His "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" is incredibly moving to me. I heard Igor Levit perform it a few years ago. I was in the front row, so I don't know how many of the other listeners were on their feet cheering when he finished. The sound was pretty loud.
On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 5:29 AM Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo < [email protected]> wrote: > > https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/arts/music/frederic-rzewski-dead.html > > Frederic Rzewski, Politically Committed Composer and Pianist, Dies at 83Known > for his anti-establishment views, Mr. Rzewski created works inspired by the > Attica prison uprising and a Chilean protest song. > By William Robin > June 27, 2021 > [image: The pianist and composer Frederic Rzewski in 2016. Mr. > Rzewski’s anti-establishment thinking stood at the center of his > music-making and influenced generations of musicians.] > The pianist and composer Frederic Rzewski in 2016. Mr. Rzewski’s > anti-establishment thinking stood at the center of his music-making and > influenced generations of musicians.Todd Heisler/The New York Times > > Frederic Rzewski, a formidable composer and pianist who wrote and > performed music that was at once stylistically eclectic and politically > committed, died on Saturday at his summer home in Montiano, Italy. He was > 83. > > The cause was cardiac arrest, the publicist Josephine Hemsing said in an > email. > > Mr. Rzewski’s anti-establishment thinking stood at the center of his > music-making throughout his life. It was evident in the experimental, agitprop > improvisations <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzxLoCwiEy0> he created > in the 1960s with the ensemble Musica Elettronica Viva; in “Coming > Together,” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSuuwJFw4wU> the Minimalist > classic inspired by the Attica prison uprising; and a vast catalog of solo > piano works, several of which have become cornerstones of the modern > repertoire. > > His approach was epitomized in his best-known piece, “The People United > Will Never Be Defeated!,” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiWwYsWWVSk> > an expansive and virtuosic set of 36 variations on a Chilean protest song. > > Composed for the pianist Ursula Oppens in 1975, the piece, an hour long, > is a torrent of inventive and unusual techniques — the pianist whistles, > shouts and slams the lid of the instrument — and has been compared to > canonic works like Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations” and Bach’s “Goldberg > Variations.” > > “Stylistically, it goes through everything,” Ms. Oppens said in a recent > interview. “It’s pointillistic and minimalistic and really quite varied.” > At the same time, she noted, Mr. Rzewski’s mastery of traditional > counterpoint was a major draw for pianists. “There’s a logic to the > relationship of the notes to one another,” she added. > > “The People United” has captured the imagination of virtuosos including > Marc-André > Hamelin <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBeb694QII> and, more recently, > younger pianists like Igor Levit > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-UGSjBUusI> and Conrad Tao. It is the > closest thing to a war horse in the contemporary piano repertory. > > In 2015, Mr. Rzewski performed the entire work at the Pittsburgh fish > market Wholey’s > <https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2015/04/19/Rzewski-plays-Wholey-s-an-epic-piano-piece-for-the-people/stories/201504190175>, > a fabled event in contemporary music circles. > > Mr. Rzewski’s musical approach favored intuition over cerebral > composition. “The one thing that composers in the 20th century don’t do is > to simply write down the tunes that are going through their heads,” he told > the magazine NewMusicBox > <https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/frederic-rzewski-visits-america/> in 2002. > “I just write down what’s in my head.” > > Frederic Anthony Rzewski was born on April 13, 1938, in Westfield, Mass., > to Anthony Rzewski, a Polish émigré, and Emma Buynicki, who were both > pharmacists. He began playing piano and composing from a young age. > > Following the advice of a teacher, he checked out albums by Shostakovich > and Schoenberg at a record store and began to immerse himself in musical > modernism. > > After graduating from Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, Mr. Rzewski > studied music at Harvard with the tonal composers Randall Thompson and > Walter Piston. He earned his master’s at Princeton. > > In 1960 and 1961, he studied with Luigi Dallapiccola in Florence on a > Fulbright scholarship. In Europe, he gained renown performing music by > luminaries like Karlheinz Stockhausen and, after a stint in Berlin studying > with Elliott Carter, settled in Rome. > [image: In a rehearsal for the Atonal Music Festival in 1963, Mr. Rzewski > plays a typewriter and squeezes a baby doll that says “Mama.”] > In a rehearsal for the Atonal Music Festival in 1963, Mr. Rzewski plays a > typewriter and squeezes a baby doll that says “Mama.”Allyn Baum/The New > York Times > > The European avant-garde had fallen under the sway of John Cage’s > experimentalism, and Mr. Rzewski wrote heady music like his “Composition > for Two Players,” an unconventional score that he once interpreted by > placing sheets of glass on the strings of a Steinway. > > In 1966, he and the composer Alvin Curran assembled a group of musicians, > including the electronic composer Richard Teitelbaum > <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/arts/music/richard-teitelbaum-dead.html>, > to perform in the crypt of a church in Rome. The collective became Musica > Elettronica Viva, an act that used homemade electronics setups > <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07494467.2010.619729> for > visceral improvisations. Mr. Rzewski, for instance, scraped and drummed on > a piece of glass that had been cut into the shape of a piano, to which he > had attached a microphone. (“By the grace of God, we didn’t get > electrocuted,” he later said.) > > Rejecting the dense, modernist scores of his previous academic environs, > Mr. Rzewski became preoccupied with spontaneity. > > “The sublime mingled freely with the base,” he once wrote of “Spacecraft,” > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzxLoCwiEy0> one of the sets of trippy > instructions that guided Musica Elettronica Viva’s performances. “Climaxes > of exhausting intensity alternated with Tibetan drones, ecstatic trances > gave way to demonic seizures in rapid succession.” > > The collective gave more than 100 performances across Europe in the late > 1960s, and its raucous concerts drew increasingly politicized listeners. As > students agitated, the group joined in, inviting audiences to play with > them in anarchic improvisations — a kind of avant-garde Summer of Love. The > group also performed in factories and prisons. > > “The most important thing was the connection of community and the > political,” the composer and scholar George E. Lewis, who performed in > later iterations of the collective, said in a recent interview. “Music gave > people choices and options, and collectively creating music together > allowed everyone to rethink their situations.” > > In 1971, Mr. Rzewski moved to New York and resumed a more routine concert > life, playing recitals of new music and joining the downtown improvisation > scene. > > And he began to bring his politics to bear on works he created alone. “It > is fairly clear that the storms of the ’60s have momentarily subsided, > giving way to a period of reflection,” he wrote that year. First was “Les > Moutons de Panurge,” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ-ZVkVvgrI> which > asks an ensemble to play a tricky, ever-shifting 65-note melody. “Stay > together as long as you can, but if you get lost, stay lost,” the score > impishly indicates. > > Then came “Coming Together,” in which a speaker recites a letter written > by Sam Melville, a leader of the 1971 Attica prison uprising, over a > chugging, minimalist bass line as instrumentalists contribute > quasi-improvised interjections. Mr. Rzewski would occasionally perform > “Coming Together” himself, playing and speaking simultaneously. > > The music is at once calculated and urgent; Mr. Rzewski described the > Attica rebellion, in which 43 people died, as an “atrocity that demanded of > every responsible person that had any power to cry out, that he cry out.” > Its many interpreters have included the performance artist Steve Ben > Israel, the composer-performer Julius Eastman and Angela Davis > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2GquuyvHto>, the professor and > political activist. > > During this period Mr. Rzewski became involved in the Musicians Action > Collective, a coalition that organized benefit concerts for United Farm > Workers, a defense fund for Attica inmates and the Chilean solidarity > movement. > > He was soon drawn to the song “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido,” > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8UGs0rdhq8> which had become an anthem > for the Chilean resistance through performances by the exiled group > Inti-Illimani. Written by Sergio Ortega and Quilapayún, the song served as > the basis for Mr. Rzewski’s set of variations, commissioned for the United > States Bicentennial and first performed by Ms. Oppens at the Kennedy Center > in Washington in 1976. > > “People always say, ‘Well, how can music be political if it has no text?’ > Mr. Rzewski told an interviewer that year. “It doesn’t require a text. It > does, however, require some kind of consciousness of the active > relationship between music and the rest of the world.” > > Returning to Europe in the late 1970s, Mr. Rzewski split his time between > Italy and Liège, where he was a professor at the Conservatoire Royal de > Musique until his death, and he made regular visits to the United States to > perform and teach. > > After “The People United,” Mr. Rzewski largely focused on solo piano > music, like the “North American Ballads” (1979), which bring together > Baroque counterpoint, minimalist improvisation and leftist folk song. > Subsequent major solo works include the theatrical “De Profundis,” in which > a pianist plays while reciting Oscar Wilde’s infamous prison manifesto; the > polystylistic, 10-hour-plus cycle “The Road”; and a sprawling series of > miniature “Nanosonatas.” > > “Opera houses don’t come asking me to write operas,” he told The New York > Times <https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/arts/music/27gure.html> in > 2008. “Symphony orchestras don’t come asking for symphonies. But there’s > this piano player I see every day who keeps asking me for music. So that’s > what I do.” > > Much of the music encourages improvisation, and, in performances of > canonic works like Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGyX5W9a_IE>, Mr. Rzewski would create > his own elaborate cadenzas. > > He remained true to his iconoclastic roots. In 2001 he released his > scores as free downloads > <https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/free-scores-made-available-online-by-composer/> > on the internet, and many are now available on the online Petrucci Music > Library <https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Rzewski,_Frederic>. > > There was, though, a darker side to his ornery personality. Mr. Rzewski > could be exceedingly harsh to students in educational settings. After his > death was announced, several musicians noted on Twitter that he had a > reputation for inappropriate flirtation and sexual innuendo toward younger > women. > > Mr. Rzewski married Nicole Abbeloos in 1963, and they later separated. His > partner for many years was Françoise Walot; they separated around 2008. > Survivors include six children, Alexis, Daniel, Jan, Noemi, Esther and > Noam, and five grandchildren. > > Wary of the present, Mr. Rzewski also refused to dwell in nostalgia. “Free > improvisation was going to change the world,” he told The New York Times > in 2016 > <https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/arts/music/the-composer-frederic-rzewski-in-his-notes-protest-and-politics.html>, > referring to his early days with Musica Elettronica Viva. “It was going to > create an entirely new language, so that people could come together from > different parts of the planet and instantly communicate.” > > After taking a beat, he added, “Well, of course, we were wrong.” > > > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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