COMPOSER’S NOTEBOOK Parma Manifesto Frederic Rzewski I This text, Parma Manifesto, was written in the afternoon of a American-born and -raised composer and musician Frederic D E performance by Musica Elletronica Viva (MEV)—the Rome-based Rzewski began his career as a performer of new piano music in Italy N T electronic music and improvisation group that Rzewski had recently during the 1960s. His early associations with the composers Chris- I T co-founded—in March 1968 at the Festival Internazionale del Teatro tian Wolff, David Behrman, John Cage and David Tudor strongly Y Universitario in Parma, Italy. The evening performance, directed by influenced his compositional style and performance practice. He Jean-Jacques Lebel, although basically spontaneous, mainly had to do formed MEV in the mid-1960s with Alvin Curran and Richard with the necessity of taking theater out into the streets. It was termi- Teitelbaum in order to explore possibilities in live electronics and col- nated by the authorities, who simply turned off the electricity. The per- lective improvisation. Over the past three decades his work has been formers and audience carried the performance out of the theater. The performed across the U.S.A. and Europe, and he has taught composi- next day, the students occupied the University. MEV was involved in tion in the U.S., Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. a number of similar incidents at that time. Works published as Composer’s Notebook entries in Leonardo Music Journal may include composers’ texts published in raw, unedited form, scores, working notes, schematics, diagrams or Frederic Rzewski (musician, composer), 142 Meyerbear, 1180 Brussels, Belgium. E-mail: other documentation of the artist’s creative process. <[email protected]> © 1999 Frederic Rzewski LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 9, pp. 77–78, 1999 77 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/lmj/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/096112199750316848/1673862/096112199750316848.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 I D E N T I T Y 78 Rzewski, Parma Manifesto Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/lmj/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/096112199750316848/1673862/096112199750316848.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021.