During World War II, after narrowly escaping German capture, Lutosławski made a living playing the piano in Warsaw bars.

The Lutosławskis travelled east to Moscow, where Józef remained politically active, organising Polish Legions ready for any action that might liberate Poland (which had been divided over a century earlier—Warsaw was part of Tsarist Russia).

After his father's death, other members of the family played an important part in Witold's early life, especially Józef's half-brother Kazimierz Lutosławski, a priest and politician.

[21] Listening in cafés was the only way in which the Poles of German-occupied Warsaw could hear live music; putting on concerts was impossible since the Germans occupying Poland prohibited any organised gatherings.

[22] In café Aria, where they played, Lutosławski met his future wife Maria Danuta Bogusławska, a sister of the writer Stanisław Dygat.

[32] In 1947, the Stalinist political climate led to the adoption and imposition by the ruling Polish United Workers' Party of the tenets of socialist realism.

[35] Lutoslawski's First Symphony was proscribed as "formalist",[36] and he found himself shunned by the Soviet authorities, a situation that continued throughout the era of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko.

The work, commissioned in 1950 by the conductor Witold Rowicki for the newly reconstituted Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, earned the composer two state prizes in the following year.

[47] Lutosławski's harmonic and contrapuntal thinking were developed in this work, and in the Five songs of 1956–57,[48] as he introduced his twelve-note system, he realised the fruits of many years of thought and experiment.

[49] Another new feature of his compositional technique became a Lutosławski signature: he introduced randomness into the exact synchronisation of various parts of the musical ensemble in Jeux vénitiens ("Venetian games").

This shortened title was suggested by the poet Jean-François Chabrun, who had published the poems as Quatre tapisseries pour la Châtelaine de Vergi.

[59] The Second Symphony, and Livre pour orchestre and a Cello Concerto which followed, were composed during a particularly traumatic period in Lutosławski's life.

[61] Lutosławski did not support the Soviet regime, and these events have been postulated as reasons for the increase in antagonistic effects in his work, particularly the Cello Concerto of 1968–70 for Rostropovich and the Royal Philharmonic Society.

[62][63] Indeed, Rostropovich's own opposition to the Soviet regime in Russia was just coming to a head (he shortly afterwards declared his support for the dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn).

At the work's première with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Arthur Bliss presented Rostropovich with the Royal Philharmonic Society's gold medal.

[66] In 1973, Lutosławski attended a recital given by the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with the pianist Sviatoslav Richter in Warsaw; he met the singer after the concert and this inspired him to write his extended orchestral song Les Espaces du sommeil ("The spaces of sleep").

[67] This work, Preludes and Fugue, Mi-Parti (a French expression that roughly translates as "divided into two equal but different parts"), Novelette, and a short piece for cello in honour of Paul Sacher's seventieth birthday, occupied Lutosławski throughout the 1970s, while in the background he was working away at a projected Third symphony and a concertante piece for the oboist Heinz Holliger.

These latter pieces were proving difficult to complete,[68] as Lutosławski struggled to introduce greater fluency into his sound world and to reconcile tensions between the harmonic and melodic aspects of his style,[69] and between foreground and background.

[72] During this period, Poland was undergoing yet more upheaval: in 1980, the influential movement Solidarność was created, led by Lech Wałęsa;[73] and in 1981, martial law was declared by General Wojciech Jaruzelski.

[85] It was a performance of this work and the Third Symphony at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1988 that marked the composer's return to the conductor's podium in Poland, after substantive talks had been arranged between the government and the opposition.

[88] In between, and after initial reluctance, Lutosławski took on the presidency of the newly reconstituted "Polish Cultural Council",[89] which was set up after the 1989 legislative elections led to the end of communist rule in Poland.

[89] In 1993, Lutosławski continued his busy schedule, travelling to the United States, England, Finland, Canada and Japan,[90] and sketching a violin concerto,[91] but by the first week of 1994 it was clear that cancer had taken hold,[92] and after an operation the composer weakened quickly and died on 7 February, aged 81.

[93] He had, a few weeks before, been awarded Poland's highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle (only the second person to receive this since the collapse of communism in Poland—the first had been Pope John Paul II).

[96] As Lutosławski developed the techniques of his mature compositions, he stopped using folk material explicitly, although its influence remained as subtle features until the end.

[99] Lutosławski's twelve-note techniques were thus completely different in conception from Arnold Schoenberg's tone-row system,[100][101] although Musique funèbre does happen to be based on a tone row.

Although he was not influenced by the sound or the philosophy of the music, Cage's explorations of indeterminacy set off a train of thought which resulted in Lutosławski finding a way to retain the harmonic structures he wanted while introducing the freedom for which he was searching.

[108] For his String Quartet, Lutosławski had produced only the four instrumental parts, refusing to bind them in a full score, because he was concerned that this would imply that he wanted notes in vertical alignment to coincide, as is the case with conventionally notated classical ensemble music.

According to Bodman Rae, in his later works Lutosławski evolved a more mobile, simpler, harmonic style, in which less of the music is played with an ad libitum coordination.

[112][113] This development first appeared in the brief Epitaph for oboe and piano,[114] around the time Lutosławski was struggling to find the technical means to complete his Third Symphony.

[115] Lutosławski's formidable technical developments grew out of his creative imperative; that he left a lasting body of major compositions is a testament to his resolution of purpose in the face of the anti-formalist authorities under which he formulated his methods.