Four American Composers
- IMDb link: 0085562
- IMDb rating: 7.3 (154 votes)
- Genres: Music, Documentary
- Director: Meredith Monk, Peter Greenaway
- Cast: Robert Ashley, John Cage, Philip Glass, Jack Kripl and others
- Release year: 1983
- Runtime: 220 minutes
- Country: United Kingdom
- Keywords: avant garde music, independent film
Plot:
This is a 4-part documentary that follows four different contemporary composers performing/creating/building their shows. Peter Greenaway leads us, with a great sense of balance between the performances and the interviews, through the creative process of 4 very different composers in style (sound and noise, repetition and discipline, vocal experimentation, poetry and musical freedom) who are all framed under the same musical genre - contemporary music. A great way to get introduced to this music and to understand how much of it is intellectual or playful.