Frederic Rzewski - Attica. Coming Together. Les Moutons de Panurge (1973)

Frederic Rzewski studiowałkompozycję między innymi u Miltona Babbitta i Luigiego Dallapiccoli. W połowie lat 60. wraz z Alvinem Curranem i Richardem Teitelbaumem założył w Rzymie zespół MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva), który rychło zdobył uznanie za swe pionierskie działania w dziedzinie żywej muzyki elektronicznej i improwizacji. W latach 70. artysta eksperymentował z formami, w których styl i język traktowane są jako elementy strukturalne; najbardziej znanym dziełem z tego okresu jest The People United Will Never Be Defeated! - 36 wariacji fortepianowych na temat pieśni rewolucyjnej śpiewanej w oddziałach Che Guevary (w 1980 kompozytor wykonał je na "Warszawskiej Jesieni"). Z kolei seria utworów na większe zespoły instrumentalne, skomponowanych w latach 1979–81, zdradza powrót do notacji eksperymentalnej i graficznej, twórczość zaś lat 80. eksploruje nowe sposoby użycia techniki dodekafonicznej.

W nowszych utworach Rzewski prezentuje swobodniejsze, bardziej spontaniczne podejście do kompozycji. Największym dotychczas utworem jest The Road, ośmiogodzinna ,"powieść" na fortepian solo. The Triumph of Death (1987–88) to z kolei dwugodzinne oratorium, którego tekst jest adaptacją sztuki Petera Weissa z 1965 r. "Die Ermittlung" ("Dochodzenie"). Scratch Symphony na orkiestrę miała prawykonanie na festiwalu w Donaueschingen w październiku 1997 r.

Artysta jest członkiem American Academy of Arts and Letters, a w 2009 r. otrzymał doktorat honorowy Uniwersytetu w Liège. (polskie radio)

Frederic Anthony Rzewski (born April 13, 1938 in Westfield, Massachusetts) is an American composer and virtuoso pianist.Rzewski (pronounced zheff-skee) began playing piano at age 5. He attended Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt. In 1960, he went to Italy, a trip which was formative in his future musical development. In addition to studying with Luigi Dallapiccola, he began a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an improvisatory element. A few years later he was a co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. Musica Elettronica Viva conceived music as a collective, collaborative process, with improvisation and live electronic instruments prominently featured. In 1971 he returned to New York.

In 1977 Rzewski became Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège, Belgium, then directed by Henri Pousseur. Occasionally he teaches for short periods at schools and universities throughout the U.S. and Europe, including Yale University, the University of Cincinnati, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, San Diego, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and Trinity College of Music, London.

Many of Rzewski's works are inspired by secular and socio-historical themes, show a deep political conscience and feature improvisational elements. Some of his better-known works include The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (36 variations on the Sergio Ortega song El pueblo unido jamás será vencido), a set of virtuosic piano variations written as a companion piece to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations; Coming Together, which is a setting of letters from Sam Melville, an inmate at Attica State Prison, at the time of the famous riots there (1971); North American Ballads; Night Crossing with Fisherman; Fougues; Fantasia and Sonata; The Price of Oil, and Le Silence des Espaces Infinis, both of which use graphical notation; Les Moutons de Panurge; and the Antigone-Legend, which features a principled opposition to the policies of the State, and which was premiered on the night that the United States bombed Libya in April 1986. Among his most recent compositions, the most interesting are the Nanosonatas (2006~2010) and the Cadenza con o senza Beethoven (2003), written for Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. Rzewski played the solo part in the world premiere of his piano concerto at the 2013 BBC Proms.

Nicolas Slonimsky (1993) says of him in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: "He is furthermore a granitically overpowering piano technician, capable of depositing huge boulders of sonoristic material across the keyboard without actually wrecking the instrument."