Frederic Rzewski, the avant-garde composer and pianist best-known for “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” an hour-long set of variations on a popular song sung by protesters against the repressive regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, has died at 83.
A Massachusetts-born pupil of leading modernist composers – Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, Luigi Dallapiccola – Rzewski spent most of his career living and teaching in Europe, serving for more than 40 years as a professor at the Royal Conservatory of Liège in Belgium.
An obituary by Tim Page for The Washington Post:
Letter V 