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Steve Reich | |
|---|---|
 Reich at theHolland Festival,c. June 1976 | |
| Born | (1936-10-03)October 3, 1936 (age 89) New York City, U.S. |
| Era | Contemporary |
| Notable work | |
| Website | stevereich |
Stephen Michael Reich (/raɪʃ/RYSHE;[1][2][3] born October 3, 1936) is an American composer best known as a pioneer ofminimal music in the mid to late 1960s.[4][5][6] Reich's work is marked by its use ofrepetitive figures, slowharmonic rhythm, andcanons. Reich describes this concept in his essay "Music as a Gradual Process" by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go "out of phase." This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow.[7]
His innovations include usingtape loops to createphasing patterns, as on the early compositionsIt's Gonna Rain (1965) andCome Out (1966), and the use of simple, audibleprocesses, as onPendulum Music (1968) andFour Organs (1970). Works likeDrumming (1971) andMusic for 18 Musicians (1976), both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences onexperimental music,rock, and contemporaryelectronic music, would help entrench minimalism as a movement.[8] Reich's work took on a darker character in the 1980s with the introduction of historical themes as well as themes from his Jewish heritage, notablyDifferent Trains (1988).
Reich's style of composition has influenced many contemporary composers and groups, especially in the United States and Great Britain. The critic Andrew Clements has suggested that Reich is one of "a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history".[9]
Reich was born in New York City to Jewish parents, the Broadway lyricistJune Sillman and Leonard Reich. When he was one year old, his parents divorced, and Reich divided his time between New York and California. He is the half-brother of writerJonathan Carroll.[10] He was given piano lessons as a child and describes growing up with the "middle-class favorites", having no exposure to music written before 1750 or after 1900. At the age of 14 he began to study music in earnest, after hearing music from theBaroque period and earlier, as well as music of the 20th century.[11] Reich studied drums withRoland Kohloff in order to playjazz. While attendingCornell University, he minored in music and graduated in 1957 with a B.A. in Philosophy.[12] Reich's B.A. thesis was onLudwig Wittgenstein;[13] later he would set texts by that philosopher to music inProverb[14] (1995) andYou Are (variations) (2006).[15]
For a year following graduation, Reich studied composition privately withHall Overton before he enrolled atJuilliard[16] to work withWilliam Bergsma andVincent Persichetti (1958–1961). Subsequently, he attendedMills College inOakland, California, where he studied withLuciano Berio andDarius Milhaud (1961–1963) and earned a master's degree in composition. At Mills, Reich composedMelodica formelodica andtape, which appeared in 1986 on the three-LP releaseMusic from Mills.[17]
Reich worked with theSan Francisco Tape Music Center along withPauline Oliveros,Ramon Sender,Morton Subotnick,Phil Lesh andTerry Riley.[18] He was involved with the premiere of Riley'sIn C and suggested the use of the eighth note pulse, which is now standard in performance of the piece.
Reich's early forays into composition involved experimentation withtwelve-tone composition, but he found the rhythmic aspects of the number twelve more interesting than the pitch aspects.[19] Reich also composed film soundtracks forPlastic Haircut (1963),Oh Dem Watermelons (1965), andThick Pucker (1965), three films byRobert Nelson. The soundtrack ofPlastic Haircut, composed in 1963, was a short tape collage, possibly Reich's first. TheWatermelons soundtrack used two 19th-centuryminstrel tunes as its basis, and used repeated phrasing together in a large five-partcanon. The music forThick Pucker arose from street recordings Reich made walking around San Francisco with Nelson, who filmed in black and white 16mm. This film no longer survives. A fourth film from 1965, about 25 minutes long and tentatively entitled "Thick Pucker II", was assembled by Nelson from outtakes of that shoot and more of the raw audio Reich had recorded. Nelson was not happy with the resulting film and never showed it.
Reich was influenced by fellow minimalistTerry Riley, whose workIn C combines simple musical patterns, offset in time, to create a slowly shifting, cohesive whole. Reich adopted this approach to compose his first major work,It's Gonna Rain. Composed in 1965, the piece used a fragment of asermon about the end of the world given by a BlackPentecostal street-preacher known as Brother Walter. Reich built on his early tape work, transferring the last three words of the fragment, "it's gonna rain!", to multiple tape loops that gradually moveout of phase with one another.[20]
The 13-minuteCome Out (1966) uses similarly manipulatedsound collage recordings of a single spoken line given by Daniel Hamm, one of the falsely accusedHarlem Six, who was severely injured by police.[21] The survivor, who had been beaten, punctured a bruise on his own body to convince police to allow him to receive medical aid for his injury from the police beating. Out of Hamm's spoken line "I had to, like, open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them," Reich rerecorded the fragment "come out to show them" on two channels, which are initially played in unison. They quickly slip out of sync; gradually the discrepancy widens and becomes a reverberation. The two voices then split into four, looped continuously, then eight, and continues splitting until the actual words are unintelligible, leaving the listener with only the speech's rhythmic and tonal patterns.
InMelodica (1966), Reich applies the phase looping approach of his previous works to a musical instrument. He started by playing and recording a simple melody on amelodica. He then places the recording on two separate channels, and by slowly moving them out of phase creates an intricate interlocking melody. This piece is very similar toCome Out in rhythmic structure, and is an example of how one rhythmic process can be realized in different sounds to create two different pieces of music. Reich was inspired to compose this piece from a dream he had on May 22, 1966, and put the piece together in one day.Melodica was the last piece Reich composed solely for tape, and he considers it his transition from tape music to instrumental music.[22]
Reich's first attempt at translating this phasing technique from recorded tape to live performance was the 1967Piano Phase, for two pianos. InPiano Phase the performers repeat a rapid twelve-notemelodic figure, initially in unison. As one player keeps tempo with robotic precision, the other speeds up very slightly until the two parts line up again, but one sixteenth note apart. The second player then resumes the previous tempo. This cycle of speeding up and then locking in continues throughout the piece; the cycle comes full circle three times, the second and third cycles using shorter versions of the initial figure.Violin Phase, also written in 1967, is built on these same lines.Piano Phase andViolin Phase both premiered in a series of concerts given in New York art galleries.
A similar, lesser known example of this so-calledprocess music isPendulum Music (1968), which consists of the sound of several microphones swinging over the loudspeakers to which they are attached, producingfeedback as they do so. "Pendulum Music" has never been recorded by Reich himself,[citation needed] but was introduced to rock audiences bySonic Youth in the late 1990s.[clarification needed]
Reich also tried to create the phasing effect in a piece "that would need no instrument beyond the human body". He found that the idea of phasing was inappropriate for the simple ways he was experimenting to make sound. Instead, he composedClapping Music (1972), in which the players do not phase in and out with each other, but instead one performer keeps one line of a 12-eighth-note-long (12-quaver-long) phrase and the other performer shifts by oneeighth note beat every 12 bars, until both performers are back in unison 144 bars later.[23]
The 1967 prototype pieceSlow Motion Sound was not performed althoughChris Hughes performed it 27 years later asSlow Motion Blackbird on his Reich-influenced 1994 albumShift. It introduced the idea of slowing down a recorded sound until many times its original length without changing pitch or timbre, which Reich applied toFour Organs (1970), which deals specifically with augmentation. The piece hasmaracas playing a fasteighth notepulse, while the four organs stress certain eighth notes using an 11th chord. This work therefore dealt withrepetition and subtle rhythmic change. In contrast to Reich's typical cyclical structure,Four Organs is unique among his work in using a linear structure—the superficially similarPhase Patterns, also for four organs but without maracas, is (as the name suggests) a cyclical phase piece similar to others composed during the period.Four Organs was performed as part of aBoston Symphony Orchestra program, and was Reich's first composition to be performed in a large traditional setting.
In June 1970, Reich travelled to theUniversity of Ghana to studypolyrhythmic music for five weeks with theEwe master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie.[24] From this experience, as well asA. M. Jones'sStudies in African Music about themusic of the Ewe people, Reich drew inspiration for his extensive pieceDrumming (1970–1971), which he started to compose shortly after his return. Composed for a nine-piece percussion ensemble with female voices andpiccolo,Drumming marked the beginning of a new stage in his career, for around this time he formed his ensemble,Steve Reich and Musicians, and increasingly concentrated on composition and performance with them. Steve Reich and Musicians was the sole ensemble to interpret his works for many years,[25] and they remain a "living laboratory" for his music.[26] The ensemble still remains active with many of its original members.[27]
AfterDrumming, Reich moved on from the "phase shifting" technique that he had pioneered, and began writing more elaborate pieces. He started investigating other musical processes such asaugmentation (the temporal lengthening of phrases and melodic fragments). In the summers of 1973 and 1974, he studiedBalinese gamelansemar pegulingan andgambang[28] (atSeattle andBerkeley).[24][29] This experience influenced the composition ofMusic for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973).[28] Another work from this period isSix Pianos (1973).
In 1974, Reich began writingMusic for 18 Musicians. This piece involved many new ideas, although it also recalls earlier pieces. It is based on acycle ofeleven chords introduced at the beginning (called "Pulses"), followed by a small section of music based on eachchord ("Sections I-XI"), and finally a return to the original cycle ("Pulses II"). This was Reich's first attempt at writing for largerensembles. The increased number of performers resulted in more scope for psychoacoustic effects, which fascinated Reich, and he noted that he would like to "explore this idea further". Reich remarked that this one work contained more harmonic movement in the first five minutes than any other work he had written. Steve Reich and Musicians made thepremier recording of this work onECM Records.
One of Reich’s characteristic compositional strategies for his minimalist work is his omission of bass notes to avoid tonal structure. “The reason lay in his antipathy to the functionality, which Reich thought inevitable, of the bass in determining and spelling out a tonal center and the relationships developed around this”. "Music for 18 Musicians” maintains his minimalist feel through these “phases” and harmonic shifts. A piece with rich tonal exploration about an hour’s length performance can only provide so much melodic opportunity, so repetitive rhythmic structure also plays a large role in this.[30]
Reich explored these ideas further in his frequently recorded piecesMusic for a Large Ensemble (1978) andOctet (1979). In these two works, Reich experimented with "the human breath as the measure of musical duration ... the chords played by the trumpets are written to take one comfortable breath to perform".[31] Human voices are part of the musical palette inMusic for a Large Ensemble but the wordless vocal parts simply form part of the texture (as they do inDrumming). WithOctet and his first orchestral pieceVariations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards (also 1979), Reich's music showed the influence of Biblicalcantillation, which he had studied in Israel since the summer of 1977. After this, the human voice singing a text would play an increasingly important role in Reich's music.
The technique ... consists of taking pre-existing melodic patterns and stringing them together to form a longer melody in the service of a holy text. If you take away the text, you're left with the idea of putting together small motives to make longer melodies – a technique I had not encountered before.[32]
In 1974 Reich published the bookWritings About Music, containing essays on his philosophy, aesthetics, and musical projects written between 1963 and 1974. An updated and much more extensive collection,Writings On Music (1965–2000), was published in 2002.
Reich's work took on a darker character in the 1980s with the introduction of historical themes as well as themes from his Jewish heritage.Tehillim (1981),Hebrew forpsalms, is the first of Reich's works to draw explicitly on his Jewish background. The work is in four parts, and is scored for an ensemble of four women's voices (one highsoprano, two lyric sopranos and onealto),piccolo, flute,oboe,English horn, twoclarinets, six percussion (playing small tunedtambourines without jingles, clapping,maracas,marimba,vibraphone andcrotales), twoelectronic organs, two violins,viola, cello and double bass, with amplified voices, strings, and winds. A setting of texts from Psalms 19:2–5 (19:1–4 in Christian translations), 34:13–15 (34:12–14), 18:26–27 (18:25–26), and 150:4–6,Tehillim is a departure from Reich's other work in its formal structure; the setting of texts several lines long rather than the fragments used in previous works makes melody a substantive element. Use of formalcounterpoint and functionalharmony also contrasts with the loosely structured minimalist works written previously. The musicologist Ronit Seter described it as "one of a very few non-Israeli works where the setting of the Hebrew text feels natural", reflecting Reich's extensive research into modern Hebrew-Israeli speech, ancient Psalmic prosody and Jewish cantillation traditions.[33]
Different Trains (1988), forstring quartet and tape, uses recorded speech, as in his earlier works, but this time as a melodic rather than a rhythmic element. InDifferent Trains, Reich compares and contrasts his childhood memories of his train journeys between New York and California in 1939–1941 with the very different trains being used to transport contemporaneous European children to their deaths underNazi rule. TheKronos Quartet recording ofDifferent Trains was awarded theGrammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 1990. The composition was described byRichard Taruskin as "the only adequate musical response—one of the few adequate artistic responses in any medium—tothe Holocaust", and he credited the piece with earning Reich a place among the great composers of the 20th century.[34]
In 1993, Reich collaborated with his wife, the video artistBeryl Korot, on an opera,The Cave, which explores the roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam through the words of Israelis,Palestinians, and Americans, echoed musically by the ensemble. The work, for percussion, voices, and strings, is a musical documentary, named for theCave of Machpelah inHebron, where a mosque now stands andAbraham is said to have been buried. According to musicologist Ronit Seter, the work "share[s] the confrontational, yet peaceful message" conveyed by contemporaneous Israeli composers.[33]
Reich and Korot collaborated on the operaThree Tales, which concerns theHindenburg disaster, the testing ofnuclear weapons onBikini Atoll, and other more modern concerns, specificallyDolly the sheep,cloning, and thetechnological singularity.
Reich used sampling techniques for pieces likeThree Tales andCity Life from 1994. Reich returned to composing purely instrumental works for the concert hall, starting withTriple Quartet in 1998 written for the Kronos Quartet that can either be performed by string quartet and tape, three string quartets or 36-piece string orchestra. According to Reich, the piece is influenced byBartók's andAlfred Schnittke's string quartets, andMichael Gordon'sYo Shakespeare.[35]
The instrumental series for the concert hall continued withDance Patterns (2002),Cello Counterpoint (2003), and multiple works centered around variations:You Are (Variations) (2004),Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings (2005), and theDaniel Variations (2006).You Are looks back to the vocal writing ofTehillim andThe Desert Music while theDaniel Variations, which Reich called "much darker, not at all what I'm known for", are partly inspired by the death ofDaniel Pearl.[36]
In 2002 Reich was invited byWalter Fink to the annualKomponistenporträt of theRheingau Musik Festival, as the 12th composer featured.
In December 2010Nonesuch Records andIndaba Music held a community remix contest in which over 250 submissions were received, and Steve Reich and Christian Carey judged the finals. Reich spoke in a related BBC interview that once he composed a piece he would not alter it again himself; "When it's done, it's done," he said. On the other hand, he acknowledged that remixes have an old tradition e.g. famous religious music pieces where melodies were further developed into new songs.[37]
Reich premiered a piece,WTC 9/11, written for String Quartet and Tape (a similar instrumentation to that ofDifferent Trains) in March 2011. This was a response to theSeptember 11 attacks and used recordings from emergency services and from family members who were in New York during the attacks.[38] It was premiered by theKronos Quartet, atDuke University, North Carolina, US.[39]
On March 5, 2013, the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Brad Lubman, at theRoyal Festival Hall in London gave the world premiere ofRadio Rewrite, Reich's work inspired by the bandRadiohead. The programme also includedDouble Sextet,Clapping Music, featuring Reich himself alongside percussionistColin Currie,Electric Counterpoint, with electric guitar byMats Bergström as well as two of Reich's ensemble pieces.[40]
Music for Ensemble and Orchestra was premiered on November 4, 2018 by theLos Angeles Philharmonic underSusanna Mälkki atWalt Disney Concert Hall, marking Reich's return to writing for orchestra after an interval of more than thirty years.[41][42]
Reich has lived with his wife Beryl Korot in a home inupstate New York since 2006.[43]
In 2005, Reich was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal.[44][45]
Reich was awarded with thePraemium Imperiale Award in Music in October 2006.[46]
On January 25, 2007, Reich was named 2007 recipient of thePolar Music Prize with jazz saxophonistSonny Rollins.[47]
On April 20, 2009, Reich was awarded the 2009Pulitzer Prize for Music, recognizingDouble Sextet, first performed in Richmond March 26, 2008. The citation called it "a major work that displays an ability to channel an initial burst of energy into a large-scale musical event, built with masterful control and consistently intriguing to the ear".[48][49]
In May 2011 Steve Reich received an honorary doctorate from theNew England Conservatory of Music.[50]
In 2012, Steve Reich received the Gold Medal in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[51]
In 2013 Reich received the US$400,000BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in contemporary music for bringing a new conception of music, based on the use of realist elements from the realm of daily life and others drawn from the traditional music of Africa and Asia.[52]
In September 2014, Reich was awarded the "Leone d'Oro" (Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music) from theVenice Biennale.[53]
In March 2016, Reich was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by theRoyal College of Music in London.[54]
The American composer and criticKyle Gann has said that Reich "may ... be considered, by general acclamation, America's greatest living composer".[55] Writing inThe Guardian, music critic Andrew Clements has suggested that Reich is one of "a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history".[9]
Reich's style of composition has influenced many other composers and musical groups, includingJohn Adams,Michael Nyman,Aphex Twin,Björk,Sonic Youth,American Football,[56]Stereolab,[57]King Crimson,Autechre,Matmos,Michael Hedges,Brian Eno,the Residents,Underworld, the composers associated with theBang on a Can festival (includingDavid Lang,Michael Gordon, andJulia Wolfe),Sufjan Stevens,[58][59][60] Matthew Healy ofthe 1975,[61]Tortoise,[62][63][64]The Mercury Program,[65]JG Thirlwell,[66] andGodspeed You! Black Emperor (which titled an unreleased song "Steve Reich").[67]
John Adams commented, "He didn't reinvent the wheel so much as he showed us a new way to ride."[68] He has also influenced visual artists such asBruce Nauman, and many notable choreographers have made dances to his music,Eliot Feld,Jiří Kylián,Douglas Lee andJerome Robbins among others; he has expressed particular admiration ofAnne Teresa De Keersmaeker's work set to his pieces.
In featuring a sample of Reich'sElectric Counterpoint (1987) in the 1990 trackLittle Fluffy Clouds the Britishambient techno actthe Orb exposed a new generation of listeners to his music.[69] In 1999 the albumReich Remixed featuredremixes of a number of Reich's works by various electronic dance-music producers, such asDJ Spooky,Kurtis Mantronik,Ken Ishii, andColdcut among others.[69][70]
Reich'sCello Counterpoint (2003) was the inspiration for a series of commissions for solo cello with pre-recorded cellos made byAshley Bathgate in 2017 including new works byEmily Cooley andAlex Weiser.[71]
Reich often citesPérotin,J. S. Bach,Debussy,Bartók, andStravinsky as composers whom he admires and who greatly influenced him when he was young.[72] Jazz is a major part of the formation of Reich's musical style, and two of the earliest influences on his work were vocalistsElla Fitzgerald andAlfred Deller, whose emphasis on the artistic capabilities of the voice alone with little vibrato or other alteration was an inspiration to his earliest works.John Coltrane's style, which Reich has described as "playing a lot of notes to very few harmonies", also had an impact; of particular interest was the albumAfrica/Brass, which "was basically a half-an-hour in E".[73] Reich's influence from jazz includes its roots, also, from the West African music he studied in his readings and visit to Ghana. Other important influences areKenny Clarke andMiles Davis, and visual artist friends such asSol LeWitt andRichard Serra. Reich has also stated that he admires the music of the bandRadiohead, which led to his compositionRadio Rewrite.[74]
Actually, I wrote a thesis criticizingGilbert Ryle for criticizing Wittgenstein.
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)Freshman year, I was turned on to a lot of the bands that would influence our sound:Nick Drake,Red House Painters,Elliott Smith,Codeine,the Sea and Cake,The Smiths/Morrissey,Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Can, Steve Reich, etc.
There's been a Steve Reich influence--andPhilip Glass and people like that--on a lot of our records.
I drew inspiration from a diverse array of sources. I was as influenced byEnnio Morricone andJames Brown as I was by Steve Reich andThe Pop Group.
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