Steve Reich: Thoughts for His 50th-Birthday Year Author(s): Keith Potter Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 127, No. 1715 (Jan., 1986), pp. 13-17 Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/965345 Accessed: 20/08/2009 22:50

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http://www.jstor.org Thoughts for his 50th-birthdayyear Keith Potter

Steve Reich and Musicians are touring Britain in January and the Western classical tradition (not just the undirected February, on the Arts Council ContemporaryMusic Network, motion of Perotin's textures, to which Reich used to refer, appearingfirst at the Dominion Theatre,London, on 29 January; for no sophisticatedmid-20th-century Western composer their programme includes two British premieres, 'New York could be entirely unaffected by all later manifestationsof Counterpoint'and '' as well as 'ClappingMusic', 'Vermont the that was his birthand frommodern and Part III'. heritage by training), Counterpoint' ' urban popular traditions(the tonal and rhythmic, as well Much has been made of the extent to which Reich and as the textural,approaches common to much jazzand rock), and, most of all, from non-Western Glass representa crossoverphenomenon - the replace- probably important ment of the traditionalnarrow audience for seriousmusic sources (at that time in particularthe polyrhythmicstruc- tures of West African and Indonesiangamelan by the masseswho attendpopular culture. This proposed drumming convergence of elite and mass art, which assumes the music). of a wide audience for this new What, however,makes the currentclash of culturesrefer- possibility music, red to crucial to the musicians of the founderson two observations.The music is not casually by Lipman appear danceable and it lacks It thus for its Westernclassical tradition and their audience,is, morethan lyrics. requires the recent of musicwithin appreciation a kind of sophistication no broad group anything, higherprofile repetitive So it is not that when a recent that traditionitself. In its early days, musical minimalism, possesses. surprising as Michael once out in these was Carnegie Hall benefit, sponsored by the Columbia Nyman pointed pages, 'cold-shouldered the musical establishment', just as University student radio station WKCR, featuredper- by sonal both Reich andGlass others Cage's work had been in the 1950s, he added.5Rejected appearancesby (among the bastions of'serious' musical culture - both the less well known), it attractedonly an overwhelmingly by by and affluent audience. The conclusion performingorganizations and venues of classicalmusic and white, educated, the now establishedand for the most is inescapable:Reich and Glass have lately written what by quitefirmly initially is no more than a music for an partserially-orientated vanguard of contemporary'serious' pop intellectuals, easy-to- - listen-tomusic free of the so markedin black-oriented music in Americanuniversities composerssuch as Reich rage and Glass formed their own instrumentalensembles from music and the pop culture of the 1960s.' the handfulof like-mindedcomposer-performers and other and their work to those who Transitoryor not, people like this music. For a serious sympathetic musicians took in composerin the late twentieth century, that is no mean seemedto want it: chieflyto young audiences artgalleries, achievement.2 museums and art colleges and university art departments, many of whose membersknew somethingof currentdevel- Musical syntheses are, of course, a great deal older than opments in minimalismin the fine arts, and most of whom the currently fashionableterm applied to certain of their were probablymore interested in rock music than in the present manifestations.The view, expounded by Mellers classical tradition. and Hitchcock and fruitfully pursued again more recently To some extent this still describes the audience for the by Rockwell, of music in the USA as a dialogue between music of these composers today, though the numbers are the 'cultivated' and the 'vernacular'traditions, is but one now much larger.This is particularlythe case with Glass, example of direct relevanceto my present concern.3Even who despite being signed as a 'classical' artist by CBS the early repetitive works of the so-calledminimalist com- Recordshas a considerablefollowing in the worldof popular posers like Reich can easily be interpretedas part of John music; one should not forget, though, that until recently Rockwell's 'happy babble of overlapping dialogues':4in Reich became known to many people through the record- Reich'scase a highly compellingmixture of influencesfrom ings of his music on a West Germanjazz label, ECM. The 'classical music world' and the 'new music scene' which 1 Samuel Lipman: TheHouse of Music:Art in an Era of Institutions(Boston, 1984), forms a small part of it have, though, taken a noticeably 47-8 keenerinterest in such music in the last ten yearsor so, and 2 John Rockwell:All AmericanMusic: Compositionin the Late TwentiethCentury in 122 Britain more especially in the last two or three. Glass (London, 1985), is better known in the world than and his 3 see Wilfrid Mellers: Music in a New FoundLand: Themesand Developmentsin pop Reich, own the History of AmericanMusic (London, 1965) and H. Wiley Hitchcock: Music in group has for some years now toured in the manner of a the UnitedStates: a HistoricalIntroduction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2/1974) as well as Rockwell, op cit 4 Rockwell, 4 5 in a review of Reich and Glass's first London concerts, MT, cxii (1971), 463 13 significant amount of activity among classical music pro- fessionals - includingthose composerswho feel themselves the heirs of that tradition- that suggestsa new understand- ing of this view. This sympathymight, as proponentsof modernismwould argue, sometimes be expressedwith little more coherence than most rejections of the new. It cannot, however, any longerbe denied that a sizeablenumber of composersquite aside from the older traditionalistsnow feel themselves to be in a situation in which such things as the proceduresof Westernclassical tonality must be reinvestigatedand some- how reactivated.Clearly the extent to which the music of both Reich and Glass since around 1973 or so can be inter- preted, far less ambiguously than their earlier, more minimalistcompositions, in termsof such tonal reinvestiga- tion is an importantelement in its acceptanceinto the world of classicalmusic; its explorationsof certainkinds of tonal harmonic language in the context of rhythmic repetition are also, of course, what drawsthis music closer to jazz or rock. In addition, the feeling that, as Rockwell puts it, 'we are in a new era'6has been noted elsewherein the arts over at least the last 15 years. In architecture,in dramaand in other arts, as increasingly in music too, its very real and important outlines, already difficult to perceive clearly because of their proximity to practice and resistance to theory, are furtherobscured by the frequentuse of the label 'post-modernism'. Lipman'sdiatribe, on the otherhand, proclaimsthe music of a composersuch as Reich to be opportunistand escapist, a blandthough sinister attempt to anaesthetizeany members of the classical music audience gullible enough to realize that they are being deprived of the cultural essences that justify the 'real thing'. Such music's failure to survive the criteria of does not, rock band more than a 'classical' he is now scrutiny by 'pop' unfortunately, ensemble; yet render it immune to the strictures of the classical world, most of his time to for the devoting writing operas major, as Paul Griffiths'sarticle on Glass in last June's MT makes establishedhouses. Reich more within operates exclusively clear.7 We come here, of course, full circle in more than the world of'classical music', as his tour this month under one sense:not to an inevitablerecourse to the 'modern- the of the ArtsCouncil's Music Net- only auspices Contemporary ist' versus 'post-modernist'debate, but also to an uneasy work makes clear; and while Glass has been taken up by conclusionthat no truly 'crossover'cultural mixture is ever the Europeanopera houses, Reich has been commissioned to validfare in eitherthe of one source and the likely prove fryingpan performedby Europeanbroadcasting organizations or the fire of the other. It still seems manifestly unfair to and their orchestrasand choruses. Reich, also, symphony reject a new synthesis on the grounds that it fails fully to now has two 'classical' music publishers; in this respect, come to the standardsestablished and Glass still more the lines a up purely, separately, operates along popularcomposer for its And it is, after all, that would do. component parts. possible the combination of significant audience acceptance and The question remains,though, as to why this higher pro- critical that has the music of file has been achieved. at the withering complaint greeted Rockwell, quoted beginning these composers on their entry into the world of classical of this article, suggests that the answer lies in the increas- music betokens a and of the dissatisfactionfelt audiencesin the world of classical fragmentation regrouping ing by various 'audiences'that we can perhapsnow start to iden- music for the work of the modernists - Boulez, postwar tify within the vaguenessnormally described as the 'general etc - and the of their musical Cage progeny revolutions, musical public'. be serial, indeterminateor whatever.One they might argue If we decide to accept, on whatever basis, that Reich's that such audienceshave rarely,if ever, demonstratedmuch sympathywith such music, even in the modernistheydays of 1950s West Germany or Glock-inspired early-1960s 6 Rockwell, 71 musical Britain. But it is also now possible to observe a 7 'Opera Glass', MT, cxxvi (1985), 337-9 14 musical staturealready demands that he be properlytaken deliberationson his development,requires especially close up by musicalscholarship, what is the presentbase-line and and carefulhandling, for wordslike 'tonal'and 'consonant' what needs to be done in additionto a more thorough-going arebandied about far too freelywhere discussion of his music investigationof his work's importancein culturalhistory? is concerned - whether early or recent. As an example,finally, for biographicaland musicological study, what basis is there for an examination of Reich's earliestyears? We know little more than the composerhas Reich will be 50 this year; he was born in New York City so far chosen to tell us about either his life or work before on 3 October 1936. The basic facts of his careerare by now he took a tape recorderdown to Union Squarein San Fran- well enough known; his music and its attendant musical cisco near the end of 1964, when he was already just 28, philosophy since his breakthroughinto what we generally and made the tape of BrotherWalter preachingabout the refer to as minimalism in the mid-1960s have also by now Flood that becamethe basis of It's GonnaRain, completed been quite well and widely described.8Not the least among the followingyear. That piece, put togetherfrom tape loops Reich's commentatorshas been the composerhimself, who of this preacher'svoice, is Reich's first extant exploration has frequently laid what has usually been taken - rightly of what he called 'the process of graduallyshifting phase or wrongly,and usefully or not - as the basisfor the descrip- relationsbetween two or more identical repeatingmusical tion and analysisof each work and its place in Reich's out- patterns':'4in other words, the principle of phasing on put; though now inevitably dated and, less inevitably but which most of his music of the next seven years was built. I suppose understandably, hard to find, his collected But what sort of music was Reich composing before this Writingsabout Music remainsthe majorsource here.9The obviously important stage in what I earlier called the most fulsome and comprehensiveaccount of Reich's devel- breakthroughinto minimalism?For naturaland perfectly opment so far is to be found not in any of the books devoted understandablereasons, the composerhimself has for a long to experimentalmusic in generalor even to minimalismin time now offeredonly a general,and generallylow, opinion the arts or specifically in music in particular(least of all, of his early efforts at composition, and it is probablethat sadly, in Wim Mertens's recently published American most of such juvenilia as survives would prove less than Repetitive Music),'0 but in the American journal Perspectives compelling as music in its own right and quite possibly not of New Music; K. Robert Schwarz'stwo-part survey goes even especiallyrewarding in any morestrictly musicological up to Tehillimof 1981 and is, despite its over-relianceon terms. There is, too, probablynot as much music, certainly the composer'sown views of his work as expressedin print interestingmusic, as therewould be froma composerwhose (and especiallyin the Writings),an importantcontribution careerfollowed the normalpattern of musicaleducation and to the breachingof this formerbastion of serialismthat has development. While at Cornell University from 1953 to been undertakenin that journal'spages in recent years." 1957, Reich took some music courseswith the musicologist If I add to these my own discussion of Reich's work since William Austin, and he must by then (between the ages of 1973,12it is only because I believe it is still the most up- 17 and 21) have alreadybeen committing notes to paper to-dateattempt. Perhaps the most urgent need is for some in some formor his teacherwould presumablynot havebeen really detailed and penetrating analysis of Reich's music encouraginghim to pursuecomposition as a career,as Austin itself; now a sizeable proportionof the composer's scores apparently was. Yet Reich majored in philosophy (his arepublished, proper examination of worksfrom all periods reasonsfor choosingthis areunclear), not music (his reasons of his output is made generally possible for the first time. for avoidingit arealso not clearlyestablished), and he began It will be particularlyinteresting to see how our understand- studyingcomposition, formally at least, only when he went ing of Reich's developmentfares as a result. Generalopin- to Hall Overton privately for lessons in New York in ion amongthe earlyenthusiasts for his experimental,mini- 1957-8. malist compositions of the 1960s is that these works - It seems unlikelythat therewould be anythingof any real culminating in Drumming (1970-71) - remain his best; interest, even to the most single-mindedof musicologists, Reich himself, not unnaturallyfor a composer,now regards until the composer was well into his 20s and well into his them merely as studies for the later music.13The whole periodof institutionalizedcompositional studies, first with question of Reich's use of tonality, a crucial factor in any William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard Schoolin New York(1958 - 61) andthen with LucianoBerio 8 see, for example(and confining mattersto the pagesof this journal),'Steve Reich: and Darius Milhaud at Mills College, Oakland,California an Interview with ', MT, cxii (1971), 229-31; also Brian Dennis: (?1961- 3). Implied, though farfrom clearlystated, in what 'Repetitive and Systemic Music', MT, cxv (1974), 1036-8 9 Reich has so far said about his workof these years and how Halifax, NS, and New York, 1974 it has been is a sort of - I doubt 10 trans. J. Hautekiet (London, 1983) interpreted, progression 11 that it was linear - from'the conventional 'Steve Reich:Music as a GradualProcess', PNM, xix (1980-81), 373- 92; PNM, straightforwardly xx (1981 - 2), 225 -86 free atonalidiom of the time'15to music that slowly became 12 Keith Potter: 'The Recent Phases of Steve Reich', Contact,no.29 (spring 1985), 28 - 34 14 Writings,50 13 interview with the composer, Paris, Dec 1984 15 Schwarz, 383 15 more tonal, even though at least some, perhaps all, of the certainly repay particularly close attention. For by this time scores of the Mills period were still serially based. While the essential conditions for the burgeoning of musical far from being entirely sympathetic, it would appear, Berio minimalism were all there: a dissatisfaction with atonality at least realized where Reich's strength lay, and even possibly and serialism, and also with Cageian indeterminacy, that the sort of direction in which he was heading, when he asked had already led to some kind of re-exploration of tonality; his pupil 'If you want to write tonal music, why don't you and, more widely, Reich's location in a cultural commun- write tonal music?'16 ity sympathetic to a musical development that paralleled The years 1963 and 1964, on the other hand, would almost those in the plastic arts. Within probably a year, maybe rather less, Reich moved from and its 16 As quoted bx Reich in Donal Henahan, 'Reich? Philharmonic?Paradiddling?' campus composition N\:>., tork Times(24 Oct 1971), 2/14; an extract is quoted in Schwarz, 383. attendant taboos and restrictions to independent experimen-

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16 tation. By 1964 he had madethe then unaffiliatedSan Fran- ment flourished between 1965 and 1967). cisco Tape Music Center his compositionalbase. Here he It is here, of course, that things startto get reallyinterest- found a sympathetic community of musicians including ing. Unpublished and largely unmentioned works are PaulineOliveros and , the latterof whose famous included in lists of compositions from this period - Pitch In C he helped to mount under the auspices of the Center Charts'for any number of any instruments'(1963), Music that year. What we now know as musical minimalismwas 'for three or more pianos, or and tape' (1964) - that very much in the air, madepossible, it would seem, not only are clearly early attemptsat some sort of minimalism.And by the exampleof 'searly experiments with from these yearsonwards the whole historyof Reich'smini- long-sustainedsounds as earlyas 1957 but by the emergence malistperiod and its placein the developmentof minimalism of a minimalist movement in other art forms. All this, too, in music and in the arts generally is still waiting to be took place against the backgroundof the rise of the San- explored in detail, as well as his rather different work of Francisco-basedhippy scene (the Haight-Ashburymove- the last dozen years or so.

WORKS

Pitch Charts, 1963 Pulse Music, 1969 Music for Eighteen Musicians, 1976 Music, 1964 Four Log Drums, 1969 Music for Large Ensemble, 1978 It's Gonna Rain, 1965 , 1970 Octet, 1979 , 1966 Phase Patterns, 1970 Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards, 1979 Melodica, 1966 Drumming, 1971 My Name Is: Ensemble Portrait, 1981 , 1967 , 1972 Tehillim, 1981 Slow Motion Sound, 1967 , 1973 Vermont Counterpoint, 1982 , 1967 Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and The Desert Music, 1983 My Name Is, 1967 Organ, 1973 Sextet, 1984 , 1968 Music for Pieces of Wood, 1973 , 1985

A Country Dance by Haydn A. Peter Brown

In a recent catalogue issued by the music antiquarians try dance by Haydn. Perhaps it is one of several written Burnett& Simeone(no. 13), the followingprint is described: for the Prince or Princessof Wales'. The danceTyson cites The SouthFencible's March as approved of theEarl of Hope- was also associatedwith the Scottish folk-fiddler,society town.Colonel; Miss Murray ofAuchtertyre's Strathspey; Miss bandleader and sometime publisher Nathaniel Gow AnnAEmelia Stuarts Strathspey; Haydn's Strathspey. Corrected (1766 - 1831), who accordingto Tyson was unusuallyscru- &Co. by Nath.Gow. Edinr.: N. Stewart [c 1795].Engraved, pulous with regardto textual matters, the transmissionof folio, 2pp. tunes and attribution.We also learn from Chambers'Bio- at the end of this collection of four Buried pieces, 'Haydn's graphical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (1835) that is unknown in the it is Strathspey' previously literature; Nathaniel Gow 'visited London frequently' and in absentfrom Hoboken's catalogue, the exemplarylists The wasin thehabit, too, duringevery visit to thecapital, of being New Grove and RISM, and the discussions in Landon's honouredby invitations to theprivate parties of hislate majesty, Haydn: Chronicle and Works. The print itself is registered GeorgeIV., when prince of Walesand prince regent; on which in the British Union Catalogue (p.650) under 'The South occasionshe joined that prince, who was a respectable Fencible'sMarch', but with no referenceto Haydn. Burnett violoncelloplayer, in the performanceof concertedpieces of & Simeone claim this strathspeyis by Haydn and date the the mostesteemed composers. appearanceof the print, as does the BUC, at the end of or The fourthGeorge was the Princeof Walesduring Haydn's justafter Haydn's second sojourn in London.The only other Londonresidence. That Haydn also frequentedthe prince's known copy is owned by the National Libraryof Scotland social events is established by the very best evidence, (Glen 347 [26]). including the composer's preservationof a recipe for the As is well known,Haydn's 'London Catalogue' lists a total prince's own punch in his London notebook.Tyson's con- of six country dances - one set of four and anotherof two. clusion that the dancehe discussesis indeedby Haydnthus In an article in The Musical Times for November 1961 gains in its claim to authenticity, if only by circumstantial (reprintedin TheHaydn Yearbook,i), Alan Tyson suggested evidence. While the 'Princess of Wales's Favorite Dance' that 'The Princessof Wales'sFavorite Dance by Dr. Haydn' is explicitly attributed,the dance we are concernedwith is as published in a collection of similarorigin is 'a somewhat moredifficult to claim for Haydnthan Burnett& Simeone's mutilated,and probablytruncated, form of a genuine coun- attribution indicates. 17