Les Moutons de Panurge (1969). Frederic Rzweski

eighth blackbird will be in San Francisco on Friday, February 4th at the Jewish Community Center. Via the new Amazon Yellow Pages, the picture to the left is probably the JCCSF. Similarly, San Francisco Performances does not list the precise works to be played:

The program will include five works selected from music by FITZELL, LERDAHL, HIGDON, RZEWSKI, SHEFSKY, CRUMB and BERMEL.

Based on recent blackbird concerts (via Steve Layton's NetNewMusic and notes by Jay Weitz), the program may include Jennifer Higdon's Zaka, George Crumb's Vox Balaenae, the Canadian George Fitzell's violence, Derek Bermel's Tied Shifts,  Fred Lerdahl's Fantasy Etudes (streamed on an Art of the States page), and Frederic Rzewski's Les Moutons de Panurge

About Rzewski's composition:

In his work with MEV, Rzewski emphasized the concept of collective improvisation, leading both to a penchant for socialist political compositions and a style that often combined notated and improvised passages...To this day, the phrase ‘sheep of Panurge’ implies a person who blindly follows the lead of another.”

Is "Shefsky" a mistakenly inserted phonetic pronunciation of Rzewski? I couldn't find any composer with that name. I did find some Marx Brothers dialogue, including a mythical Shefsky:

Lucille : You can't stay in that closet.
Groucho : Oh, I can't, can I? That's what they said to Thomas Edison, mighty inventor; Thomas Lindbergh, mighty flier; and Thomas Shefsky, mighty like a rose. Just remember, my little cabbage, that if there weren't any closets, there wouldn't be any hooks, and if there weren't any hooks, there wouldn't be any fish, and that would suit me fine.

Comments

[clst]

I heard a rumor that Rzewski may release his scores under a creative commons license.

[Jason Hibbard]

The times I've seen it psuedo-phonetically spelled it's been as ZHEV-skee. Also, it's true that Rzewski has embrace the Copyleft concept. He says, "But here is how I understand it, in a nutshell: anyone can copy my music (those pieces that are not already published, that is [i.e., the piano works pub'd by Zen-on]) as long as they identify the composer, don't claim authorship themselves, and allow others freely to make copies of their copies." [See http://jennylin.net for this statement and directions for requesting works. From Ms. Lin's menu, click Share, then Ad-lib.] Also, this URL (http://icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer/Rzewski.html) has PDF versions of Les Moutons, No Place To Go But 'Round, and Mayn Yingle. From other things I've read, getting scores directly from Rzewski (or his management) isn't difficult, though there will be a nominal fee for copying, labor, and postage - most likely a small price to acquire the score to something like The Road or De Profundis.

[Jason Hibbard]

Forgot this article from NewMusicBox: http://newmusicbox.org/page.nmbx?id=28nw08 - a little more about Copyleft, featuring the Rzewski photo where he looks like actor Jonathan Pryce in a wind machine.