(b Nice, 8 March 1934). American composer of French origin. He arrived in the USA in 1941 and associated with Cage in the early 1950s while studying classics at Harvard; he remained there as a teacher until 1970, when he was appointed professor of classics and music at Dartmouth College. His early compositions (c 1950-57) are fully notated, and make much use of silence; in his next phase (to 1964) more choice is allowed to the performers. From the mid-1960s his works explore ways of giving freedom to the performer in ‘parliamentary participation’, allowing them to mould the music, latterly in an explicitly political programme of liberation (e.g. in Changing the System, 1973).
