Music by Frederic Rzewski Text by Sam Melville
Letter from Sam Melville. Addressed to "dear brother". Dated 5/16/70.
i think the combination of age and the greater coming together is responsible for the speed of the passing time. its six months now and i can tell you truthfully few periods in my life have passed so quickly. i am in excellent physical and emotional health. there are doubtless subtle surprises ahead but i feel secure and ready.
as lovers will contrast their emotions in times of crisis, so am i dealing with my environment. in the indifferent brutality, incessant noise, the experimental chemistry of food, the ravings of lost hysterical men, i can act with clarity and meaning. i am deliberate --sometimes even calculating-- seldom employ histrionics except as a test of the reactions of others. i read much, exercise, talk to guards and inmates, feeling for the inevitable direction of my life.
special love to flotsam + brood, charlene, lenny, jetsam
Sam Melville was a white male arrested for committing an overtly political crime. Arrested in November of 1969, Melville and others were charged with a series of bombings in Manhattan between July and November of that year. Melville pleaded guilty to bombing such buildings as the Whitehall Selective Service Center and the Chase Manhattan Bank. Each of the bombings was accompanied by calls to insure that injuries were avoided and by detailed writings pointing out that the business which occurred within these structures spread death and poverty.
Born and raised in Buffalo, NY (born Samuel Grossman, later to take the name of the famous novelist), Melville was eighteen when he moved to New York City in the mid-fifties. In 1969, Melville was involved in the political demonstrations against Columbia University. Then, as the war droned on, he launched his own offensive against what he saw as the pillars of New York's financial and "war machine" industries. He saw these industries as real evils, directly linked to violence and poverty, not just symbols.
After his arrest, Melville was sent to the Federal House of Detention in Manhattan. Following two escape attempts, authorities moved him to the Tombs, where he remained until his convictions for the bombings in June of 1970. At the time of his conviction the judge chastised him for the $100,000 worth of damage done at Whitehall. Melville's reply: "That's about two Viet Cong." He was sent to Sing Sing prison and then to Attica on an 18 year sentence.
After only one year into his sentence, Melville was killed during the Attica prison riot of September 1971. He was alleged to have been seen walking and very much alive after the troopers stormed the prison and took it back under their control. He is believed to have been killed by a National Guard sharpshooter just after the riot ended.
We can think of time not as an independent phenomenon, but a relation between a person and an experienced event. As such, musical time exists not as an objective reality, but as an interaction between listener and composition. Musical sounds unfold in time, but time itself is elusive, subjective, and abstract. Time then, can be interrupted, sped up or slowed down, or even reordered.
In both Coming Together and Attica, as well as most music described as 'minimal', there is no hierarchic structure. The motion of gestures is so evenly paced and so predictable that it is not perceived as progression. This type of continuous motion can easily imply stasis. In these pieces, the stasis of prison life seems to be contrasted against the aggressive act of the State in storming the Attica Correctional Facility. It is in harmony with Melville's description of the passing of time in his letter. Because there are no significant deviations from the music's predictable course, listening to a process composition can be a "vertical time experience" where we experience one moment over and over again. This sense of timelessness is expressed by Melville's text also.
This so-called vertical music does not create its own temporality, but rather makes contact with a deeply human time sense that is often denied in daily living - that of timelessness. It gives voice to a fundamental human experience that is largely unavailable in traditional Western music. This denial of daily living perhaps enhances the sense of the verticality of time while in prison.
The concepts of the past, present, and future do not exist, nor do those of before and after. The mood of atemporality is one of chaos and emptiness. The linearity evident in the additive/subtractive text process of both Attica and Coming Together coexists with the nonlinear unchanging procedure that permeates the instrumental aspects of the piece. There are no surprises, no thwarted expectations, no deviations from the composition process. The piece is constantly in motion, yet never particularly gets anywhere. The motion is so consistent that we lose any point of reference, any contact with faster or slower motion that might keep us aware of the music's directionality. The experience is static despite the constant motion in the music. This is mimicked in the choice of Melville's text.
The text used in Coming Together is past, present and future. A sense of timelessness is portrayed through the text alone; it looks back and forward.
Text unfolds in the following additive, then subtractive process
*builds to here
Rzewski ends the additive cycle after cell one is repeated seven times, even though not all phrases have been heard yet (he subtracts cell one prior to the entrance of cell eight). There is, at most, and never more than seven cells in the process. Each cell is repeated exactly seven times during the piece. From a 1973 recording, Rzewski uses an instrumental ensemble of seven.
Within each cell, the phrases are always broken down into the same seven separations as follows:
All phrases are always repeated with the same break between text. They are always broken into seven equally spaced phrases, regardless of how many words need to be said within the allotted time. Seven it seems is the basis for this piece. (See more on this in Section Analysis of the Score.)
The text looks both forward and backward while giving both external references and internal prison references. It alludes to the passing of time directly in Melville's writings. We can see that Rzewski used Melville's text straight, with no alterations in wording or in order.
In addition to not altering the integrity of the text, Rzewski chooses to use spoken word rather than a singing voice. Rather than using Melville as a means to an end, Rzewski remains true to the writers original intent: that his letter would be read rather than sung.
Both Coming Together and Attica call for an instrumental ensemble of unspecified constitution to give cumulatively powerful expression to a melodic line. They are scored for "speaker, bass instrument and ensemble."
In a 1973 recording with Rzewski himself playing the piano, we find the following instrumentation; vibraphone, synthesizer, alto sax, viola, trombone, bass, and piano. A later Hungaraton recording has a similar ensemble. Though not specifically scored to include the piano, it seems an integral instrument to the piece. The precision of its tone and the constant running sixteenth notes keep the piano as the center point, and the other instruments appear to freely fall within its structure.
The instruments' relationship to each other produces an incessant sound mass, which swells ebbs and flows within a pre-determined structure. In the above graph we can see that at first the piece builds over 14 cells, at which point the volume suddenly diminishes in all instruments (not the voice), so that when we hear cell five for the first time, the voice is present in the foremost ground. Cell four reads "there are doubtless subtle surprises ahead but I feel secure and ready." Indeed, when cell five occurs, it comes as a surprise to the listener after hearing the continual building of sound. The piece then begins to increase in intensity until another 14 cells have passed. This is also the change of the text process from additive to subtractive. The emphasis here is the missing of cell one for the first time in the piece. This sharp diminuendo does not occur until 18 cells later, again just prior the entrance of cell five. Its effect this time refers back to the initial crescendo, only this time more time has passed between occurrences (18 rather than 14 cell repetitions). This is another way Rzewski alters our perception of how much time is passing.
The relationship of the instrumental ensemble to the text is primarily one of support. The voice is predominately in the foreground throughout the piece (this is certainly more evident in the Hungaraton recording than in the 1973 recording). Although the instruments play incessant sixteenth notes, their effect is that of slow motion. This is primarily due to the tonal center clearly on G, which never strays. The harmonic progression is virtually non-existent; another form of timelessness.
Rzewski uses acoustic instruments and unprocessed voice which is typical of his style. The overall texture of the piece remains constant throughout, and the pitch range is nominal. We hear no extended vocal or instrumental techniques.
Coming Together was written in 1972, just one year after the Attica prison uprising, demonstrating a sense of urgency explicit in political activism.
As of this date these are the only four measures of the score that I have been able to obtain. Even in just these four measures (m. 1-3 and m. 297) we can see that the piece is tonally centered about G, and progresses to the third (Bb) by later in the piece. From all that I can tell G, Bb, and C are the only three pitches in the piece.
The motive becomes slightly extended with the addition of pitch C (making G-Bb the motive and G-Bb-C the extended motive). The extended motive allows for a repetitious yet varied pulse. The first two pitches of the piece frame the motive and pulse of the entire piece. The third, fourth, and fifth notes of measure two extend the motive to three notes and cross the pulse at beat two. The sixth and seventh notes (both G) can be considered either the end of the extended motive or the beginning of the new version to follow. These two notes are linked to note eight in such a way that the opening motive is repeated, but shifted with respect to the beat. Notes nine, ten, and eleven repeat the variant of the motive, but are metrically altered. These cross accents and cross rhythms, which contrast the lack of development in new pitch and rhythm material, add to the intricacy of this piece. The instrumental motive is much smaller and condensed than the vocal line.
This 'phasing' of the G centricity is explained further below.
Coming Together is composed of 394 measures of continuous running sixteenth notes. No other rhythm occurs in the piece. There are 394 measures x 16 notes per measure = 6304 notes in the piece. 394 measures x 4 beats per measure = 1576 down beats. Those 1576 beats divided by 8 cells = 197 beats per cell. (788 16th notes). There are 56 phrases = 8 cells x 7 repetitions of each. Each cell gets approximately 28 beats (7 sixteenth notes groups of 4) or 1.75 measures (shifting the accent even more). The piece is written in 4/4 and not 7/4 perhaps so the shifting of the G-Bb motive is clearer to performers. It may also 'help' confuse the performers so that 'when a player gets lost they should remain lost for the duration of the piece.' When a performer does get lost (which is entirely possible and likely), phasing occurs. When the group gets lost the piece becomes a wash of sound. The solo line of the voice, which also divides each phrase into seven cells, then begins to move away from the beat.
Rzewski remains true to his process. He never breaks it throughout the composition.
As this piece is not about tonality or changing the tonality over time, Rzewski creates a harmonic structure of stasis; that of the prisoner's life he is memorializing. The melody is based on almost no change, perhaps so that it will not take undue attention away from the spoken text, which unfolds by means of an additive repetitive process. A greater and greater percentage of the music becomes redundant as we listen to the piece. Less and less often do we hear something new (we never do after the 8th phrase finally enters). Using variation within narrow limits, the piece strikes me as far more consistent than developmental, as more static than dramatic.
Contrary to the intent of most other minimal music, the 'programmatic' nature of Coming Together is strikingly powerful. As Melville speaks to us of his distorted view of the passing of time, so does Rzewski in this 20 minute work about time, about Sam Melville, and about Attica Correctional Facility.
Minimal music is perhaps best described as slowly changing relationships. During the 1960's, process music began to bridge a gap between the highly experimental and academic electronic music and the popular music of the time. Linear additive (or subtractive) process is defined as the addition (or subtraction) of one event at a time. The event could be a note, a word, etc. The text in Coming Together and Attica are first a linear additive process, then turn in on themselves to a linear subtractive process. The time signature remains constant though accentuation often alters the down beat.
In creating a non-hierarchical music, no one sound should have any greater importance than any other sound. This should not imply to a reader a lack of tonal center; for in both pieces this is quite the contrary. Simply stated, no sense of expectation or drive to the cadence is present. The minimalists objectified the compositional techniques by using specific processes to generate the works. These processes were decided prior to the execution of the composition, and then they merely worked themselves out over time.
Our response to minimal music is probably not affected by the number of times we hear the music. That is to say, once we discover the process it is simply there for all to see, and not hidden. It is always meaningful or meaningless. It is a music where a score analysis may not be an accurate guide to what the music sounds like. This piece is fully notated out, all 394 measures. It is my understanding that the only 'improvisitory' aspect is that the instruments are free to hold any note they desire, which is easily heard in a listening.
Minimal music presents a succession, rather than a progression of events and is essentially static. In Coming Together there is a progression of sorts in the text but not in the instrumental lines. Minimal music portrays a never ending present, for the past, present, and future are, in essence, the same (part of the same process).