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Steve Reich (born October 3, 1936) is one of the most famous living composers, who is popularly regarded as repetitive and minimalist, but in some works deviates from a purely minimalist style. His style of
music has influenced many others including the group of composers associated with the Bang On A Can festival such as David Lang.
Reich's music explores such ideas in contemporary music as
using tape loops to create phasing
patterns - amongst Reich's first works, It's Gonna Rain, Come Out, Drumming, and others, and using
processes to create and explore concepts in music (Pendulum
Music, Four Organs).
Reich achieved a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1957,
attended the Juilliard School and, from 1961 to 1963, Mills College in Oakland, California with Luciano Berio and
Darius Milhaud. His works, particularly Drumming (1971), show
the influence of African music, Reich being particularly influenced by A. M. Jones' Studies in African Music about Ghanian Ewe music. Eventually he travelled to Ghana to study drumming. He also studied Balinese gamelan in Seattle.
After Drumming, Reich moved on from the "phase shifting" technique that he had pioneered, and began to start writing
more elaborate pieces. He moved on to other musical processes such as augmentation (the temporal lengthening of phrases and melodic fragments). It was during this period that he
wrote works such as Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973) and
Four Organs.
Four Organs deals specifically with augmentation, and was based
on a piece written in 1967, Slow Motion Sound, which was more of a prototype piece. Having never been performed, the idea of
slowing down a recorded sound until many times its original length without changing pitch or timbre was applied to Four Organs.
The result was a piece with maracas playing a fast quaver pulse, while the four organs stress certain quavers using an 11th chord. This work therefore dealt with rhythmic
change and repetition. This work is unique in the context of Reich's other
pieces in the way that is in linear as opposed to being cyclic like his earlier works.
In 1974, Reich began writing what would be classed as his seminal work by most, Music for 18 Musicians. This piece involved a lot of new ideas, although it harked back
to earlier pieces. The piece is based around a cycle of eleven chords, then a small piece of music is based around each chord,
then returning to the original cycle at the end. The sections are aptly named "Pulses", Section I-X, and "Pulses". This was
Reich's first attempt at writing for larger ensembles, and the extension
of performers resulted in a growth of pyscho-acoustic effects, which fascinated Reich, and he noted that he would like to
"explore this idea further". Reich also noted that this one work contained more harmonic movement in the first five minutes then
any other work he had written.
In 1993, Reich collaborated with his wife, the video artist Beryl Korot, on the opera, The Cave, which explores the roots of
Judaism, Christianity and
Islam. The two collaborated again on the opera Three Tales, which concerns the
Hindenburg disaster, the testing of nuclear weapons on Bikini
Atoll, and more modern concerns, specifically Dolly the sheep and
cloning.
Notable works include:
See also John Adams, Philip Glass, Terry Riley.
External links
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