Piano Sonata

Piano Sonata composed in 1991. A large-scale, densely argued work in which the medieval cantus firmus 'L'Homme Arme' undergoes 27 variations in the final movement, placing Rzewski's radical politics and post-tonal language in dialogue with a 500-year-old tradition of cantus firmus composition. The work as a whole engages classical sonata architecture while subjecting it to constant pressure from popular song, folk melody, and freely improvisatory passages — a characteristic Rzewski collision of the learned and the vernacular.