The sounds of speech and the sounds of music occupy different dimensions, yet Frederic Rzweski successfully brings them together. The politically motivated pianist composes works which intellectually combine music and language into a tonal dialect.
Rzewski brings his most recent piece, titled "The Road," to the Rollins Chapel tonight. In a conversation during his brief stay at the College, Rzewski talked about his music and his misunderstood politics.
A bit scruffy and wearing thick glasses, Rzewski looks much like a New Englander, despite having lived abroad for so long.
He comes off as being very intellectual, passionately discussing classical music as an escape and how the media has changed the genre.
The two-and-a-half hour piano solo he is playing tonight is divided into eight sections and took him over five years to write. "The Road" is inspired by the novel "Anna Karenina," which also took Leo Tolstoy over five years to complete.Like Tolstoy, Rzewski watched his work change conceptually over time. He compared writing the work to writing a novel, with an audience intended to read it contextually in their own perspective and time.
Rzewski frequently relies upon literature as a creative process for his music. "De Profundis," a piece completed in 1992, recites in rhythm the letter Oscar Wilde wrote to Lord Alfred Doublas while imprisoned. Uniting the dimensions of speech and music, Wilde's text speaks of suffering, sorrow and tests of faith.
Interwoven into the solo are eight excerpts from the letter which result in a somewhat disarming effect as Rzewski's breathing, clapping and laughing periodically interrupt the flow of the text and music. The piece is as much a theater work as it is a piano solo.
In addition to these pieces, much of Rzewski's previous work derives from variations of old folk songs, jazz and blues. Strands of these influences are heard intermittently throughout his other pieces.
Since 1975 Rzewski's direction as a composer changed. While he continues to write in a tonal language, he now aims the end product at other musicians rather than the audience itself.
"I have often wondered who I am writing for," he said. "I have come to the conclusion that my job ends when I have furnished a performer with a script -- a precise text. I am really writing for other pianists. They are the immediate destination."
Rzewski left the country in the 1970s after coming under harsh criticism for his involvement in left-wing politics. In 1975's "The People United Will Never Be Defeated," Rzewski used a Chilean protest song to arouse the audience.
"I wanted to write a piece for an audience of classical music-lovers who perhaps knew nothing at all of what was happening in Latin America," he said. "By virtue of listening to my piece they might somehow get interested in the subject. I really was trying to reach the audience by using a language they would not find alienating."
Often dubbed with the moniker of "political composer," Rzewski tends to scoff at the idea. "Politics are not really my specialty," he commented. "It is a peculiarity of this field to have any ideas about anything at all."
While his left-wing political outlooks have remained constant since the 1970s, their effect on his music has lessened.
"There's a big difference between 1997 and 1977," he said. "I have my own feelings about what's happening in the world, but I don't think I can express them musically with any great clarity as I could have 20 years ago."
"For one thing," he added, "there was a movement. There were large numbers of people who shared similar ideas, and one could feel that one was part of something larger than oneself."
