Steve Reich (1963 - )3rd movement (Fast)

from Electric Counterpoint

(1987)the study of this set work you will learn about:

• the origins of minimalism• the features of minimalism• the life and works of Steve Reich• how the 3rd movement (Fast) from Electric Counterpoint is constructed through an analysis of the music.

Before minimalism

Throughout the 20th century, composers sought to push music in new and interesting directions.

At the beginning of the century, Schoenberg pushed the boundaries of tonality by abandoning the normal use of keys altogether, developing the style we now know as expressionism.

Expressionism led into serialism, which caught the imagination of many composers of the time.

Composers (such as Stockhausen) experimented with electronics so that they could control every aspect of the timbre of the note

Some composers felt restricted by serialism, especially this total serialism, so they naturally went in completely the opposite direction, giving the performer back much more control of the composition than they were used to.

Experimentalism In reaction to the massively detailed scores of serialism, these composers came up with various alternative approaches such as:

scores with little or no detail at allscores with the staff notation replaced by written directions (text-based scores) scores with staff notation replaced by symbols and pictures (graphic scores) the music of Cornelius Cardew is a prime example of this approach.

These composers liked the way instruments used the extremes of their pitch ranges and were being pushed to the maximum by the serialist composers, but thought that the next logical step would be to use instruments in unconventional ways - by hitting the body of the instruments, plucking the strings in the piano, bowing cymbals or immersing them in water and so on.

Of course, this can be taken further - why stop at making strange noises with musical instruments when you can make musical noises with everyday objects such as pieces of paper, bottles, doors and cars?

La Monte Young and Terry Riley• The composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley belonged to this second group of

composers. • They were both completely fascinated with drones and repetition, so tended to use

these as the basis for their compositions. • Young took this to extremes, basing entire pieces on a very long, extended notes

played very loudly and adding harmonics to it.• He would often revisit pieces, constantly reworking and extending them, so much

so that he rarely considers his pieces to be completed. • He would also write pieces that were mostly improvised, but based around very

carefully controlled rules or themes that might last anywhere from 45 minutes to 6 hours (his piece, The 'I-tuned Piano (1964-present) is an example of this).

• Much of his music does not contain many different musical ideas, and this method of making the most of minimal musical resources is where the term 'minimalism' comes from.

• Terry Riley was a friend and colleague of Young. • He studied with Young and his career as a composer shadowed Young's for a while. • In the early 1960s Riley experimented with tape loops of various sounds, combining

these with delay and occasional instrumental sounds. • He would run the loops through the reel-to-reel tape recorders, out of the open

window, around some wine bottles and back in to the tape recorder again. • Riley's most important work, which brought minimalism to the notice of the

musical mainstream, was In C (1965). This piece focuses on repetition of short musical fragments along with a constantly repeating quaver C keeping the pulse.

• The first performance of this work included Steve Reich in the ensemble.

Hallmarks of minimalismThe following are features of minimalism in general, some of which are used in the set work and others are present in other minimalist works:

• drones - a long, continuous note or a constantly repeated note (can be any pitch, but is often a low note)

• ostinati/loops - repeated musical ideas. The shortest ideas are called cells

• phasing - two almost identical parts -which go out of sync with each other and gradually, after a number of repetitions, come back into sync again

• metamorphosis - gradually changing from one musical idea to another, often by changing one note at a time

• layering - adding new musical parts, commonly one at a time. The parts will often interact with each other forming a complex texture key - the texture is equally as important as the key in defining the structure of a piece

• note addition - starting off with a very simple, sparse ostinato containing many rests, and gradually adding notes over a number of repetitions

• note subtraction - starting off with a more complex ostinato and gradually taking notes away, leaving rests in their place

• rhythmic displacement - playing a musical phrase so that the accents fall in different places to what would be expected. For example, playing a three-note quaver pattern in 4/4 time so that the accent falls on the first note, then the second note, then the third note, or playing the same phrase but starting at a different point in the bar (this is what Reich does with 'ostinato 1' as shown later)

• augmentation - extending the durations of a rhythmic pattern. For example, a four note idea becomes

• diminution - the opposite of augmentation

• static harmony - the piece appears to have one long chord which only changes very gradually, if at all (there is no impression of a chord sequence)

• non-functional harmony - there are chord sequences, but they do not seem to follow the expected hierarchy of tonic, dominant, sub-dominant etc (the chords do not seem to lead from one to the other in the way dictated by classical harmonic rules

• Parallels can be drawn between minimalism in music and minimalism in art - the use of minimal resources makes us experience the work in a different way, getting drawn into a world of the composer's/artist's creation.

• People tend to react to this quite strongly, either positively or negatively.• The next set work is in the minimalist style and is by the minimalist composer,

Steve Reich.

Minimalist art

A painting in the minimalist style entitled 'Magenta', by Mark Rothko.

• This places very specialised demands on performers, such as the need to concentrate deeply on the exact timing of every note or to count many repeats without cues to tell a performer where they are in the piece.

• To meet these special requirements, Reich formed his own ensemble in 1966, starting with just three members, but growing to meet the requirements of new pieces he composed.

• In 1970, Reich took time out to study African drumming in Ghana. • This led to him writing works such as Drumming (1970-1971) and Clapping Music (1972) that are based around

rhythms phasing in the same way as the tape loops did in It's Gonna Rain and Come Out. • He also studied Balinese gamelan music in 1973-1974, but this may not have had such a profound impact on his

music other than the extensive use of mallet instruments (such as the marimba) in his ensembles. • In 1976-1977, he studied traditional Hebrew chanting which he included in the work Tehillim (1981).• He has written major works for various ensembles including Music for 18 Musicians (1974-1976), The Desert Music

(1984) and Different Trains (1988). • He has been acclaimed as 'our greatest living composer' by The New York Times, amongst other accolades, and has

won many awards for his compositions.

Steve Reich (1963 – )• Born in New York in 1936, Steve Reich grew up in New York and California. • He studied philosophy at university and afterwards went on to study composition at

the Juilliard School of Music and Mills College (where he worked with the famous composers Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud).

• He performed in Terry Riley's ensemble for a while and, like Riley, became fascinated with tape loops.

• In 1965/66 he composed two pieces called It's Gonna Rain and Come Out. • Reich's music is often rhythmically complex with much repetition.

• In each of these pieces he created two identical tape loops of some speech he felt contained musical qualities and played them simultaneously on two different tape recorders.

• Because the tape recorders ran at slightly different speeds, the loops gradually went out of sync with each other.

• As the loops become more and more out of sync, the speech becomes less intelligible until it starts to be heard as a rhythm rather than speech.

• The effect is rather trance-like and is the extreme form of the 'phasing' technique.• After a while the loops would come back into sync again. • These pieces were a breakthrough in the world of music and would form the basis

of Reich's compositional technique.

“Its Gonna Rain” and “Come Out”

Background to Electric Counterpoint• Electric Counterpoint is the last in a series of three pieces for soloists playing along with pre-recorded

multi-track tapes of themselves. • The other two pieces in the series are Vermont Counterpoint (1982) for flute and New York

Counterpoint (1985) for clarinet. • Electric Counterpoint was commissioned for the jazz guitarist Pat Metheny to perform at the Brooklyn

Academy of Music's 'Next Wave' Festival. • Metheny would record all the instrumental parts himself (12 guitars and two bass guitars) under the

watchful eye of Reich, and this would be used as a stereo 'backing track' to which he would perform the live part.

• The recorded parts are seen by the composer as something more than a 'backing track' - it is a way for the performer to perform in an ensemble with himself, even if it does not allow for live interaction.

• The act of recording the piece takes an incredible amount of precision, with Metheny himself saying that it was a much more difficult task than he had expected - when you listen to the interweaving parts and the precise timing, you can hear what he means.

• This piece takes the act of using tape loops in a different direction - instead of using one, constantly repeating loop like that in It's Gonna Rain or Come Out, the composer uses the tape as a way of capturing the sound of one performer, giving the whole piece a togetherness of sound that would not be possible using different live performers.

• The piece is like a tape loop that develops - multi-tracking the performer allows note addition and other development techniques that would not be possible with a fixed loop, but the sounds are all coming from an identical sound source - the performer's fingers and guitar.

Parts and layers• Like much minimalist music, Electric Counterpoint is built up in layers. • In the third movement (simply titled 'Fast' by Reich), there are seven pre-recorded

electric guitar parts and two bass guitars. • The live guitar is then performed along with the recorded parts.• The texture gradually builds up in the first section (section A), with the guitar parts

entering in the following order:1. Guitar 12. Live Guitar3. Guitar 24. Guitar 35. Guitar 46. Bass Guitars 1 and 27. Guitar 58. Guitar 69. Guitar 7

• This piece is divided into two main sections with a coda. • The main sections are then subdivided into four smaller sections, each of which is

defined by changes in key and texture.