Jeux vénitiens

Jeux vénitiens (French for Venetian Games) is a 1961 composition by Polish composer Witold Lutosławski, under commission from the Krakow Philharmonic.

Four percussion instruments signal the beginning of these sections, which are composed of lively un-metered lines played by woodwinds.

Similar to the refrains, percussion instruments signal the beginning of these sections, which are composed of static soft string clusters.

For example, the woodwind pitches of section A contain 12 notes (two symmetrical hexachords) and exhibit the following intervallic structure from bottom to top, expressed as intervals (in semitones): 23222 / 5 / 22232.

Thus, such aleatoric counterpoint produces a special type of sound mass in which the full chromatic spectrum is not covered.