Reich Musique Graduale Processeur

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Steve reich onmusic as a gradual process

Steve Reich (b. 1936) wrote this now-famous essay in October 1968, and it was pub-

lished as his biographical statement for an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of

American Art in 1969 titled Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials. (The exhibition

included works by minimalist artists, among them Lynda Benglis, Eva Hesse, Robert

Ryman, and Richard Serra.) Here, Reich rejects serial music and indeterminacy (as

practiced by Babbitt and Cage) as processes which cannot be heard and therefore

exist only as theoreticalrather than experientialmusical constructs. Reich helped to

launch a new musical movement which critics eventually called minimalism, be-

cause of its shared aesthetic affinities with artists like those in the Whitney show.

Despite resistance to the term minimalism from Reich and some of his contem-

poraries, among them Philip Glass and Terry Riley, the branding has stuck. Other

names for this new music at the time included trance music and pulse music.

Reich reprinted Music as a Gradual Process in several places, including Source

magazine in 1971 and then as liner notes for the album Drumminghis most im-

portant music from his first stylistic period. Each version of the essay differs slightly.

For Drumming, he added some additional remarks about his ensemble, which are

included here as well.

By 1976, Reich had moved beyond his self-imposed limitations of compositional

transparency in a more complex work of extended lengthMusic for 18 Instruments,

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EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 9/10/2013 11:32 PM via BERKLEE COLLEGE OF

MUSICAN: 259477 ; Beaudoin, Paul E., Tick, Judith.; Music in the USA : A Documentary Companion

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which is now regarded as a late twentieth-century masterpiece. Despite its relatively

greater complexity, Reichs reliance on phase shifting, evolving canons, and pulse

still relate to the aesthetic defined so austerely and so powerfully here.

Ido not mean the process of composition, but rather pieces of music that are, literally, pro-cesses.The distinctive thing about musical processes is that they determine the note-to-note

(sound-to-sound) details and the overall formal morphology simultaneously. (Think of a round

or an infinite canon in traditional music.)

I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happen-

ing throughout the sounding music.

To facilitate closely detailed listening, a musical process should happen very gradually.

Performing and listening to a gradual musical process resembles:

turning over an hourglass and watching the sand slowly run through to the

bottom; pulling back a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually come

to rest;

placing your feet in the sand by the oceans edge and watching, feeling, and

listening to the waves gradually bury them.

Though I may have the pleasure of discovering musical processes and composing the musical

material to run through them, once the process is set up and loaded, it runs by itself.

Material may suggest what sort of process it should be run through (content suggests

form), and processes may suggest what sort of material should be run through them (form sug-

gests content). If the shoe fits, wear it.

Whether a musical process is realized through live human performance, or through

some electro-mechanical means is not finally very important. One of the most beautiful concerts

I ever heard consisted of four composers playing their tapes in a dark hall. (A tape is interesting

when its an interesting tape.)

Its quite natural to think about musical processes if one is frequently working with

electro-mechanical sound equipment. (All music turns out to be ethnic music.)

Musical processes can give one a direct contact with the impersonal and also a kind of

complete control, and one doesnt always think of the impersonal and complete control as going

together. By a kind of complete control I mean: by running this material through this process

I completely control all that results, but also I accept all that results without changes.

John Cage has used processes and has certainly accepted their results, but the processes

he used were more compositional ones that could not be heard when the piece was performed.

The process of using the I Chingor imperfections in a sheet of paper to determine musical pa-

rameters cant be heard when listening to music composed that way. The compositional pro-

cesses and the sounding music have no audible connection. Similarly, in serial music, the series

itself is seldom audible. (This is a basic difference between serial [basically European] music and

serial [basically American] art, where, in the latter, the perceived series is usually the focal point

of the work.)

700 music in the usa

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What Im interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one

and the same thing.

James Tenney said in conversation, then the composer isnt privy to anything. I dont

know any secrets of structure that you cant hear. We all listen to the process together, since its

quite audible, and one of the reasons its quite audible, is because its happening extremely

gradually.

The use of hidden structural devices in music never appealed to me. Even when all the

cards are on the table and everyone hears what is gradually happening in a musical process,

there are still enough mysteries to satisfy all. These mysteries are the impersonal, unintended,

psycho-acoustic by-products of the intended process. These might include sub-melodies heard

within repeated melodic patterns, stereophonic effects due to loudspeaker or listener location,

slight irregularities in performance etc.

I begin to perceive these minute details when I can sustain close attention, and a grad-

ual process invites my sustained attention. By gradual I mean extremely gradual; a process

happening so slowly and gradually that listening to it resembles watching the minute hand on

a watchyou can perceive it moving after you stay with it a little while.

Many modal musics, such as Indian Classical, John Coltranes during the early 1960s,

some recent rock and roll and other new musics may make us aware of minute sound details;

because in being modal (constant key center, hypnotically droning) they naturally focus on these

details rather than on key modulation, counterpoint, and other peculiarly western devices. Never-

theless, these modal musics remain more or less strict frameworks for improvisation and/or for

expression. They are not processes.

While performing and listening to gradual musical processes one can participate in a

particularly liberating and impersonal kind of ritual. Focusing in on the musical process makes

possible that shift of attention away from he and she and you and me outwards towards it.

SOURCE: Steve Reich, Music as a Gradual Process, in Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials, ed. James Monte and Marcia Tucker (catalog for exhibition at the Whitney Mu-seum of American Art, New York, May 19July 6, 1969) (New York: Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art, 1969): 5657. Reprinted in Source: Music of the Avant-Garde 2, no. 10(1971): 30.

A slightly modified version of the above essay appears as liner notes in Steve Reichs

Drumming, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, Six Pianos. It in-

cludes the following new material.

notes on the ensemble 12/73

Since 1966 I have been rehearsing and performing my music with my own ensemble. A fewyears earlier I decided that despite my limitations as a performer I had to play in all my com-positions. It seemed clear that a healthy musical situation would only result when the functions

steve reich on music as a gradual process 701

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702 music in the usa

of composer and performer were united. This ensemble began in 1966 with three musicians,

grew in 1970 to five, and in 1971, with the composition of DRUMMING, grew to twelve musi-

cians and singers. This is a repertory ensemble. Each new composition is added to the repertoire

and our concerts present a selection of new and/or older works.

The question often arises as to what contribution the performers make to the music?

The answer is that they select the resulting patterns in all compositions that have resulting pat-

terns, and that certain details of the music are worked out by members of the ensemble during

rehearsals. Resulting patterns are melodic patterns that result from the combination of two or

more identical instruments playing the same repeating pattern one or more beats out of phase

with each other. During the selection of resulting patterns to be sung in the second part of

DRUMMING, Joan La Barbara, Jay Clayton and myself all contributed various patterns we heard

resulting from the combination of three marimbas. These patterns were selected, and an order

for singing them worked out, with the help of tape loops of the various marimba combinations

played over and over again at my studio in New York during rehearsals held throughout the

summer of 1971. The resulting patterns in MUSIC FOR MALLET INSTRUMENTS, VOICES

AND ORGAN were selected by Jay Clayton and myself in a similar way, two years later. In SIX

PIANOS, Steve Chambers, James Preiss and myself worked out the resulting patterns and the

order in which to play them during evening rehearsals at the Baldwin Piano store in New York

during the fall and winter of 197273.

Selecting resulting patterns is not improvising; it is actually filling in the details of the

composition itself. It offers the performer the opportunity to listen to minute details and to sing

or play the ones he or she finds most musical.

Theres a certain idea thats been in the air, particularly since the 1960s, and I think it

is an extremely misleading idea. It is that the only pleasure a performer can get while perform-

ing is to improvise, or in some way be free to express his or her momentary state of mind. If a

composer gives them a fixed musical score, or specific instructions to work with this is equated

with political control and it means the performer is going to be unhappy about it. But if you work

with musicians you will see that what gives them joy is playing music they love, and whether

that music is improvised or completely worked out is really not the main issue. The main issue

is whats happening musically; is this beautiful, is this sending chills up and down my spine, or

isnt it?

The musicians play in this ensemble, usually for periods of three to five years or more,

because, presumably, they like playing the music, or at least because they find it of some musi-

cal interest. They do not make all their income from playing in this ensemble. Some are Doctoral

candidates in the study of African, Indonesian and Indian music, some teach percussion, and all

perform professionally in a variety of musical ensembles including orchestras, chamber groups,

Medieval music ensembles, South Indian, African and Indonesian classical ensembles, free im-

provisation and jazz groups. It is precisely the sort of musician who starts with a strong Western

classical background and then later gravitates towards these other types of music that I find ide-

ally suited for this ensemble.

SOURCE: Steve Reich, liner notes for Drumming, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices andOrgan, Six Pianos (Hamburg: Deutscher Grammophon; Polydor, 1974).

Copyright

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Reich Musique Graduale Processeur