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Exploring Political Action And Socialization Through Group Improvisation Within The Music Of Frederic Rzewski And Cornelius Cardew, Marcel Rominger
Exploring Political Action And Socialization Through Group Improvisation Within The Music Of Frederic Rzewski And Cornelius Cardew, Marcel Rominger
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In the late 1960s, socialist composers, Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, each established ensembles with the purpose of performing works consisting of experimental forms of improvisation. By employing group improvisation, and including untrained, non-musicians within their performances, they strove to use these ensembles as a model for society itself; this model includes a dissolution of the hierarchy among performers and the barrier between performer and audience. Improvisation helped music resist commodification by the culture industry or appropriation by authoritarian regimes for the purpose of propaganda. This dissertation aims to explore how Cardew and Rzewski constituted effective socialization and political action …