René Leibowitz, ’Marijuana,’ Variations non sérieuses Op. 54 (1960)

René Leibowitz (17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after the Second World War, and teaching a new generation of serialist composers. In Paris Leibowitz earned his living as a jazz pianist and composed constantly. In his early twenties he married an artist from an illustrious French family and settled down in Paris, eventually taking French nationality. During the early 1930s he was introduced to Schoenberg’s twelve-note technique by the German pianist and composer Erich Itor Kahn. Maguire writes that Leibowitz easily fitted into “the ebullient intellectual and artistic climate of Paris in the pre-war years“. His aesthetic interests were not confined to music, and he became friendly with leading figures from the world of modern art, notably André Masson and Pablo Picasso, and with literary figures