Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Rzewski was among the major figures of the American musical avant-garde to emerge in the 1960s, and he was highly influential as a composer and performer. Rzewski's music helped define postwar American new music. He consistently gave exuberant boyish pleasures of a composer like Copland within the rigorously experimental framework of a composer like Cage. Often unapologetically tonal and fun, Rzewski's music cuts right through the frequent churlishness of avant-garde music. He was also an important educator.
Rzewski was born on April 13, 1938 in Westfield, Massachusetts. He earned his B.A. in music at Harvard and later received an M.F.A. from Princeton, where he had the privilege of studying with Roger Sessions and Milton Babbit. A Fulbright scholarship allowed him to travel to Florence in 1960 to study for a year with Luigi Dallapiccola. Except for a five-year period in the 1970s, he mainly lived in Europe. He first came to public attention as a performer of new piano music, having participated in the premieres of such monumental works as Stockhausen's Klavierstück X (1962). In 1966, with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum, he founded the famous ensemble Musica Electronica Viva (MEV). MEV combined free improvisation with written music and electronics. These experimentations led directly to the creation of Rzewski's first important compositions, pieces such as Les moutons de Panurge, a so-called "process piece," which also combined elements of spontaneous improvisation with notated material and instructions.
Rzewski's improv-classical hybrids are some of the most successful of the kind ever produced, thanks to the fervent energy at the core of his music. During the 1970s, his music continued to develop along these lines, but as his socialist proclivities began to direct his artistic course, he developed new structures for instrumental music that used text elements and musical style as structuring features. Attica, which includes the recitation of a prison letter, and The People United Will Never Be Defeated, a virtuosic set of piano variations, are his most well-known works of the period. In 1977, Rzewski was made professor of composition at the Royal Conservatory of Liège, Belgium, teaching there until his death. He also spent time teaching at Yale, the California Institute of the Arts, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and elsewhere.
During the 1980s, Rzewski produced a number of surprising twelve-tone compositions that helped provide fresh ideas of what could be done with serial systems. The 1990s saw him revisiting, via scored music, some highly spontaneous approaches to composition that recall his inspired experiments of the late 1960s. Rzewski continued composing into the 21st century, and in 2001, he made his scores available to download for free online. From 2006 until 2010, he composed a series of 56 Nanosonatas and dedicated many of them to friends, such as Hideyuki Arata and Pete Seeger, and on commission for Milton Schlosser. In 2016, Rzewski wrote Songs of Insurrection, a sequel to his popular The People United Will Never Be Defeated, which was heard on a recording by Thomas Kotcheff in 2021. That year, the Imani Winds featured Rzewski's Sometimes, for speaker, soprano, and winds, on its album Bruits. Rzewski died on June 26, 2021, in Montiano, Italy.
© Donato Mancini & Keith Finke /TiVo
Artistas semelhantes
Discografia
12 álbum(ns) • Ordenado por Mais vendidos
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The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
Classical - Lançado por hat ART CD em 1 de jan. de 1990
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Frederic Rzewski: De Profundis
Classical - Lançado por hat ART CD em 28 de jan. de 2015
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
North American Ballads & Squares
Contemporary Jazz - Lançado por hat ART CD em 25 de jan. de 2015
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Speaking Rzewski (Pieces for Speaking Pianist Performed by Stephane Ginsburgh)
Alternative & Indie - Lançado por Sub rosa em 10 de jan. de 2022
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Main Drag
Frederic Rzewski, Marco Passarani, Alter Ego, Frankie Hi NRG
Classical - Lançado por Stradivarius em 1 de jan. de 2002
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
New Works by Frederic Rzewski
Frederic Rzewski, David Abel, Julie Steinberg, William Winant
Classical - Lançado por Music and Arts Programs of America em 1 de jan. de 1997
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Rzewski: Four Pieces, Which Side Are You On?
Classical - Lançado por Vanguard Classics em 20 de ago. de 2021
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Rzewski: Night Crossing
Frederic Rzewski, Ursula Oppens
Classical - Lançado por Music and Arts Programs of America em 1 de jan. de 1997
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Robert Satterlee Plays Rzewski & Albright
Classical - Lançado por Blue Griffin Recording, Inc. em 15 de dez. de 2014
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dragon
William Perconti, Alloy Saxophone Quartet
Chamber Music - Lançado por Albany Records em 1 de out. de 2013
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dragon
William Perconti, Alloy Saxophone Quartet, Gary Gemberling
Chamber Music - Lançado por Albany Records em 1 de out. de 2013
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Stockhausen: Zyklus / Klavierstück X
Christoph Caskel, Max Neuhaus, Frederic Rzewski
Classical - Lançado por wergo em 24 de set. de 2012
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo