Faculty Recital: Stephen Drury

Anthony R. Green | Apology (2020)

Preface
During my residency at the Gettysburg National Military Park in 2019, I experienced one of the most life-affirming, emotionally painful yet beautiful moments I have ever endured as a Black man. It occurred at a church, scarcely populated, seemingly on the brink of closing, despite its historical importance. Towards the end of the service, a white man confessed to being a racist in his childhood, growing up and realizing his moral depravity, and seeking forgiveness. He asked myself and the other Black parishioners for forgiveness and acceptance. We all wept and hugged him. Apology is a musical reflection upon that moment, both technical and psychological. It is a sonic diary entry, not meant to capture details, but more to encapsulate the most important little and big aspects of that experience. Apology was composed with love for Stephen Drury.

… from my residency journal, 18 February 2019

 Day 3 – amazing tears (17 Feb.)

From my Day 1 walk, I noted that I wanted to go to church at St. Paul’s AME Zion. Unfortunately, I got out the house a bit later than desired, and anticipated not arriving early or on-time, as I wanted. But, thinking “this is a Black church”, I figured there would be others arriving at about the same time I got there. 

As I approached, I noticed a family of 4 walking in front of the church and thought, “Yay, I won’t be too far behind them!” But the family continued to walk past, not entering. “Strange”, I thought. Stranger still was the lack of cars around the building and the silence as I approached. On Sundays, one can almost always hear the Amens or an organ or a choir from the outside of a service. I checked to see if it indeed was Sunday, then cautiously entered, expecting … well … I don’t know, TBH. 

What I found was a 4-person congregation (including an older white man) and a pastor playing music from an old laptop. I sat in the back, knowing that my presence was definitely felt. As the service progressed, the next hymn was “Blessed Assurance”, which was played (piano accompaniment, much too fast) from the laptop (connected to decent speakers). I sang, and was definitely the loudest because the key was a bit too high for my voice. This just solidified my presence even more.

The service had two moments of musical selections/presentation. Both were recordings played on the audio system. I felt so uncomfortable during these moments, and I almost got up and played the piano in the corner, but I exercised restraint. 

The pastor then stated, “We have a visitor today” (surprise, surprise!). I stood, explained myself, and the eyes of the pastor widened! He suggested I play for the service while I’m here, and I responded “I would love to.”

The most awkward, pathetic moment of my church experiences in life happened next. After the canned music selection came a sermon that reeked of desperation. It was a sermon more for him than the congregation. Towards the end, he talked of how God gives us “gifts”, and often it is very difficult to live your life pursuing these gifts. He then said, “If you want to know how hard it is, ask me.” He went on to say that he felt like giving up often, but every time he tried to “leave” (he said “leave”), God made him stay. So he essentially admitted to his congregation that he wanted and may still want to abandon them. #Whoa 

After such a low, I was feeling uneasy. But the most incredible thing happened next. The pastor called for intercessory prayer. We all went to the altar, kneeled, prayed, and received a prayer from the pastor. Afterwards, we were all still at the altar, and the white man said, “I have a confession to make. I haven’t told anyone here this before but …

“I was a racist.”

I was … oddly numb. He continued to explain how he grew up in AZ, and there weren’t Black people around. The “Spanish” people and the “Indians” that were around were treated badly, and he heard racial slurs, but he said and did nothing. Tears started to well inside me. He proceeded to say that as he grew and realized how disgusting racism is, he felt ashamed. He was honored that St. Paul’s welcomed him, and he asked for forgiveness, and to one day be considered a brother. 

By the time he finished, we were all practically in tears. The pastor and the congregation hugged and embraced him. And I was the last one to give him a significant hug. I also said, “I definitely consider you to be a brother.” 

- Anthony R. Green

Frederic Rzewski | The People United Will Never Be Defeated: 36 variations on "¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!" (1975)

A metaphor can be a slippery beast -- in both music and politics. Charles Ives spends the bulk of Essays Before a Sonata pondering the question of musical metaphor:  "Can a tune literally represent a stone wall with vines on it or even with nothing on it...[or] the sad thoughts of a bathtub when the water is being let out...[?]"

The image of "the people united..." as a powerful force is undeniable, but whether a force for good or for evil can often be a matter of perspective.  Although both the slogan and the song El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido! ("The People United Will Never Be Defeated!") originated in socialist/workers political movements, the strongest recent image those words call up is the fall of the Berlin Wall and the re-unification of Germany, the signal event of the collapse of Communism.  And for some, this event is less cause for celebration of "the triumph of the free world" than for apprehension in the face of a strong, united Germany still haunted by ghosts of the Third Reich.  The aftermath of the people's success in throwing off the mantle of late Communist dictatorships seems to have spread more dis-unity than unity -- most disastrously in the former Yugoslavia.  Dreams are so easily betrayed...

Frederic Rzewski's set of variations on El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido! is an hour-long metaphor in musical form.  Continuing the tradition of massive variation sets for solo keyboard such as Bach's "Goldberg" Variations, Beethoven's "Diabelli" Variations, and Brahms' two books of variations on a theme by Paganini, Rzewski creates a concert work for solo piano of epic proportions, held together not only by the theme from which the variations spring, but also by an overriding form which binds the entire set together as architecture, narrative, and metaphor.

Through his use of variation form, Rzewski creates an aural image of "the people united" -- individuals in all their diversity coming together, bit by bit, to form a unity.  The variations are a cornucopia of styles:  modal, tonal, atonal, after the manner of a folk song or in the dense, dissonant language of Stockhausen, each variation uses as a basis the structure of the theme, rather than its melody.  Counterpoint abounds -- many of the variations are in the form of a two-part invention, and often (such as in the fourth variation) the two voices ping-pong back and forth, creating a third, virtual melody as each voice fills in the gaps left by the other (called "hocket" in medieval music).

As in fractal geometry, the large form of the piece reflects both the form of the theme and the form of each of the variations. The complete version of the theme heard at the very beginning is 36 bars long, and is followed by 36 variations. Leaving off the four-bar introduction and the eight-bar coda (which cry out the rhythm of the slogan El Pueb-lo! U-ni-do! Ja-más Se-rá Ven-ci-do! in English as well as Spanish) the melody of the theme is 24 bars long, made up of six phrases of four bars each. The variations are also 24 bars long, and the 36 variations fall into six groups of six variations each.  In the first five groups, we hear five variations, each in a different style or with a different rhythmic, harmonic, or pianistic profile, followed by a sixth variation which combines the elements of the previous five variations:  four bars in the style of the first variation, four bars from the second variation, four bars from the third, and so on, with a concluding four-bar cadence or coda.

Rzewski does not allow his imagination to become imprisoned by his own scheme, however.   As early as variation #13, the composer introduces a brief cadenza which develops into the Italian revolutionary song Bandiera Rossa. At variation #19, the tempo picks up dramatically and the entire fourth group of variations goes by in a single, toccata-like sweep.  The concluding variation of this group turns into a free fantasy on previously heard material rather than an exact reconstruction of earlier elements. In the fifth group of variations, the 24-bar form breaks up entirely, and Rzewski introduces first another quotation (Hans Eislers' Solidaritatslied forms the basis of variation #26) and then the extended cadenzas (the first in the minimalist style of early Philip Glass) of variation #27.  

In the same manner, the sixth GROUP of variations recapitulates the previous five groups:  variation #31 (the first of the group) begins with four bars in the style of variation #1, followed by four bars from #7 (the first of the second group), four bars from #13, etc.  Variation #32 recovers elements from the second variation in each group (#2, #8, #14, #20, and #26).  And so forth.  (The cadences at the end of variations #31 -35 pile up truncated fragments from THESE variations in rapid succession.)

Finally we arrive at variation #36 -- the sixth variation of the sixth group -- which, combining the elements of the five previous variations, becomes a mega-variation which unites the entire range of musics heard over the last three-quarters of an hour.

The people ... united.

- Stephen Drury

Frederic Rzewski

Frederic Rzewski, composer and pianist, became known as an interpreter of new piano music by Boulez, Stockhausen, Bussotti, Kagel, Cage, Feldman, and Wolff, performed world premieres, and recorded much of the music of these composers for the first time.  In the summer of 1963, he and Charlotte Moorman organized the first New York Avant-Garde Festival at Judson Hall.  He then returned to Europe, where he spent two years in West Berlin on the invitation of Elliott Carter in the Ford Foundation's artists-in-residence program (1963 - 1965).  The electronic tape-composition Zoologischer Garten dates from this time.  With Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum, he founded the M.E.V. (Musica Elettronica Viva) group, devoted to live electronic music and improvisation.

In 1968 he began, with "Les Moutons de Panurge", a series of compositions based on additive melodic formulas which began to address social theses, and he became more and more concerned with the question of language, striving to express the most difficult and complex formal structures in a form which could be understood by a wide variety of listeners.  He was also concerned with what appeared to be a crisis in theory, not only in music but in many different fields, including science and politics:  the absence of a general theory to explain phenomena and guide behavior.  He explored forms in which existing musical languages could be brought together.  A series of variations for solo piano, "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!", was the main expression for these ideas at the time. 

In 1977 Henri Pousseur invited Rzewski to teach at the Conservatory of Liege, and he began experimenting with graphic notation and using unconventional instruments or combinations or instruments.  In 1982 he became interested in new ways of exploring twelve-tone rows.  With "Antigone-Legend", a one-hour setting of Brecht's poem for voice and piano, he devised a technique using all-interval rows which he has employed in a number of compositions since then.  In the last few years, in addition to purely instrumental music, Rzewski has written a number of pieces using texts, both large and small.  He as also done a considerable amount of teaching, both at the Liege Conservatory and at Yale, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, SUNY Buffalo, and the Hochschule der Kuenste in West Berlin.