Comments on: Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated!: Performer’s Notes on a Masterpiece and its Interpretation

By: zeno

zeno — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:44:03 +0000

What sticks in my mind now is that I heard the thrilling Frederic Rzewski performance of this work at almost the exact same time that I heard Steve Reich and his musicians perform his Tehillim in the huge space of the National Building Museum. (I was also probably spinning my CBS LPs of Glass’s Satyagraha at the same time.)

There was indeed something special about the Rzewski depth and perspective; for the reasons that both you and Mr Van Raat cite.

I also heard Rzewski perform his “Antigone-Legende” at this same period. I wish that I had listened to, and studied these, works more earlier.

[The Fall 1970 article in the MQ on the Rhetoric of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis was a big influence on me in the 1980s.]

By: jeff harrington

jeff harrington — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:55:30 +0000

Well that performance was a big influence on me at the time. I was struggling to find a way to get out of writing very classically influenced pieces and hearing ‘Beethoven’ through the Rzewski lens was revelatory. It occurred to me that almost anything could be ‘Beethovenified’, something I’ve tried to do since then in my composing with varying success…

By: zeno

zeno — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:07:18 +0000

Jeff, I heard Rzewski play this piece at the Kennedy Center’s then newer Terrace Theater, as part of the long-passed American Composer Portraits series. I appreciate your comment about the performance’s ‘oddball late Beethovenisms’.

We had Marta Istomin to thank for that series which embraced such fine and diverse American works as ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated!’ to La Mont Young’s ‘The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from The Four Dreams of China’.

Bravo Frederic Rzewski and Brava Marta Casals Istomin!

By: Ralph van Raat

Ralph van Raat — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:12:22 +0000

Hi all, thanks for your comments! Actually, every subsequent variation in the piece has a tonal center which is a fifth (interval) apart from the previous one – it actually follows very strictly the cycle of fifths, which I think gives a very tonal feel to even the most “way-out” variation. Besides that, because even in the most atonal passages the intervals of the tunes are kept quite strictly (in which the minor third takes on a big role), a tonal, melodic and harmonic unity is conserved very well too. And last but not least, the whole build-up of the piece, its line and the discourse it seems to exhibit, supports to my opinion the tonal feel of having solid grounds under your feet most of the time!

By: jeff harrington

jeff harrington — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:54:28 +0000

That’s cool… as long as you can write!

By: Galen H. Brown

Galen H. Brown — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:13:56 +0000

I faild reeding komprehenshun.

By: jeff harrington

jeff harrington — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:17:03 +0000

I found your comments about vaguely apparent tonalisms in the atonal sections interesting. I heard Rzewski play this piece in the East Village in 89? and he seemed to really exaggerate the pointillistic sections to the point that they seemed like oddball late Beethovenisms and not Boulezian fracturings.

Was a great concert; Carter was in the small audience…

By: Carson Cooman

Carson Cooman — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:03:44 +0000

He says in the eighth paragraph: “In fact, my improvised cadenza (53’06” – 59’15”) has been used as a culmination of all the energy which was built up during the previous fifty minutes.”

By: Galen H. Brown

Galen H. Brown — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:25:22 +0000

Did you play the optional improvised variation?

By: david toub

david toub — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:57:44 +0000

This is a great discussion of an important piece in the piano literature. I have the original Oppens performance and would be very curious to see how this compares. Thanks for posting this.