surprise: Francis Poulenc, whose music Lukaszewski likes. But he also names Mahler, Brahms, and Mendelssohn. From the last 100 years, he names Gorecki, Arvo Part, and John Taverner, composers whose sacred music is on his wavelength.
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