North American Ballads

by Frederic Rzewski

Composed 1978–1979
Published 1979
Works 4

Four piano pieces composed 1978-1979 on commission from pianist Paul Jacobs, each built as an extended fantasy-paraphrase on an American folk or labor song: Dreadful Memories (based on 'Shady Grove'), Which Side Are You On? (the Kentucky miners' union song), Down by the Riverside (the spiritual), and Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (the South Carolina work song, with its insistent repetition evoking the mechanical rhythm of the cotton mill). Each ballad takes its song as a point of departure for large-scale variation, elaboration, and development — political music in the grand pianistic tradition of Liszt.

Works in this Collection (4)

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