Lucia Dlugoszewski

Lucia Dlugoszewski (June 16, 1931 – April 11, 2000) was a Polish-American composer, performer and inventor. She created over a hundred musical instruments, including the timbre piano, a sort of prepared piano in which hammers and keys were replaced with bows and plectra.

The daughter of Polish immigrants, Dlugoszewski was born and raised in Detroit. She studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory of Music and was a pre-medical student at Wayne State University, where she also took physics courses. Surprised and disappointed by an unsuccessful application to medical school in 1950, Dlugoszewski spontaneously moved to New York City, where she would spend the rest of her life. In New York, Dlugoszewski took piano lessons from Grete Sultan and studied analysis with Felix Salzer and composition with Edgar Varèse. Apart from a handful of piano preludes and sonatas, Dlugoszewski had written little music prior to 1950, but once in New York, she quickly became a prolific composer of experimental music, including several open-form works.

Dlugoszewski’s compositions have been recorded for Nonesuch Records, Folkways, CRI, and other important contemporary music labels. Her 1975 piece Abyss and Caress, for trumpet and small orchestra, was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and premièred by Pierre Boulez. In 1977, she became the first woman to win the Koussevitzy International Recording Award with Fire Fragile Flight, for 17 instruments – the work became a signature piece for the Philadelphia ensemble Orchestra of Our Time. The recordings for Nonesuch and CRI released in the 70s were reissued by CRI in 2002 as Disparate Stairway Radical Other along with new work for string quartet and timbre piano.

Beginning in 1957, Dlugoszewski cultivated a professional and personal relationship with the dancer and choreographer Erick Hawkins. Dlugoszewski, a dancer herself, wrote chamber and orchestral scores for the Erick Hawkins Dance Ensemble as well as for the Foundation for Modern Dance. Her music for dance includes Journey of a Poet, written for and executed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Taking Time to be Vulnerable, for Pascal Denichou. She also contributed music for chamber ensemble to the soundtrack of the 1962 avant-garde film Guns of the Trees, directed by Jonas Mekas. A very early performance of her timbre piano can be heard in her music for Marie Menken's1945 film "Visual Variations on Noguchi.," a score perhaps added later in the early 50s when the composer had arrived in New York.

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