Frederic Rzewski performing Four Pieces for Piano (excerpt)

[remork138]

@JohnEBPiano: The range of emotion is not expanded in atonal music?

maybe yours isn't, but i'd appreciate it if you speak for yourself on this one.

to each his own.

[mikern2001]

He had to have the music, so he wouldn't miss a note.

[herma57]

very nice

[aschnittke]

My only regret is that the whole performance wasn't uploaded. Some people have problems with the music not being serious or they can't handle the atonalism. I feel sorry for them.

[qtpipi]

Why didn't you record the entire performance :(

[friendlybipolarbear]

I can't understand how people cannot enjoy modern music. It is a direct response to the compositional environment, just as every other style period has been. Twelve-tone was a response to the atrocities of WWII. Rzewski's late work is a response to the world making less and less sense to him. I have been in a masterclass with him when he said, to paraphrase, "Why would I want to make music that makes sense when none of the world makes sense. It is not a true reflection." Rzewski is amazing

[tinyjru]

Twelve tone music must have been a foreshadowing of WWII, since Schoenberg started it in the 20's.

Everything Rzewski writes/plays is brilliant!

[totallycynical]

Friendlybipolarbear: 12-tone was around before WWII. And I couldn't put it bettter than your Rzewski quote: "Why would I want to make music that makes sense". And re WWII atrocities, my own personal opinion is that music and art should lift and inspire us to a higher, finer plane, not stoop to the level of human baseness, or respond to or reflect the senseless or sordid world around us. But that's just my opinion (of course for me Rzewski is simply adding to the senseless world he's describing).

[friendlybipolarbear]

You are correct. Twelve tone was around before WWII, and I may have phrased that inappropriately. I was simply referring to the idea that 12 tone worked to reflect society, such as the emancipation of the dissonance and restructuring of intervallic material. I guess what I was trying to say is that 12 tone was a musical language that allowed for a response to the atrocities of WWII. I have always thought about how European cultures steeped in beautiful music could create social atrocity.

[friendlybipolarbear]

Sorry, ran out of room. I just wanted to say that I do agree with your opinion of art approaching a higher plane. But I also think that beauty can exist in non-sensical music and sounds. So I guess I am on the fence, but I just wanted you to know that I appreciated your comment. Much peace.

[joshisanonymous]

@friendlybipolarbear I think you mean "modernist" music? Anyway, the twelve-tone technique was developed long before WWII broke out and even if it did have anything to do with WWII that would still have absolutely no bearing on whether people should enjoy it or not. You might as well be saying that every piece of art based on anything in the world must be enjoyable to everyone. Clearly, that's an absurd statement for numerous reasons. Not that I don't enjoy modernism...

[Malaka57]

@friendlybipolarbear It must have been a great master class. Rzewski is one of my all time favorites. And I agree with you.... modern music has to be listened to. The more we do it, the easier it becomes to understand.... but our society goes in the other direction. We want simple and standard and boring (but loud and electronically amplified).

Just a note.... you mean World War One, surely. Schoenberg began developing 12-tone in 1921. Have a Nice Day

[JohnEBPiano]

@friendlybipolarbear I find it hard to believe twelve tone was a responce to the atrocities of WWII when it's history of use dates back to 1921. Did the world make so much sense in the nineteenth century? Were there not atrocities then? The atonal music of today emerged from a notion that music must constantly evolve, whether or not this notion is true I do not know, but I am almost certain that what I hear in this video cannot be music. The range of emotion is NOT expanded in atonal music.

[frankiepop]

Rzewski has 12 tone influence, but he is also one of the many post serial composers after stockhausen. He and his peers have much in common with improvisers and MINIMALISTS as well. This is a minimalist influenced piece. By now though, the avant-garde ought to have enough self esteem to exist without needing to respond or even care about every other antagonist who appears. It's 2008 for god sakes.

[outis1953]

Why do so many of these comments degenerate into nastiness? Live and let live, listen and let listen, and try to imagine that maybe your own limitations are at fault if you can't enjoy something that many other people genuinely enjoy.

[jmikali]

Profoundly moving.. reminds me of Beethoven..

[mcvanby]

Bleah...in a theatre we should listen to music, and not to the same sound we hear in an airport. Contemporary music is too far from the public. Pop stars will be loved more than classical musicians if composers don't propose something good to listen to.

[darkgod5]

You should open your mind a little. Contemporary music may not be for you or most of the general public but composers of such do not compose for such a reason.

[mcvanby]

People have been opening their mind for 100 years; since Schonberg decided to change the rules of compositions opening a failing season of experiments.

If you like creating noise, just don't do the musician. Choose another job! It's so ridiculous to call music something that is no longer music.

Prokofief, Shostakovich are loved by people. Not Nono, not John Cage, not Berio...

Change your mind or classical music will die.

[Blibblabblibblibblab]

"It's so ridiculous to call music something that is no longer music." Poor sentence construction aside, what gives you the right to judge what makes music and what doesn't? What makes you the authority on what makes "something good to listen to?" Schoenberg didn't change the rules, he merely invented a new way of doing things, and though I imagine you thought yourself clever when tossing out Nono, Cage, and Berio as names of "unloved" composers, you also prove your ignorance. Cage

[Blibblabblibblibblab]

Cage has written some downright beautiful (and pretty diatonic) music, and I bet that if you actually listened to electronic, serialist, and other modern composers (like Berio and Nono), you'd be rewarded. As Camus said, "when abstraction starts getting you down, you've got to get busy with it." You have to listen hard and pay attention. If it comes off as noise to you, listen differently. Try to hear sounds and timbres as opposed to notes, and overall shape and contour as opposed to themes.

[Blibblabblibblibblab]

Cage has written some downright beautiful (and pretty diatonic) music, and I bet that if you actually listened to electronic, serialist, and other modern composers (like Berio and Nono), you'd be rewarded. As Camus said, "when abstraction starts getting you down, you've got to get busy with it." You have to listen hard and pay attention. If it comes off as noise to you, listen differently. Try to hear sounds and timbres as opposed to notes, and overall shape and contour as opposed to themes.

[mcvanby]

I think that this conversation is not interesting anyone, as long as you keep offending me without confuting my words.

I don't need to reply to your post, as my words are sustained by these composers' works. It's sufficient to listen to their works to understand who of us is right. And remember: only the audience decides which composers are loved and which are not. Not you, not a history-of-music book.

[Sportulas]

Every time I hear someone say something ignorant about contemporary music, I think of all those dissenting voices that criticized Beethoven, Wagner, Liszt, or Prokofiev in their time -- anyone who did anything to push music to where it hadn't been before. Those music critics are now the laughingstock of music history because they didn't, or couldn't open their ears. How could they possibly be so small-minded?

[Sportulas]

As a musician today, it is your DUTY to try and understand contemporary music. If you can't bring yourself to that level, history will be the unmerciful judge of your intellect.

[mcvanby]

Wait wait... Beethoven, Wagner, Liszt and Prokofiev didn't change the rules. They wrote something new, but starting from what their predecessors wrote. Their works are a development in the history of music.

On the contrary these contemporary composers changed everything! They write in a completely different way. And if you think well, none of these experiments is working. For example nobody can understand dodecaphony even if it started almost 100 years ago!

[mcvanby]

As a musician, I've played contemporary music. I've studied it with and without instruments. Because of that I think that you are not better than me just because you appreciate contemporary music. On the contrary, I think you are only unother slave of history of music: you simply trust what writers write on books. Think with yor mind.

It's too easy to say "You are small minded" or "You are lazy". Prove that contemporary music is good, don't offend.

[lamanogaucha]

Bullshit... You know nothing. Twelve-tone composition is easy to understand and appreciate, assuming that you have a half-decent IQ and sense of aesthetics. And by the way, Schoenberg's early atonal work is a direct evolution from late-romanticism, while his twelve-tone system was originally developed in order to use classical forms a la Brahms once again. Early dodecaphonism was in fact -- at least in the Schoenbergian sense -- quite "traditional".

[mcvanby]

In fact, as you know, everybody appreciate dodecaphonism. I'm the only person in the world who doesn't like it and that considers dodecaphonism a great fiasco. Nowadays even the latest critics are changing their mind, and nobody consider dodecaphonism a success. It's time to stop experimenting. It's time to produce something serious in music!

PS

Thank you for offending me. Acting like that you demonstrated who you are. A terribly impolite person.

[lamanogaucha]

No one has been writing straight 12-tone music since the middle of the 20th century. As far as integral serialism goes, that was over by the 1960s. Remnants of serialism endured for some time after that, and in the present very few composers use that system, except perhaps for folks like Babbitt and Perle (both of whom use it in a very individual manner). No sir, you're full of crap, and you deserve nothing but disrespect for disrespecting the craft of so many great composers. Like I said: STFU.

[bitonality]

"it's time to produce something serious in music!"

what music is serious and what music isn't serious in your mind?

[IAMLISZT]

actually this conversation was very interesting, and im inclined to believe sportulas. twelve tone composition is first of all not very popular now and second of all evolved straight out of schoenberg's predecessors. also rzewski comes right out of the tradition of great composer pianists ie liszt chopin scriabin rachmaninov; he is merely extending what they did in a more modern vocabulary.

[lamanogaucha]

You're just about the dumbest and most ignorant wannabe intellect I've in a while. What the hell do you know about art and music, anyway? You're just expressing some totally subjective opinion based on total ignorance of music history or aesthetics. STFU.

[christian6657]

Very Interesting, thanks for posting. I've never heard a piano sound like that before.

[emtube]

Rzewski is GREAT! A genius composer-pianist in the old tradition, whose thorough knowledge of the piano as well as great imagination draw amazing new sonorities and effects from the instrument. Thanks for posting!

[jojobanjo]

Thanks! Haven't heard a piano sound that awesome, ever! ;-)

[tompilk]

amazing....

[jre58591]

thanks! i enjoyed this very much.

[KevinBrownsvideos]

WOW!