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Different Trains , for String Quartet and pre-recorded performance tape, begins a new way of composing that has its roots in my early tape pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). The basic idea is that carefully chosen speech recordings generate the musical materials for musical instruments.
The idea for the piece form my childhood. When I was one year old my parents separated. My mother moved to Los Angeles and my father stayed in New York. Since they arranged divided custody, I travelled back and forth by train frequently between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1942 accompanied by my governess. While the trips were exciting and romantic at the time I now look back and think that, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains. With this in mind I wanted to make a piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation. In order to prepare the tape I did the following:
Eight Lines is structured in five sections, of which the first and third resemble each other in their moving piano, cello, viola and bass clarinet figures, while the second and fourth sections resemble each other in their longer held tones in the cello. The fifth and final section combines these materials. The transitions between sections is as smooth as possible with some overlapping in the parts so that it is sometimes hard to tell exactly when one section ends and the next begins.
In the first, third and fifth sections there are somewhat longer melodic lines in the flute and/or piccolo. This interest in longer melodic lines composed of shorter patterns strung together has its roots in my earlier music as well as my studies in 1976-77 of the cancellation (chanting) of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Steve Reich
Electric Counterpoint (1987) was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival for guitarist Pat Metheny. It was composed during the summer of 1987. The duration is about 15 minutes. It is the third in a series of pieces (first Vermont Counterpoint in 1982 for flutist Ransom Wilson followed by New York Counterpoint in 1985 for clarinettist Richard Stolzman) all dealing with a soloist playing against a pre-recorded tape of themselves. In Electric Counterpoint the soloist pre-records as many as 10 guitars and 2 electric bass parts and then plays the final 11th guitar part live against the tape. I would like to thank Pat Metheny for showing me how to improve the piece in terms of making it more idiomatic for the guitar.
Electric Counterpoint is in three movements; fast, slow, fast, played one after the other without pause. The first movement, after an introductory pulsing section where the harmonies of the movement are stated, uses a theme derived from Central African horn music that I became aware of through the ethnomusicologist Simha Arom. That theme is built up in eight voice canon and while the remaining two guitars and bass play pulsing harmonies the soloist plays melodic patterns that result from the contrapuntal interlocking of those eight pre-recorded guitars.
The second movement cuts the tempo in half, changes key and introduces a new theme, which is then slowly built up in nine guitars in canon. Once again two other guitars and bass supply harmony while the soloist brings out melodic patterns that result from the overall contrapuntal web.
The third movement returns to the original tempo and key and introduces a new pattern in triple meter. After building up a four guitar canon two bass guitars enter suddenly to further stress the triple meter. The soloist then introduces a new series of strummed chords that are then built up in three guitar canon. When these are complete the soloist returns to melodic patterns that result from the overall counterpoint when suddenly the basses begin to change both key and meter back and forth between E minor and C minor and between 3/2 and 12/8 so that one hears first 3 groups of 4 eighth notes and then 4 groups of 3 eighth notes. These rhythmic and tonal changes speed up more and more rapidly until at the end the basses slowly fade out and the ambiguities are finally resolved in 12/8 and E minor.
Steve Reich
Melodica is composed of one tape loop gradually going out of phase with itself, first in two voices and then in four. The original loop is of myself playing the four note pattern on the melodica, a toy instrument. I dreamed the melodic pattern, woke up on May 22nd, 1966, and realized the piece with the melodica and tape loops in one day. Melodica was composed of musical pitches, as opposed to the speech fragments used in my two earlier tape pieces, It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). It proved to be both a transition phase shifting process, and the last tape piece I ever made.
Steve Reich
While working on Six Pianos I also began work on another piece that seemed to grow very spontaneously from one simple marimba pattern to many patterns played by different instruments. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ was completed in May 1973, and deals with two simultaneous interrelated rhythmic processes.
The first is that of constructing, beat by beat, a duplicate of a pre-existing repeating musical pattern with the second being one or more beats out of phase with the first, exactly as in Six Pianos . This then triggers the second process of augmentation of another simultaneous but different repeating musical pattern. The first process of rhythmic construction is performed by marimbas against marimbas and glockenspiel against glockenspiel. These rhythmic constructions, which have the effect of creating more fast moving activities in the mallet instruments, then trigger the two women's voices and organ into doubling, quadrupling, and further elongation the duration of the motes they sing and play. When the marimbas and glockenspiels have built up to maximum activity, causing the voices and organ to elongate to maximum length and slowness, then a third woman's voice doubles some of the short melodic patterns resulting from the combination of the four marimba players, using her voice to precisely imitate the sound of these instruments (exactly as in part two of Drumming ). During the rhythmic constructions in the marimbas and glockenspiels, the metallophone plays long ringing tones for the same duration as the voices and organ. When the voices and organ get longer, so do the tones of the metallophone. However, a bar of steel over an aluminium resonator tube rings for just so long and then decays into inaudibility so that when the voices and organ have reached their maximum length the metallophone then begins playing rippling sixteenth notes, moving as fast or faster than all the other mallet instruments in combination. After these sections where the voices and organ have reached their maximum length (based on the length of continuous tone a single breath can sustain), the marimbas and glockenspiels begin, one at a time, to abruptly move into unison with each other, thus allowing the voices, organ, and metallophone to begin reducing the length of their sustained tones. This paired process of rhythmic construction-augmentation followed by rhythmic unison-diminution occurs four times in sections marked off by changes in key and meter. The first section is in F dorian 3/4, the second in A-flat dorian 2/4, the third in B-flat natural minor 3/4, and the fourth is an A-flat dominant 11th chord 3/4.
Steve Reich
Nagoya Marimbas (1994) is somewhat similar to my pieces from the 1960s and '70s in that there are repeating patterns played on both marimbas, one or more beats out of phase, creating a series of two part unison canons. However, these patterns are more melodically developed, change frequently and each is usually repeated no more than three times, similar to my more recent work. The piece is also considerably more difficult to play than my earlier ones and requires two virtuosic performers.
Steve Reich
New York Counterpoint was commissioned by The Fromm Music Foundation for clarinettist Richard Stolzman. It was composed during the summer of 1985. The duration is about 11 minutes. The piece is a continuation of the ideas found in Vermont Counterpoint (1982), where as soloist plays against a pre-recorded tape of him or her self. In New York Counterpoint the soloist pre-records ten clarinet and bass clarinet parts and then plays a final 11th part live against the tape. The compositional procedures include several that occur in my earlier music. The opening pulses ultimately come from the opening of Music for 18 Musicians (1976). The use of interlocking repeated melodic patterns played by multiples of the same instrument can be found in my earliest works, Piano Phase (for 2 pianos or 2 marimbas) and Violin Phase (for 4 violins) both from 1967. In the nature of the patterns, their combination harmonically, and in the faster rate of change, the piece reflects my recent works, particularly Sextet (1985). New York Counterpoint is in three movements: fast, slow, fast, played one after the other without pause. The change of tempo is abrupt and in the simple relation of 1:2. The piece is in the meter 3/2 = 6/4 (=12/8). As is often the case when I write in this meter, there is an ambiguity between whether one hears measures of 3 groups of 4 eight notes, or 4 groups of 3 eight notes. In the last movement of New York Counterpoint the bass clarinets function to accent first one and then the other of these possibilities while the upper clarinets essentially do not change. The effect, by change of accent, is to vary the perception of that which in fact is not changing.
Steve Reich
Six Pianos (1973) grew out of the idea I had to do a piece for all the pianos in a pianos store. The piece which actually resulted is a bit more modest in scope since too many pianos (especially if they are large grands) can begin to sound thick and unmanageable. Using six smaller grands made it possible to play the fast, rhythmically intricate kind of music I am drawn to while at the same time allowing the players to be physically close together so as to hear each other clearly.
The piece begins with four pianists all playing the same eight-beat rhythmic pattern, but with different notes. The other two pianist then begin in unison to gradually build up the exact pattern of one of the pianists already playing by putting the notes of his fifth eight-note on the seventh eight-note of their measure, then his first on their third, and so on until they have constructed the same pattern with the same notes, but two eighth-notes out of phrase. This is the same process of substituting beats for rests as appears for the first time in Drumming , but here, instead of the process happening by itself, it happens against another performer (or performers) already playing that pattern in another rhythmic position. The end result is that a pattern played against itself but one or more beats out of phase. Though this result is similar to many older pieces of mine, the process of arriving at that result is new. Instead of slow shifts of phase, there is percussive build up of beats in place of rests. The use of pianos here is more like the sets of tuned drums.
When these phase relationships have been fully constructed, one or two other pianists then double some of the many melodic patterns resulting from this four or five piano relationship. By gradually increasing the volume of these resulting patterns they bring them to the surface of the music, and by gradually fading out enable the listener to hear these patterns, and hopefully many others, pre-existing in the ongoing four or five piano relationship. The decisions as to which resulting patterns were most musical, and what their order would be, were made by James Preiss, Steve Chambers and myself during rehearsals.
This process of rhythmic construction followed by doubling the resulting patterns is then continued in three sections marked of by changes in mode, key, and gradually higher position on the keyboard, the first being in D major, the second in E dorian, and the third in B natural minor.
Steve Reich
Three Tales is a three act digital video opera in which historical film and video footage, videotaped interviews, photographs, text and specially constructed stills are recreated on the computer, transferred back to video tape and projected on one large 32 foot screen. Sixteen musicians and singers take their place onstage along with the screen.
Three Tales recalls three well known events from the early, middle and late 20th century: Hindenberg, Bikini, and Dolly. Each of these reflects on the growth and implications of technology during the 21st century from early air transport and world wars to the current ethical debate about the future of our species. This debate about the physical, ethical and religious nature of the expanding technological environment has continued and grown pervasive since 1945.
The first tale, Hindenburg, tells of the zeppelin’s explosion in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937. The unambiguously positive attitude towards technology is presented through newscasters of the era. The second, Bikini, is based on footage, photographs, and text from the Atom bomb tests at Bikini atoll in 1946-1954. It also tells of the dislocation and relocation of the Bikini people, living totally outside the Western world which determined their fate. The third tale, Dolly, takes its title from the adult sheep cloned in Scotland in 1997. It deals extensively with the idea of the human body as a machine, genetic engineering, technological evolution and robotics.
Steve Reich
Triple Quartet is for three string quartets. For Kronos (or any other single string quartet) to perform the piece they must pre-record quartets two and three and then play the quartet one part along with the pre-recorded tape. Alternatively, the piece can be played by 12 or more string players with no tape.
The piece is in three movements (fast-slow-fast) and is organized harmonically on four dominant chords in minor keys a minor third apart: E minor, G minor, B-flat minor, C-sharp, minor, and then returning to E minor to form a cycle. The first movement goes through this harmonic cycle twice with a section about one minute long on each of the four dominant chords. The result is a kind of variation form.
Rhythmically the first movement has the second and third quartet playing interlocking chords while the first quartet plays longer melodies in canon between the first violin and viola against the second violin and cello.
The slow movement is more completely contrapuntal with a long slow melody in canon eventually in all 12 voices. It stays in E minor throughout.
The third movement resumes the original fast tempo and maintains the harmonic chord cycle, but modulates back and forth between keys more rapidly. The final section of the movement is in the initial key of E minor, and there the piece finally cadences.
Triple Quartet was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Kronos Quartet.
Steve Reich, 1998
Vermont Counterpoint (1982) was commissioned by flutist Ransom Wilson and is dedicated to Betty Freeman. It is scored for three alto flutes, three flutes, three piccolos and one solo part all pre-record on tape, plus a live solo part. The live soloist plays alto flute, flute and piccolo and participates in the ongoing counterpoint as well as more extended melodies. The piece could be performed by eleven flutists but is intend primarily as a solo with tape. The duration is approximately ten minutes. In that comparatively short time four sections in four different keys, with the third in a slower tempo, are presented. The compositional techniques used are primarily building up canons between short repeating melodic patterns by substituting notes for rests and then playing melodies that result from their combination. These resulting melodies or melodic patterns then become the basis for the following section as the other surrounding parts in the contrapuntal web fade out. Though the techniques used include several that I discovered as early as 1967 the relatively fast rate of change (there are rarely more than three repeats of any bar), metric modulation into and out of a slower tempo, and relatively rapid changes of key may well create a more concentrated and concise impression.
Steve Reich
Violin Phase is one of a number of earlier works all dealing with repeating patterns gradually going in and out of phase with each other. The technique is basically a variation of traditional Western canons or rounds. In Violin Phase the performer plays against one, then two, and finally three pre-recorded tape tracks of himself. All the gradual shifts of phase are accomplished by the performer moving slowly ahead of the stationary tape.
Steve Reich