Frederic Rzewski (1938–2021) grew up in the United States but moved to Italy in 1960 to study with Luigi Dallapiccola. After a brief return to America, he settled permanently in Brussels in 1977, from where he developed an international career as a composer and pianist.
As a child, he wanted nothing more than to follow in Beethoven’s footsteps, and that is exactly what he did. He played the piano as though the instrument were an extension of his body. He composed music that is complex and challenging, yet never leaves the listener unmoved. He also held strong political convictions that he could not simply set aside as an artist. He was familiar with the latest developments in the musical avant-garde but saw little value in the almost scientific approach of serialism, for example. For Rzewski, music had to reflect something of our humanity. After all, we do not experience life as a perfectly ordered structure, but as a great chaos from which both beautiful and ugly things emerge.
Ultimately, for Rzewski, music is about people who have something to say through it. Nowhere is this pure humanity better documented than in Gerd Conradt’s film Turn Your Eyes to the Present. In it, we see Rzewski, wearing little more than boxer shorts and slippers, playing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto on a rickety upright piano in the laundry room of his accommodation in Italy. The piano virtuoso and composer who studied at Harvard and Princeton and, from 1977 onwards, commuted from his home in Brussels to Liège to teach at the conservatory, needs neither fine clothes nor expensive instruments to make an impression in a disarmingly simple way. He simply plays.
Another thing Frederic Rzewski shares with Ludwig van Beethoven is a monumental set of variations. In this work, the musical tradition in which Rzewski felt so much at home comes together with his belief in the ideals of a society that places the values and rights of the people at its heart. The People United Will Never Be Defeated! is often compared to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, which were also on the programme at the world premiere, performed by Ursula Oppens. The starting point is indeed very similar: a single recognisable theme is varied more than thirty times, resulting in a monumental work lasting over an hour. In these variations, both composers explore every conceivable character, style and playing technique.
"For Rzewski, music had to reflect something of our humanity. After all, we do not experience life as a perfectly ordered structure, but as a great chaos from which both beautiful and ugly things emerge."
A Song of Struggle
A set of variations benefits from a simple, recognisable theme. If the theme is too complex, it becomes difficult to make it even more interesting through variation. If the theme is not recognisable enough, the listener loses their way. Rzewski found the perfect theme in the Chilean protest song ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!, written by Sergio Ortega Alvarado around the time of the military coup in Chile on 11 September 1973. This coup, led by Augusto Pinochet, was yet another episode following decades of political wrangling and a succession of economic crises and poor governance. The protest song was used mainly by the popular movement supporting President Salvador Allende, who died during the coup. It became a tribute to the ideals Allende had fought for and, by extension, a symbol of left-wing thought in South America and beyond.
The melody of ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! has everything a protest song needs: a clear rhythm that lends itself to chanting, an ascending melody that radiates energy and hope, and an incantatory repetitiveness that invites people to sing it again and again. These are precisely the qualities that Rzewski explores so masterfully in The People United Will Never Be Defeated!. Complete with exclamation mark and plenty of capital letters.
Unity in Variation
Rzewski immediately emphasises the music’s militant character. Even before the original melody is heard, the piano chants the work’s slogan. In the score, the words are even written beneath the notes to reinforce the message, first in Spanish, then in English. Only then does the complete melody appear, in a fairly relaxed atmosphere.
After 36 bars, exactly the same number as the variations that follow, Rzewski begins his journey through an ever-expanding universe. The first variation is simple in conception. He retains the notes of the melody but spreads them across the entire range of the keyboard. Thanks to the recognisable contours of the original song, the theme remains identifiable. Throughout the following variations, which often flow seamlessly into one another, the music becomes increasingly complex and we gradually drift further away from the original. Yet time and again, Rzewski brings us back to familiar landmarks.
The 36 variations are organised into six groups of six, with the final variation of each group summarising the preceding five. In this way, each group of six variations forms a small, self-contained unit. The swinging rhythms that open Variation 7 therefore return at the beginning of Variation 12. The jazzy groove of Variation 13 (with a reference to the Italian socialist song Bandiera Rossa) reappears at the opening of Variation 18. The further we progress through the variations, the more freely Rzewski treats this structure, reflecting the chaos of real life. The fifth group of six variations is the least clearly organised. In Variation 26, a new theme even makes an appearance: Hanns Eisler’s Solidaritätslied.
The remarkable unity of The People United becomes apparent once again when we reach the sixth group of six variations. In these final variations, Rzewski refers back to the earlier ones. Variation 31 brings together all the first variations of the preceding groups, Variation 32 does the same with all the second variations, and so on. We thus look back one last time over the entire journey we have travelled. The very last variation culminates in an improvised cadenza, in which the performer is free to respond to the musical world they have just traversed. The composer does not impose the music like a dictator but invites the performer – and, through them, the audience – to write their own version of the story.
The enduring success of this composition can be explained by its perfect combination of originality, complexity and recognisability. The work is surprisingly accessible, not in the sense that it is easy, but in the sense that Rzewski, and by extension the performer, takes the listener by the hand and guides them through the labyrinth of a boundless musical imagination.
