thirteen ways

At 8bb, we are all big fans of the music of Fred Rzewski.

Apart from commissioning Pocket Symphony from Fred and recording a complete disc of his music, we are jointly commissioning a new work for string quartet and sextet with Oberlin Conservatory, to be premiered next season, both in Oberlin and New York.

I found the following YouTube link quite by accident this morning (cheers, facebook); it is of pianist Roger Wright giving an impassioned performance of a piece that can leave nobody unmoved, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. According to his Wikipedia page, Wright is also a champion Scrabble player, who received international press coverage for his “politically incorrect” use of the word “LEZ” (slang for “lesbian”).

My favorite pieces of Fred’s are invariably those in which he focuses his broad and sometimes undisciplined musical vocabulary through the lens (maybe “filter” – little help?) of the variation form. So we get all of the myriad styles and techniques that Fred commands, but they are directed towards a single emotional goal.

For me, Winnsboro is the ultimate example of this. In a sort of “theme and variations in reverse”, Fred (like Beethoven in the last movement of the Third Symphony) gives the motoric, churning “accompaniment” figure extensive, surging development long before the theme in full arrives. When the tune does arrive, its soft, simple eloquence is heightened by what has come before. Fred manages to achieve something that is very rare in classical music: the overt political message of the work is actually clarified and intensified by his musical statement. Winnsboro is eight of the most emotionally potent minutes of 20th century music: