The University of York Illusion / Anti-Illusion: the Music of Steve Reich in Context, 1965–1968 A dissertation submitted for the degree of Master of Arts by Research in Musicology By Ross Graham Cole (102008550 / Y4777582) December 2010 ii © 2010 Ross Graham Cole All Rights Reserved iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iv List of Figures v Acknowledgements vi (1) 1 Process, Pendulums, and Links with the Plastic Arts [Contact with the impersonal...] (2) 27 Racial Politics, Tape, and San Francisco’s Cultural Nexus [Marching to a Manhattan tempo...] (3) 61 Intermezzo: Two Missing Links [Trapped in a lab...] (4) 74 Teleological Mechanics and the Phase-Shifting Pieces of 1967 [Millions of burgers sold...] (5) 105 Concluding Remarks: Context and Contradiction Resource List 112 iv Abstract ‘Illusion / Anti-Illusion: the Music of Steve Reich in Context, 1965–1968’ Ross Graham Cole (2010) Supervisor: Professor William Brooks This dissertation situates the work of Steve Reich during the mid-to-late 1960s in its intricate socio-cultural context. Exploring biographical, hermeneutic, aesthetic, and political implications, it attempts to shed light on the composer’s early years. The historical narrative concentrates on the period between the first instantiation of the phase-shifting technique in It’s Gonna Rain, or, Meet Brother Walter in Union Square after Listening to Terry Riley (1965) and the theoretical treatise ‘Music as a Gradual Process’ (1968). It reaches back, however, to the cultural nexus of San Francisco and ahead to the mercurial gallery scene in New York. In addition, modal compositions from 1966 and 1967 are subject to detailed analyses which question the boundary between ‘impersonal’ process and composerly intervention. Chapter 1 deals with Reich’s relationship to Process art and Minimalism(s), paying particular attention to where he presented his work and with whom he was associated. Chapter 2 traces his involvement with the San Francisco Tape Music Center, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the filmmaker Robert Nelson; problematic issues surrounding race and representation are also considered. Chapter 3 critiques two transitional works: Melodica and Reed Phase , the latter representing a striking omission from the accepted Reich canon. Chapter 4 is concerned with the relationship between musical teleology and consumer desire in post-war ‘affluent society’, building on the work of Robert Fink. The conclusion proposes that broader social contradictions of the 1960s can be detected in Reich’s music. v List of Figures 1.1 Rafael Ferrer and his exterior installation for ‘Anti-Illusion: Procedures / Materials’ (1969) at the Whitney Museum, New York; <www.citylimits.org> 1.2 Movement in Squares (1961) by Bridget Riley, tempera on hardboard [black & white]; <http://artcritical.com> 1.3 Kinetic installation for a performance of Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (1968), Belfast, 2005; <www.flickr.com> photograph courtesy of ‘cfans / Cav’ 1.4 The ‘A’ Train (1965–67) by Mark Di Suvero, wood and painted steel [black & white reproduction of a photograph]; <http://blantonmuseum.org> 1.5 Lime Line (1965) by Dean Fleming, acrylic on canvas [black & white reproduction]; <http://blantonmuseum.org> 1.6 A view of Gallery 5 from ‘Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture’ (1966) at the Jewish Museum, New York; <www.radford.edu> 2.1 The San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Capp Street studios at an abandoned church in the Mission District, photographed 1964 (Davis, 1975) 2.2 Original poster for the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s A Minstrel Show, or ‘Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel’ , 1965 (Davis, 1975) 3.1 Analysis of Melodica (1966) by Steve Reich 3.2 Jon Gibson performing Reed Phase (1966) by Steve Reich at the Park Place Gallery, New York, 1967; photograph by Peter Moore; <www.jongibson.net> 3.3 Analysis of Reed Phase , first section 3.4 Analysis of Reed Phase , second section 3.5 Analysis of Reed Phase , third section 3.6 Aggregate patterns in Reed Phase 4.1 Analysis of the four basic units in Piano Phase (1967) by Steve Reich 4.2 Voice-leading analysis of Piano Phase ’s basic units 4.3 Analysis of Piano Phase , middle section 4.4 Analysis of Piano Phase , final section 4.5 Analysis of the basic unit in Violin Phase (1967) by Steve Reich 4.6 Two possible voice-leading analyses of Violin Phase ’s basic subunit 4.7 Aggregate patterns in Violin Phase vi Acknowledgements First and foremost, my thanks go to Bill Brooks for his unfailing erudition, warmth, and clarity of thought during our many conversations and exchanges; I am indebted to his guidance and knowledge. The perceptive comments he made on the various drafts of this dissertation have been indispensible and my current thinking owes much to his eye for historical detail and refreshingly unconventional attitude. Credit is additionally due to my undergraduate tutors at Oxford, in particular: Jonathan Cross, David Maw, and Robert Samuels. I could not have begun such a project without the intellectual grounding I received whilst at the music faculty and much of this project bears the marks of my three years there. I would also like to thank Jon Gibson for his willingness to engage with my questions regarding Reed Phase and his openness in our correspondence. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my family, friends, and Claire for their love and support this year. Regarding the various emendations made to this dissertation in June 2011, further thanks must go to Keith Potter and Jenny Doctor for their insightful remarks and suggestions as examiners. Any errors remain my own. (1) Process, Pendulums, and Links with the Plastic Arts [Contact with the impersonal...] The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, summer 1969. Imagine you’ve come to see the new show entitled ‘Anti-Illusion: Procedures / Materials’ curated by Marcia Tucker and James Monte. The exhibition catalogue says that it ‘seriously calls into question how art should be seen, what should be done with it and finally, what is an art experience’. 1 Let New York Times critic Grace Glueck take you on a brief tour: Barry Le Va has dusted the floor with flour. Rafael Ferrer has piled up hay against a wall…[and] lined the Whitney’s ramp with 15 cakes of ice, set on leaves, that melted after 20 hours [see figure 1.1]…Most of the art – done right on the spot – will only last the length of the show…Take Robert Morris’s piece, Money , for instance, a demonstration of time’s influence on cash. To help him execute it, the Whitney borrowed $50,000 (from collector Howard Lipman). Deposited in the bank, it will draw 5 percent interest just for the show’s duration [19 th May – 6 th July]. (The exhibit itself consists not of money, but nine documents relating to the transaction.) 2 It is the landmark show for what would become known as Process art – a term which came to describe an aesthetic drawing on various conceptual elements of the mercurial New York scene. According to Cornelia H. Butler, the exhibition consisted of Figure 1.1: Rafael Ferrer and his ‘extremely ephemeral work’ made exterior installation for ‘Anti- Illusion: Procedures / Materials’ at by young, downtown artists who the Whitney Museum, NY 1969. <www.citylimits.org> were suddenly enjoying inclusion 1 Quoted in: Grace Glueck, ‘Air, Hay and Money’, New York Times (25 May 1969), 42. 2 Ibid. 2 in ‘the hallowed halls of the heavy, modernist Marcel Breuer building’ on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.3 To dig the new movement, Glueck advised her more conservative readers, ‘you must discard your fuddy ideas about art as object’. 4 The transfer of attention central to this aesthetic concerned a motion ‘away from the contained sculptural object, to the making of the object as the end in and of itself’. 5 An artwork’s essence was thus encoded in the processes of which it was a product. Linked to this notion, Butler argues, is the fact that the trend insisted on ‘minimizing artistic intervention into the unrestricted properties of materials’, often letting their innate qualities dictate the form, flux, and duration of a work in an indeterminate fashion.6 A definition of the practice might stress that the process of ‘construction’ was not hidden but formed a prominent aspect of the completed work’s subject matter, a consequent interest in experience for its own sake and (due to the unstable or perishable nature of the works themselves) a challenge to the marketability of the art outside of its initial gallery context. 7 The Whitney exhibition’s title was therefore apposite, as it pointed toward the deliberate undermining of conventional values such as mimetic visual illusion or allusion, whilst stating the twin theoretical cornerstones of the style – emphasis on procedural input and keen embrace of the natural tendencies of materials. In this way, Process art had its somewhat antithetical foundations both in the earlier Abstract Expressionist work of Jackson Pollock – where successive layers of dripped and poured paint revealed the gestural movements of the artist as well as the physical materiality of the medium itself – and in the deliberate distancing or underplaying of creative subjectivity inherent in the 1960s Pop art and Minimalist movements. Formal barriers between different media thus began to dissolve as novel approaches challenged the autonomy of artworks whilst relying on the institution of the gallery for existence. In their stripping back of 3 Cornelia H. Butler, ‘Ends & Means’, in: Butler (ed.), Afterimage: Drawing Through Process (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1999) [Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles], 82. Artists included: Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, Brauce Nauman, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Robert Smithson, Lynda Benglis, Alan Saret, Keith Sonnier, Barry Le Va, and Rafael Ferrer.