Contemporary Composer: Steve Reich

A short biography, by Chris Cater

Born October 3rd 1936, Steve Reich is an American composer of contemporary classical music. As with his contemporaries Terry Riley and Philip Glass, he is said to compose in the ‘minimalist’ style – a concept born as a reaction to the end of serialism with Schoenberg’s death in 1951 that deals with small musical fragments repeated many times at a steady pulse, with very gradual changes. He is considered a hugely influential composer and has inspired generations of jazz, pop and classical musicians.

Reich’s musical interest was sparked at the age of 14 when presented with recordings of music by Bach, Stravinsky and Miles Davis. His first forays into composition were in the early 1960’s where he studied at Mills College, California, with some tutelage from Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud. There he delved into the 12-tone method, but ultimately decided that this wasn’t something that really appealed to him, and he wanted to write tonal music. His efforts were hampered as in the 1960’s tonal music was considered old-fashioned and modern attempts to write it were mocked and frowned upon. Inspired by modal jazz, where often entire songs were based on a very limited number of chords, and Terry Riley’s ‘In C’, considered the first piece of minimalism, Reich decided to take a handful of the 12-tones, and instead of giving them the usual treatment of inversion, retro-gradation etc. he would just simply repeat them.

Reich is credited with pioneering a technique built on the idea of canon called phasing, where two simultaneous sounds gradually sound out of ‘phase’ with each other, before coming back around and sounding together again. His early composition using this method used voice fragments on tape, as in ‘It’s Gonna Rain’, however in the late 1960’s decided to transfer this to a human musician, first against a tape and then two musicians together as in ‘piano phase’. This was followed shortly after with ‘violin phase’ and ‘clapping music’.

Reich was strongly influenced by African percussion, having studied music in Ghana in 1971, and also Balinese Gamelan in the US after which he composed ‘Drumming’, scored for bongos, marimbas, glockenspiels, female voices and piccolo. Shortly after this he created his ensemble – Steve Reich and The Musicians - which is still active today.

In 1990 Reich won a Grammy Award in the category of Best Classical Contemporary Composition for his work ‘Different Trains’. This work uses voice fragments recorded from interviews of people’s experience before, during and after World War II. These fragments are utilized as melody, and are often imitated by the instruments in the piece. This technique was also used in his much later work ‘WTC 9/11’.
Around this time Reich collaborated with his wife Beryl Korot, a video artist, on operas ‘The Cave’ and ‘Three Tales’ and made a return to writing purely instrumental music again, taking a more traditional approach. In 2009 Reich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his work Double Sextet, scored for two each of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone and piano, or an individual of each of the instruments playing against a pre-recorded tape.

Steve Reich’s music fuses traditional instruments with electronic media, with tape loops used in phasing, or to take the role of multiple instruments as in ‘Electric Counterpoint’. He has produced pieces of a political nature, such as ‘Daniel Variations’ which features recorded dialogue of Daniel Pearl, an American who was captured and killed by militants in Pakistan, and ‘WTC 9/11’ dealing with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. He has also experimented with Process Music - that is whereby the process itself creates the music. An example would be ‘Pendulum Music’, which involves setting up microphones to swing freely over upturned amplifiers, causing feedback at every pass. Some pieces feature sampling techniques, such as car horns in ‘City Life’, or augmentation of a melody as used in ‘Four Organs’. He has always been keen to co-exist and share music between genres, something he felt was not deemed acceptable during the Schoenberg era. His latest work which premieres in March 2013 is titled ‘Radio Rewrite’, and is a re-imagining of two songs by rock band Radiohead.

My Thoughts

I chose to research Steve Reich as during the course so far I have listened to several pieces that were suggested, and then delved further into his catalogue myself. I was intrigued by this composer’s use of innovative techniques such as phasing, and his use of looped voice extracts in his music.

The first two pieces that really grew on me were Different Trains, and Drumming. My initial reaction was that I thought the concepts were interesting, but the lack of melody and relentless forward movement of the pulse was something I could only comfortably listen to sparingly. However with further listening and more understanding of the ideas and techniques which underpin the works I now find it enjoyable to listen to whole pieces and become drawn into the rhythms. One of my favourite pieces by Reich which I discovered recently is his Daniel Variations. I find the dark harmonies and haunting vocals very appealing during movements one and three, which contrasts nicely with the lighter moods in the second and fourth.

I have purchased tickets to see a performance of Steve Reich’s works this year, at which Reich himself will be performing his work Clapping Music. I think this will be a great opportunity to see a range of his music in concert, and I hope to learn a great deal from the experience.

Bibliography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Reich [Accessed 13th Jan 2013]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2012/oct/22/steve-reich-contemporary-music-guide [Accessed 13th Jan 2013]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/a3031680-c359-458f-a641-70ccbaec6a74 [Accessed 15 Jan 2013]
Steve Reich-Phase to Face. 2011 [DVD] Directed by Eric Darmon and Franck Mallet. France:Euroarts