Les moutons de panurge frederic rzewski biography

          Born in Massachusetts, Rzewski was one of the founding members of the Italy-based experimental musical collective Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV).

        1. Born in Massachusetts, Rzewski was one of the founding members of the Italy-based experimental musical collective Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV).
        2. The title is a reference to a story in Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel and "mouton" means "sheep".
        3. Frederic Anthony Rzewski was an American composer and pianist, considered to be one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time.
        4. Born near Springfield, Massachusetts in , he studied music at Harvard and Princeton, then went to Italy on a Fulbright Fellowship in
        5. In his piece “Les Moutons de Panurge,” the avant-garde composer Frederic Rzewski turned inaccuracy and error to creative ends.

          6. Frederic Anthony Rzewski was an American composer and pianist, considered to be one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time....

          Frederic Rzewski


          Photo © Jerome de Perlinghi, courtesy of Other Minds

          Interview by Daniel Varela
          (March 2003)

          Sometimes recognized as a virtuoso pianist, sometimes as a composer in his own right, Frederic Rzewski is one of the most consistent, creative personalities of the last few decades.

          He is capable of exhilarating energy, performing his long piano compositions as to develop insightful ideas about the role of artists in a broader socio-historical context 1. The Sixties took Rzewski to Europe performing Stockhausen, Boulez, Cage, Bussotti, Kagel and many other composers as well as co-founding the influential electronic ensemble MEV with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum.

          Frederic Rzewski (): Frederic Rzewski was born in Westfield, Massachusetts in Rzewski's Coming Together / Attica / Les Moutons De Panurge.

          Around 1969, he composed "Les Moutons de Panurge," a radical experiment with additive melodic formulas labeled after as minimalism 2. A few years after this piece, Rzewski balanced minimal accented cells with political texts in the remarkable "Attica" and "Coming Together" (both 1972) 3.

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