# Frederic Rzewski



## Mandryka

Anyone explored what he does? What’s he about? What’s most interesting to listen to - either his own compositions of him playing other people’s?


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## chu42

I think The People United Will Never Be Defeated! is the most popular Rzewski work and the only one that is recorded often. 

It's a gargantuan and genius work, and as it goes on it becomes more and more difficult to find the original theme. The piano writing itself is highly varied and encompasses a large variety of compositional techniques.


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## Mandryka

chu42 said:


> I think The People United Will Never Be Defeated! is the only thing that is recorded often.


Coming Together maybe quite frequently recorded too.








chu42 said:


> It's a gargantuan and genius work, and as it goes on it becomes more and more difficult to find the original theme.


Well I bet a lot of people _never _find the theme in The Goldberg Variations! They think it's the aria.


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## Bwv 1080

Four North American Ballads is perhaps the best place to start






'I took as a model the chorale preludes of Bach, who in his contrapuntal writing consistently derives motivic configurations from the basic tune. In each piece I built up contrapuntal textures in a similar way, using classical techniques like augmentation, diminution, transposition, and compression, always keeping the profile of the tune on some level.'


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## ArtMusic

_The People United Will Never Be Defeated!_ is an interesting composition. It is quite long and has moments of atonal and rich tonal harmonies, a blend of both worlds.


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## MarkW

I heard him perform Beethoven's Fourth Concerto -- in which he improvised his own cadenzas, which sounded like the Apocalypse. There's also a Youtube of him performing the Hammerklavier Sonata - in which he inserts a cadenza in each movement. Good pianist, but headstrong.


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## Roger Knox

Mandryka said:


> Anyone explored what he does? What's he about? What's most interesting to listen to - either his own compositions of him playing other people's?


Good questions! There is a lot to explore with Frederic Rzewski both musically and in other ways, so much so that I will only attempt to answer a little bit. In what I hope is in keeping with the new TalkClassical policy on politics, I will separate my remarks (with an assist on facts from Wikipedia) into two parts: 1) the music, here; 2) political and other aspects, on the Politics and Religion in Classical Music sub-forum. Rzewski has been opposed, dismissed, or minimized by many because of his Marxist politics. I'm not and never have been a Marxist, though I have relevant knowledge of this area in relation to music. I think of Rzewski as a brilliant composer and pianist who had strong training from a young age, and who studied with both traditional and advanced modernist composers at Harvard and Princeton. In Italy for further studies with Dallapicolla in 1960, he co-founded a new music group -- Musica Elettronica Viva -- that combined performance, improvisation, and live electronics. Back in the USA in the 1970's and known as a top avant-garde music pianist-composer, he surprised some with forays into blues, folk, and minimalism.

The piece I know best is _The People United Will Not Be Defeated (1975)_, based on the Chilean revolutionary song of the same title and also incorporating the Italian Communist anthem Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag). The 36 variations, divided into six groups of six, are highly structured with internal connections and contrasts. One of my theory professors who is also a fine jazz pianist published analyses of pitch-class set consistencies and linkages, and like other musicians has found a lot to admire in this work. For example the impression of eclecticism ranging from classical variation techniques to avant-gardism, all in relation to the original theme song's conventional harmony, is mitigated by commonalities in pitch content between the different styles. I've listened to my Ursula Oppens recording on Nonesuch many times and have been fortunate to hear a very exciting live performance by Marc-André Hamelin (who later recorded the work on Hyperion). I've also heard _North American Ballades_, but I don't know Rzewski's avant-garde music well. He's a singularity, controversial, capable of crossing boundaries where others would be staring angrily at each other. _(To be continued later on the Politics and Religion in Classical Music sub-forum.)_


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## Mandryka

I'm having a lot of difficulty appreciating this man's music, I must say. Maybe because so much of it is piano -- it's not an instrument I much like.


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## Nereffid

If you're not keen on the piano, the group Eighth Blackbird recorded three of his pieces on the album "Fred" (Cedille Records), which I like.

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Rzewski in the booklet:



> Because you know, composing music is a very strange kind of job. There's nobody who can tell you how to do it. It's different from most jobs. If you're a truck driver or a heart surgeon or an airplane pilot or a policeman or a banker there's somebody there who tells you, "You're doing the job right. Do it that way" or "It's not right, do it some other way." But writing music there are people who will tell you that, but you can't believe them.


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## Roger Knox

Mandryka said:


> I'm having a lot of difficulty appreciating this man's music, I must say. Maybe because so much of it is piano -- it's not an instrument I much like.


What are some compositions you have difficulty appreciating? Yes, he's certainly piano-based, as I am. Each instrument has a different feel.


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## Roger Knox

Bwv 1080 said:


> Four North American Ballads is perhaps the best place to start
> 
> 'I took as a model the chorale preludes of Bach, who in his contrapuntal writing consistently derives motivic configurations from the basic tune. In each piece I built up contrapuntal textures in a similar way, using classical techniques like augmentation, diminution, transposition, and compression, always keeping the profile of the tune on some level.'


Thanks, I listened to Four North American Ballades today in the performance by Roger Wright at the 2001 Van Cliburn Competition, on YouTube. It's interesting how for each piece Rzewski has a completely different idea, and the center of gravity is the last piece, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.


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## Mandryka

Roger Knox said:


> What are some compositions you have difficulty appreciating? Yes, he's certainly piano-based, as I am. Each instrument has a different feel.


The Road - it was feeling exasperated by The Road which prompted me to post that. It just seemed like a lot of notes without much of a point. The one on this









I don't know if Rzewski is a good piano player - I mean he's obviously got chops but the timbre isn't very interesting IMO. It could be that my frustration comes from the performance style.


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## Roger Knox

Mandryka said:


> The Road - it was feeling exasperated by The Road which prompted me to post that. It just seemed like a lot of notes without much of a point. ... I don't know if Rzewski is a good piano player - I mean he's obviously got chops but the timbre isn't very interesting IMO. It could be that my frustration comes from the performance style.


Thanks Mandryka, I'm with you on the pianism. It's a controversial thing, because in his improvisations I think Rzewski is sometimes aiming for an effect that is beyond assumed boundaries, and for a short time maybe that's justified. And he can play in a controlled way as well. Still I prefer other pianists playing Rzewski's music, as do some people I know. It's good that his compositions have attracted the attention of virtuosos whose mastery of phrasing, shading, articulation, pedal effects, and other elements is at the top. I haven't listened yet to most of his recent music yet.


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## Roger Knox

Mandryka said:


> The Road - it was feeling exasperated by The Road which prompted me to post that. It just seemed like a lot of notes without much of a point.


Thanks Mandryka, your post has has intrigued me enough to listen to more recent Rzewski piano compositions and to reminisce about the '70's and '80's when I was composing more. Concerning _The Road_, at 8 hours it is another very long piece like Feldman's 6-hour String Quartet No. 2; those I can only tolerate in sections. I like some of the sections in _The Road_. One of them has a lot of wide-apart single notes or note pairs in the style of Anton Webern's _Piano Variations_. The Piano Concerto (2013) commissioned by the BBC for Rzewski's 75th birthday is like _The Road_ in being auto-biographical, but here at normal concerto length and intended for a standard orchestra concert. It is clearly structured and methodically salutes 20th-century music by composers dear to Rzewski as a new-music pianist-composer, e.g. the Second Viennese School and the post-WW2 avant-garde. By "salutes" I don't mean quotation or plagiarism, but rather music "in the style of ... ." In the '70's'-80's quite a few composers moved to make their music more accessible without ceasing to be new music. There was quotation from other music, mixing of older and newer styles, by composers including Berio, Rochberg, Foss, Crumb, Colgrass -- and Rzewski whose distinctness included combining piano virtuosity, pitch-class set structure, the western tradition (classical rather than romantic), American popular and "roots" music, and Marxist themes. From a 2021 point of view some of this may be old hat, including the Marxism, but when Rzewski started these combinations were new. Finally, I think there's something of the provocateur and "imp genius" about Frederic, like Glenn Gould or Frank Zappa. He's a bit of a prophet and some of the issues he raised are still with us (ok, no more politics).


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## cheregi

I don't have too much to contribute here but this thread has got me really interested in Rzewski, so, thanks for that. I love these weird sort of isolated pianist-composers (cf. Sorabji, Mompou), I love the play with almost naively tonal ideas alongside avant-gardisms, I love the leftism... it's Mayn Yingele which really got to me first, I think (my family is poor Jewish immigrants too!).


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## fbjim

"The People United" seems to have entered the extended repitoire which is incredibly impressive from a composer who did work in the 1970s. I imagine seeing a release like this, which implicitly (and deservedly) elevates the work on the level of the other two from one of the most major pianists working today would have been unthinkable upon its release.


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## Bwv 1080

RIP

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classi...omposer-and-pianist-frederic-rzewski-has-died


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## Bwv 1080

Good piece by Ethan Iverson

https://ethaniverson.com/north-american-ballads-and-squares-frederic-rzewski/

North American Ballads and Squares (Frederic Rzewski) | DO THE [email protected]

When composers or practitioners oriented towards notation try to move American music forward, rhythm usually takes a distant second place. In the context of a substantial fully-notated score, only a few have understood African-based techniques. The CD North American Ballads & Squares argues for Rzewski's inclusion in the Scott Joplin, James P. Johnson, and George Gershwin side of the lineage, with powerful pulsation found in the composer's own performance and groovy written-out syncopations accessible to


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## fbjim

Listened to his De Profundis recently. 

I tend not to be a fan of this monodrama-like stuff mixing narration and music, but Rzewski helps by having a very enthralling source text (Oscar Wilde). A lot like opera, much of the enjoyment comes from seeing how (and how not) the music complements or contrasts with the text, and Rzewski (in his first recording, anyway) has a great voice for it. 


I've heard Rzewski politically mellowed out by the time this was written, though I believe this was done partially as an AIDS advocacy piece.


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