Rzewski Yes, of course, it certainly is, but for most people music is a piece of plastic that you buy in a store.
Bosse You introduced a cadenza in Beethoven‘s Fourth Concerto: was it an improvised cadenza or was it written?
Bosse In terms of improvisation, when you played with Steve Lacy and Anthony Braxton, what was the founding of this spontaneous, collective process that was mentioned in several articles about you?
Rzewski Both! Jerome Lowenthal, who is a pianist from New York, does not improvise himself, but, like many classical pianists, he plays written versions of cadenzas. Many composers have written cadenzas for this concerto: Clara Schumann, Godowsky, etc. And Jerome asked me to write one. Then he recorded a CD with Beethoven‘s Fourth Concerto, but it‘s an interactive CD in which you can choose which cadenza you want! He also played a recital in New York with just the cadenzas for piano solo, and it was very interesting because it has been renowned through the century. I particularly remember Clara Schumann‘s, which was very beautiful. Well, this piece was theoretically a cadenza for the concerto, but it is long! Maybe fifteen minutes long. Beethoven also made long improvisations. Anyway, I highly doubt this cadenza will ever be played in a concert hall with an orchestra! You can‘t really ask an orchestra to sit there for fifteen minutes doing nothing! (Laughter)
Rzewski … I would have to read the articles! Bosse It was only mentioned in a biography and I wondered what it was referring to at the time: a certain type of spontaneous improvisation? Rzewski At the time? Which time? Bosse The time when you were playing with Musica Elettronica Viva. Rzewski But we just toured in Europe, yes, yes, it still going on! There are three of us now, Alvin Curran, Richard Teitelbaum and myself. They mostly use computers and electronics. As of myself, I usually stick to the piano. Of course the materials and samples are prepared, but the structure is never planned, sometimes we talk about what we‘re going to do, but it is immediately forgotten!
Bosse You are a virtuoso pianist. What does virtuosity mean to you? Is it a goal as it is for Liszt or a means for expression?
Rzewski It‘s completely different, closer to the classical tradition.
Rzewski Liszt? You know, Liszt is a composer that I hardly know; for a reason I ignore, I was never attracted nor interested by his work. He wrote an extensive number of pieces for the piano and I do not know most of his music!
Bosse How so?
Bosse And Chopin?
Rzewski Improvisation has always been an important aspect of classical music.
Rzewski I naturally know Chopin because I am of Polish origin and since I was a child, I was told about Chopin! But we don‘t know much about improvisation from back then, because it was not recorded. And yet... when Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1880, it was a very simple device, with no electrical power:
Bosse Is your type of improvisation very different from jazz?
Bosse For Beethoven, for example? Rzewski And Bach too. 24
it was mechanical, it worked with a crank. Why then was this device not created a century earlier? Mozart would have enjoyed it; he loved gadgets, and music boxes. There is no technical reason why we cannot hear the recordings of Beethoven‘s improvisations today! Why was that device not invented in the eighteenth century? Perhaps it means that the concept of recording is a fad that will eventually disappear! Maybe this century will be known by future generations as the century of recordings, the era when people had this weird idea to keep music in a piece of plastic (laughs) kind of like the Egyptian idea of life after death: totally absurd! Yet music has been around for at least 35,000 years, probably much more. 35,000 years is the age of the oldest musical instrument, which was only discovered a few years ago in Yugoslavia, a flute made of bird bones, with three holes, from which we can extrapolate the location of the other holes. And it seems to be a diatonic flute, more or less like the common flutes known throughout the world, with six holes. Music was therefore already quite developed. We can say that for 35,000 years, music was something that people did, and not something that was passively observed in concerts halls.
Bosse It is something you still experiment with? Rzewski I think I did just about all you can do with that idea! And I don‘t like to repeat myself! (Laughter) So I try to escape from the past. Bosse You‘re also a performer, what importance does that have for you? Rzewski I have a specific attitude because I can play classical music fairly well, but I think these pieces that we know so well, it‘s interesting to try to play them in a new way. I don‘t change the texts, but I sometimes like adding ornaments to them... Bosse Or introduce an improvised sequence for example? Rzewski Yes! In Beethoven‘s sonatas, especially in the first ones, there are many moments when you really have to improvise. The cadenzas... When I play classical music, I am undoubtedly very influenced by all the experience I have with modern music and in purely classical terms it is probably not a very good thing. I remember, in Liège, a violin teacher told his students that they should not play contemporary music because it‘s bad for classical music technique: I think it‘s not entirely wrong. It is probably true, and I think in my case it is true! I played so much Stockhausen, John Cage, etc., that when I play classical music, I tend to play it as if it were contemporary music!
Bosse I see three dimensions in your work, improvisation on one part, which we just talked about, also what I call a sort of ‘science of repetition‘, and... Rzewski ‘Science of repetition‘? Bosse I mean a way that is very particular to you to repeat items, return to others, introduce variations. I‘m thinking of a specific American music, Steve Reich, and some of your pieces of the 60‘s such as Les moutons de Panurge.
Bosse In a sense, you allow the audience to listen to classical music as contemporary music.
Rzewski In the 60‘s? Yes! True, I experimented with that. But there is no repetition! Bosse It‘s a repetition without being one… Rzewski Yes indeed, very simple principles.
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Rzewski You might think that‘s a good thing, but that music critic in Cleveland recently did not think so! (Laughter) And I totally understand his point of view. For example, Mendelssohn‘s Songs Without Words are, in my opinion, not just a collection of different pieces, no, it‘s a kind of oratorio for solo piano. Probably greatly influenced by the first book of Bach‘s Well-Tempered Clavier, which is also a