Changing the System (1973)

Changing the System is an ensemble piece for eight or more players (usually groups of four players each). There are two larger parts, one with pitched material (but instruments not specified), the other using percussion and voices (but in ways performable by those who are not professional percussionists or singers). The players play as quartets. In each part a quartet has chordal material (four sounds played simultaneously) and melodic material (a single line passed among four performers as in hocketing). In the second part the melodic material uses a text (part of a speech by Tom Hayden given during the 1968-69 student upheavals in the United States about the need for systemic social change) and the chordal material is percussive. A general plan of performance is made for any given occasion, but generally each quartet is autonomous, though, because timings within a quartet are flexible, each quartet can respond during a performance to what another quartet is doing.