Long a fan of the French Surrealist writers, Lutoslawski first set their poetry to music in the Trois Poèmes d'Henri Michaux (1961-1963); he returned to the Surrealists in the early 1970s when the renowned baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau asked him for a composition. The text Lutoslawski chose was Les espaces du sommeil (Sleep's Spaces), from the volume Corps et biens by Robert Desnos (1900-1945), the Paris-born poet and early Surrealist who was known for writing much of his work in a quasi-hypnotic state. Desnos was also a resistance fighter in World War II who died of typhus at the Theresienstadt concentration camp; Lutoslawski later returned to Desnos' work for the song cycle Chantefleurs et Chantefables (1990). Fischer-Dieskau sang the premiere of Les espaces du sommeil, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Lutoslawski, in Berlin on April 12, 1978.

Lutoslawski liked what he called the "musical attitude" of Desnos' poem, as well as its mixture of concrete and dream-like imagery. His setting is itself dream-like, its orchestral textures mostly delicate and evanescent; the vocal line is lyrical for the most part, with some hints of sprechstimme. One can hear an influence of the French Impressionist composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, an influence also evident in later Lutoslawski works like the Double Concerto for oboe and harp (1979-1980) and the Symphony No. 3 (1981-1983).

Early in Les espaces du sommeil the repeated gentle phrase "In the night" recurs with varying imagery. Amidst these images, "there is you"; the concept of "you," always ambivalent and loosely understood, becomes central to the work—the elusive link between the conscious and the subconscious ("elusive in reality and in dream"). Narrative attempts to give more concrete definition to the character of "you" are interrupted by tense, sometimes violent, outbursts from the orchestra, which seem to destroy any chance of understanding. In the end it is the night, and sleep, that return in the restored musical calm; alongside them is "you"—omnipresent in both night and day.

© All Music Guide