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Exploring Political Action and Socialization Through Group Improvisation Within the Music of Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew

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Exploring Political Action and Socialization Through Group Improvisation Within the Music of Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2019 Exploring Political Action and Socialization through Group Improvisation within the Music of Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew Marcel Rominger The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3413 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] EXPLORING POLITICAL ACTION AND SOCIALIZATION THROUGH GROUP IMPROVISATION WITHIN THE MUSIC OF FREDERIC RZEWSKI AND CORNELIUS CARDEW by MARCEL ROMINGER A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts, The City University of New York 2019 ©2019 MARCEL ROMINGER All Rights Reserved ii Exploring Political Action and Socialization through Group Improvisation within the Music of Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew by Marcel Rominger This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Music in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts. Date Norman Carey Chair of Examining Committee Date Norman Carey Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Geoffrey Burleson Norman Carey Chadwick Jenkins Andrew Tomasello THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Exploring Political Action and Socialization through Group Improvisation within the Music of Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew by Marcel Rominger Advisor: Chadwick Jenkins In the late 1960s, socialist composers, Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, each established ensembles with the purpose of performing works consisting of experimental forms of improvisation. By employing group improvisation, and including untrained, non-musicians within their performances, they strove to use these ensembles as a model for society itself; this model includes a dissolution of the hierarchy among performers and the barrier between performer and audience. Improvisation helped music resist commodification by the culture industry or appropriation by authoritarian regimes for the purpose of propaganda. This dissertation aims to explore how Cardew and Rzewski constituted effective socialization and political action within two works: Cardew’s The Great Learning (Paragraph 1) and Rzewski’s Les Moutons de Panurge. This dissertation explores the complex relationship between politics and art, particularly, how art maintains its autonomy while also being political. The political and compositional backgrounds of these two composers is examined in order to gauge their intentions within these works and evaluate the political efficacy of the resulting compositions. This is accomplished by examining the scores as well as various studio recordings and live performances. This dissertation proposes that it is only within performance that the relationship between improvisational choices and political efficacy is revealed. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………………...viii List of Tables….………………………………………………………………………………... .x List of Examples…………………………………………………………………………..…xi-xii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: Improvisation: A Background……………………………………………………..8 Defining “Improvisation”....………………………………………………………………9 Improvisation in Relation to Aleatory Music & Indeterminacy…………………………13 Theories of Improvisation..………………………………………………………………17 Connection with Pre-Twentieth Century Improvisation…………………………………21 Twentieth Century Improvisation………………………………………………………..23 a) Early Improvisation and Controlled Chance………………………………..23 b) John Cage and Improvisation, Intuitive Improvisation…………………….26 c) Group Improvisation……………………………………………………………31 d) Improvisation and Notation……………………………………………………37 e) Role of the Audience……………………………………………………………43 f) Free Improvisation ……………………………………………………………..47 Chapter 2: Music and Politics………………………………………………………………….51 Art and Politics: Goehr’s Crude and Critical Solutions………………………………….52 Art as Propaganda………………………………………………………………………..59 Adorno’s Resistance to Society………………………………………………………….61 Greenberg’s Kitsch………………………………………………………………………73 Politics Mediating the High/Low Divide………………………………………………...75 v Mao and the Aesthetics of Politics……………………………………………………….78 Politics and Music: Attali’s Noise and the Four Stages of Music……………………….80 Formalism in the U.S.S.R………………………………………………………………..86 Politics within Popular and Folk Music………………………………………………….88 Music of Resistance and Music of Protest……………………………………………….91 Politics within the Music Ensemble……………………………………………………...92 The Political Role of the Audience………………………………………………………94 Chapter 3: Background, Influences from the Avant-garde, and the Development of Political Works of Cardew and Rzewski……………………………………………………...97 Cornelius Cardew………………………………………………………………………...97 Frederic Rzewski……………………………………………………………………….119 Chapter 4: Analyses of The Great Learning and Les Moutons de Panurge………………..140 Method of Analysis……………………………………………………………………..141 Problems Encountered During Analysis………………………………………………..144 The Great Learning- Paragraph 1 (1968-1970) By Cornelius Cardew…………...........146 Background……………………………………………………………………..148 Paragraph 1-Analysis of Score………………………………………………….156 Paragraph 1-Analysis of Performance………………………………………….162 Discussion-Cardew……………………………………………………………..170 Les Moutons de Panurge (1968) By Frederic Rzewski………………………………...175 Background……………………………………………………………………..176 Analysis of Score……………………………………………………………….178 Analysis of Performance………………………………………………………..181 Description of Free Improvisation……………………………………………...188 vi Discussion-Rzewski…………………………………………………………….192 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………..202 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………...208 vii Acknowledgments I would like to thank all the people who helped me with this project including members of my committee. This includes my outside reader, Prof. Andrew Tomasello and my first reader, Prof. Geoffrey Burleson. A very special thank you to my advisor, Prof. Chadwick Jenkins, for tirelessly working with me on getting this project off the ground and for helping me throughout many drafts and long chapters. Additionally, a heartfelt thank you goes to Prof. Norman Carey for your patience and guidance throughout my years within the program. Furthermore, thank you to Horace Cardew, Frederic Rzewski and Zen-On Music Co., for granting me permission for use of the scores to The Great Learning and Les Moutons de Panurge within this dissertation. Finally, thank you also to Chelsea Tinsler Jones for her insight into her performance of Les Moutons. On a more personal note, I would like to thank members of my family including my mother-in-law, Olga Silverman and my cousin Adriano DosSantos. Additional thanks go to all my aunts, uncles, and cousins living abroad in Brazil and Switzerland. Thank you to my daughter Juliette Alexandra Rominger for being a special light in my life; being your dad is the best job I could ever have. Thank you to my wife, Dr. Lisa Silverman. Not only are you a wonderful wife and my best friend, but you are my greatest advisor, mentor, my inspiration, my muse and a deep source of admiration. I love you both so much. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents, Tony Rominger and Anna Rominger, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. Thank you both for standing by me and supporting me throughout the years. Thank you for being my first and longest advocates. Thank you for always believing in me and for never giving up on me. Thank you for signing me up for piano lessons and for making me practice. Thank you for instilling within me a strong work ethic. Thank you for viii always reminding me that abandoning my pursuits, no matter how difficult, was never an option. I love you both very much. ix List of Tables Table 4-1: (The Great Learning) Description of the whistles used in the 1982 recording……..168 Table 4-2: (The Great Learning) Instrumentation, duration, and description of the solos occurring in the 2010 recording…………………………………………………...169–170 Table 4-3: (Les Moutons de Panurge) A voice-leading space for the trichords that make up the four motives used in the piece………………………………………………………….180 Table 4-4: (Les Moutons de Panurge) A list of studio recordings of Les Moutons along with changes in the score…………………………………………………………………….182 Table 4-5: (Les Moutons de Panurge) Selections of Les Moutons de Panurge video recorded and posted on YouTube from live performances……………………………………...185–186 x List of Examples Example 1-1: Wolff’s Burdocks (1971) II…………………………………………….…………38 Example 1-2: Bussotti’s Five Piano Pieces for David Tudor (1959)……..……………...……...39 Example 1-3: Feldman’s The Straits of Magellan (1961)……………………………………….40 Example 1-4: Mortimore’s Very Circular Pieces (1970), “Circular Piece.”…………………….41 Example 1-5: Cardew’s Treatise (1967)…………………………………………………………41 Example 4-1a: Page 1 of Cardew’s The Great Learning-Paragraph 1…………………………146 Example 4-1b: Page 2 of Cardew’s The Great Learning-Paragraph 1…………………………147 Example 4-2: (The Great Learning) The stone rhythms in the A section……………………...157 Example 4-3a: (The Great Learning) The tremolo as written in the score. …………………..163 Example 4-3b: (The Great Learning) Material replacing the tremolo in the 1982 Scratch Orchestra recording…... ………………………………………………………………..163 Example
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