The text below was included in a 1968 edition of SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde magazine as part of an interview with composers about politics and music. Twenty composers were asked the same single question: Have you, or has anyone, ever used your music for political or social ends? The complete set of interviews, plus a 2015 follow-up interview with 18 additional composers (20 including two — Rzewski and Terry Riley — who had been interviewed in 1968), can be found on my website.
Statement from program notes for Festival Internationale del Teatro Universitario, Parma, March 23, 1968
In times of emergency men find it possible to perform operations necessary to survival without bureaucracy, police, money, and the other obstacles which normally obstruct the way to efficient behavior. In such moments the organism, acted upon by forces beyond its control, is able to act, to respond to reality in an efficient manner. It is forced to move, to create space for itself, in order to survive. When confronted with the possibility of destruction, it discovers the alternative of creation.
Seldom are men able to reap the fruits offered by such moments of crisis. The memory of the higher state fades as suddenly as the danger which brought it forth appeared. The greater part of the mind, called into action in moments of threat to physical survival, is content to relapse into a state of slumbering semi-awareness in the interim periods of tranquility. It re-acts the roles which it invented in moments of creativity, applying them to a new reality which the creative act caused to come forth. It drifts into dark, uncharted areas of the past, until tempestuous forces blow it back into the blinding light of now.
The organism is perpetually involved in a drunken balancing act, upon the high wire of the present, and over the abyss of the past, into which it rarely dares to glance. In this precarious enterprise, it extends itself uncontrollably, until some more or less painful contact with the force of gravity forces it to move creatively. The accuracy of this movement, the measure of its creativity, is determined by the awareness-level of the organism, the degree of its sensitivity to danger and salvation.
Normally human beings are open to the joyous pain of creation only in moments of immediate threat to individual survival. Civilization produces forms of behavior conditioned by such limited sensitivity to the larger organic process, and excludes others which tend to expand such sensitivity. In fact, the economy of minimum survival-efficiency on the level of the individual organism, which civilization by its competitive games systematically cultivates, is not sufficient to ensure survival. It results in the cancerous growth of the total life process.
In the last sixty years, 100,000,000 human beings have been murdered by other human beings. This number exceeds the sum of all who have been known to live and die in the course of human history up to that time. In order to survive at all, I must do more than merely survive. I must create.
To create means to be here and now: to be responsible to reality on the high highwire of the present.
To be responsible means to be able to communicate the presence of danger to others.
An artist is a person who lays claim to a heightened state of perception. His perceptions are acts of communication dictated by a sense of responsibility to the life process. He creates the sense of emergency in a state of tranquility, where there is no threat to individual survival, and where the spirit is free to e-merge, to extend its dimensions, to create space.
It is necessary now to create a new form of communication, through which human sensitivities can be awakened to the presence of danger on the highest level, and to the necessity for creation in order to avoid it efficiently. This form is not telephones, television, newspapers; nor is it theater, music, painting…As Baudelaire said, true civilization is not gas, electricity, or machines, but rather the diminution of the traces of original sin.
The most direct and efficient form of communication is dialog. Dialog in its highest form is creation out of nothing: the only true creation.
An art form which aims for highest efficiency in times of highest urgency must be based on dialog. It must reject the possibility of the impartial observer, present but not involved in the communication process, as contradictory to the idea of communication itself.
Such an art form must be concerned with creation out of nothing. Its decisions cannot be governed by structures and formulas retained from moments of past inspiration, which it is content to re-arrange and re-interpret. They must be born from marrying the moment, the creative moment in which the organism approaches reality so immediately that it is blessed with the perception of the highest possible future, which is its natural course toward joy. Such an art form must be improvised, free to move in the present without burdening itself with the dead weight of the past.
Improvisation is the art of creating out of nothing: a lost art form. It is necessary to rediscover this form and re-invent its rules, now. It is necessary to embark upon a disciplined search for a new harmony. Harmony is a process in which speaker and listener agree to communicate. The responsibility for undertaking this voyage of discovery is everyone’s who may come into contact with these words.
– Frederic Rzewski, SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde Volume 6, page 91, July 1968
Statement from program notes for Festival Internationale del Teatro Universitario, Parma, March 23, 1968
In times of emergency men find it possible to perform operations necessary to survival without bureaucracy, police, money, and the other obstacles which normally obstruct the way to efficient behavior. In such moments the organism, acted upon by forces beyond its control, is able to act, to respond to reality in an efficient manner. It is forced to move, to create space for itself, in order to survive. When confronted with the possibility of destruction, it discovers the alternative of creation.
Seldom are men able to reap the fruits offered by such moments of crisis. The memory of the higher state fades as suddenly as the danger which brought it forth appeared. The greater part of the mind, called into action in moments of threat to physical survival, is content to relapse into a state of slumbering semi-awareness in the interim periods of tranquility. It re-acts the roles which it invented in moments of creativity, applying them to a new reality which the creative act caused to come forth. It drifts into dark, uncharted areas of the past, until tempestuous forces blow it back into the blinding light of now.
The organism is perpetually involved in a drunken balancing act, upon the high wire of the present, and over the abyss of the past, into which it rarely dares to glance. In this precarious enterprise, it extends itself uncontrollably, until some more or less painful contact with the force of gravity forces it to move creatively. The accuracy of this movement, the measure of its creativity, is determined by the awareness-level of the organism, the degree of its sensitivity to danger and salvation.
Normally human beings are open to the joyous pain of creation only in moments of immediate threat to individual survival. Civilization produces forms of behavior conditioned by such limited sensitivity to the larger organic process, and excludes others which tend to expand such sensitivity. In fact, the economy of minimum survival-efficiency on the level of the individual organism, which civilization by its competitive games systematically cultivates, is not sufficient to ensure survival. It results in the cancerous growth of the total life process.
In the last sixty years, 100,000,000 human beings have been murdered by other human beings. This number exceeds the sum of all who have been known to live and die in the course of human history up to that time. In order to survive at all, I must do more than merely survive. I must create.
To create means to be here and now: to be responsible to reality on the high highwire of the present.
To be responsible means to be able to communicate the presence of danger to others.
An artist is a person who lays claim to a heightened state of perception. His perceptions are acts of communication dictated by a sense of responsibility to the life process. He creates the sense of emergency in a state of tranquility, where there is no threat to individual survival, and where the spirit is free to e-merge, to extend its dimensions, to create space.
It is necessary now to create a new form of communication, through which human sensitivities can be awakened to the presence of danger on the highest level, and to the necessity for creation in order to avoid it efficiently. This form is not telephones, television, newspapers; nor is it theater, music, painting…As Baudelaire said, true civilization is not gas, electricity, or machines, but rather the diminution of the traces of original sin.
The most direct and efficient form of communication is dialog. Dialog in its highest form is creation out of nothing: the only true creation.
An art form which aims for highest efficiency in times of highest urgency must be based on dialog. It must reject the possibility of the impartial observer, present but not involved in the communication process, as contradictory to the idea of communication itself.
Such an art form must be concerned with creation out of nothing. Its decisions cannot be governed by structures and formulas retained from moments of past inspiration, which it is content to re-arrange and re-interpret. They must be born from marrying the moment, the creative moment in which the organism approaches reality so immediately that it is blessed with the perception of the highest possible future, which is its natural course toward joy. Such an art form must be improvised, free to move in the present without burdening itself with the dead weight of the past.
Improvisation is the art of creating out of nothing: a lost art form. It is necessary to rediscover this form and re-invent its rules, now. It is necessary to embark upon a disciplined search for a new harmony. Harmony is a process in which speaker and listener agree to communicate. The responsibility for undertaking this voyage of discovery is everyone’s who may come into contact with these words.
– Frederic Rzewski, SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde Volume 6, page 91, July 1968
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| Frederic Rzewski with Elliot Carter in Berlin, 1965 |
Follow-up interview for Leonardo Music Journal in 2015:
Have you, or has anyone, ever used your music for political or social ends?
The political use of music (there is no other use for it, really, except that it can make you feel good): Music is used all the time for political purposes. What is significantly absent is the inverse: some kind of musical influence on politics. Wagner, you might say (but it really isn't clear, in this case, who is influencing whom). One could imagine a politics in which music was not merely "used", but was a basic element: a "jazz politics", for example. A politics in which art, music, and poetry were given priority because they brought enormous savings to the economy, as spiritual activities which reduced violence and hastened the coming to adulthood of the species.
But it is true that, before this can happen, there must be a fundamental change in the common perception of what is necessary for the survival of the species: individuals, or communities?
Music must become conscious of its powers. At the moment it is roving amok, not knowing where it is going and why. If music does find a direction, it could have enormous consequences. Already its power to influence behavior has been demonstrated in history: it played a huge role in influencing public opinion towards the Vietnam War, for example. It seems strangely absent now, when war threatens to become the permanent state of the society. There is nothing now to compare with Dylan's "Masters of War".
Music may or may not be able to change the world. Probably not. But it would be nice if it could. So I think we musicians should act as if it could, even though we know it probably won't. We should not act as if we didn't care. Because, in fact, we do care. Music could really have a significant influence on the course taken by humanity in the next few decades. We are really are living through a critical period in our evolution; and, like it or not, the inevitable revolution has already begun. Will it be musical? Or will it be like all the others? (As Mark Twain remarked: "Prophecy is really hard, especially when it's about the future.") But there are grounds for optimism, since the stakes are so high and the dangers so great. Therefore (with Gramsci): pessimism in thought, optimism in action. The revolution will not be televised, but it might well be musical.
As for improvisation: after fifty years of blather, we have finally come to realize that, when we talk about it, we don't really know what we are talking about, any more than we did fifty years ago. We improvise when we cross the street, and although it is necessary for survival, it is not sufficient to change the world. We can't cross the street without a plan either. We need both of these things; and that's precisely what we don't have.
(The last time I saw Elliott Carter, just a few months before his death, we talked, as we always did when we met, of serious issues facing the world. At one point he said, "The real problem in this country is that there is no communist party." Carter was not a communist, but he was a highly cultured man, and in this case he was right on the button.)
Musicians, like most artists, are frequently refuseniks, in whatever political system. But equally frequently they are collaborators, all too ready to collaborate with the system that feeds them. Some become famous and use their fame to exert political influence, sometimes admirable, sometimes questionable. Others remain in obscurity, although their work is no less important. The great composers are not solitary geniuses creating out of nothing, but simply those who put their names on the collective products of traditions which may be hundreds, even thousands of years old.
The way musicians relate to each other in the production of music can be a model for the way people relate to each other in any social situation. In this way, music is the revolution. The more we can develop it to a higher stage, the more we will be helping the revolutionary cause. As for what the final consequences may be, refer to Mark Twain.
