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Frederic Rzewski

Frederic Rzewski (born April 13, 1938) is an American composer. He attended Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Virgil Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt. In 1960, he went to Italy, a trip which was formative in his future musical development: in addition to studying with Luigi Dallapiccola, he commenced a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an improvisatory element. A few years later he became a co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. Musica Elettronica Viva conceived music as a collective, collaborative process, with improvisation and live electronic instruments prominently featured. In 1971 he returned to New York.

In 1977 Rzewski became Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège, Belgium. Occasionally he teaches for short periods at schools and universities throughout the U.S. and Europe. Schools at which he has taught include Yale University, the University of Cincinnati, The California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, San Diego, and the Royal Conservatory of the Hague.

Most of Rzewski's works are overtly political and feature improvisational elements. He is an unapologetic Marxist. Some of his better-known music includes The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (36 variations on "El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido"), a set of bravura piano variations likened in difficulty to the Diabelli set by Beethoven; Coming Together, which is a setting of letters from an inmate at Attica State Prison, at the time of the famous riots there (1971); North American Ballads; Night Crossing with Fisherman; The Price of Oil, and Le Silence des Espaces Infinis, both of which use graphical notation; Les Moutons de Panurge; and the Antigone-Legend, which features a principled opposition to the policies of the State, and which was premiered, to the composer's amusement, on the night that the United States bombed Libya in April 1986.

Nicolas Slonimsky says of him in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: "He is furthermore a granitically overpowering piano technician, capable of depositing huge boulders of sonoristic material across the keyboard without actually wrecking the instrument."

His great improvisation skills are shown clearly on his Cornelius Cardew CD We Sing For The Future!.

Table of contents
1 The Copyleft
2 Sources
3 Albums with Frederic Rzewski
4 External links

The Copyleft

I first came across the term "Copyleft" in "Le Monde Diplomatique" about two years ago and found the idea intriguing. It seems to originate in the world of software, but clearly has implications in every area of "spiritual property."

But here is how I understand it, in a nutshell: anyone can copy my music (those pieces that are not already published, that is) as long as they identify the composer, don't claim authorship themselves, and allow others freely to make copies of their copies.

I think that this is the best way for the music to get around. I don't think publishers are very useful in this, and may even make it more difficult; and I don't particularly want to be a publisher myself.

If anyone does wish to get a score, they can get in touch with my manager, Esther Freifeld ( egf.eprc@systechconsult.com), who will send the material at cost (copying, mailing, her time), or (preferably) will direct them to someone in their neighborhood who already has a copy.

And anyone who (like Jenny Lin) wants to make the music available through the internet or other media can do so also. --Frederic Rzewski

Sources

Albums with Frederic Rzewski

Composed By Rzewski

Played By Rzewski

External links

Listening

Sheet Music