Early Works (196568)

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online

Writings on Music 19652000: 1965-2000

Steve Reich and Paul Hillier

Print publication date: 2004

Print ISBN-13: 9780195151152
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151152.001.0001

Early Works (196568)

Steve Reich

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151152.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter presents Steve Reich's personal accounts about

several of his early works. These include It's Gonna Rain
(1965), Come Out (1966), Melodica (1966), Piano Phase (1967),
Violin Phase (1967), Slow Motion Sound (1967), My Name Is
(1967), and Pendulum Music (1968).

Keywords: Come Out, Melodica, Piano Phase, Violin Phase, Slow Motion Sound,
Pendulum Music

Much of the material in sections 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10,

and 11 was originally written as program notes for
concerts and recordings during the late 1960s. Reich
then reworked the material as he was preparing it for his
1974 Writings. In consultation with the composer, some
of this material has been slightly altered for this book.
Additional sources are noted below.

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Early Works (196568)
Come Out is composed of a single loop recorded on both
channels. First the loop is in unison with itself. As it begins to
go out of phase, a slowly increasing reverberation is heard.
This gradually passes into a canon or round for two voices,
then four voices and finally eight.

Melodica (1966)
Melodica (see ex. 1-1) is interesting in two respects. First, it
has almost exactly the same rhythmic structure as Come Out.
The two pieces listened to one after the other are an example
of how one rhythmic process can be realized in different
sounds to produce different pieces of music. Second, I
dreamed the melodic pattern, woke up on May 22, 1966, and
realized the piece with the melodica (a toy instrument) and
tape loops in one day.

Piano Phase (1967)

Shortly after Melodica was completed, I began to think about
writing some live music. Melodica, which turned out to be the
last purely tape piece I made, was composed of musical
pitches (as opposed to speech) manipulated with tape loops. It
felt like a transition from tape music to instrumental music.
Unfortunately, it seemed to me at the time impossible for two
human beings to perform that gradual phase shifting process,
since the process was discovered with, and was indigenous to,
machines. On the other hand, I could think of nothing else to
do with live musicians that would be as interesting as the
phasing process. Finally, late in 1966, I recorded a short
repeating melodic pattern played on the piano, made a tape
loop of that pattern, and then tried to play against the loop
myself, exactly as if I were a second tape recorder. I found, to
my surprise, that while I lacked the perfection of the machine,
I could give a fair approximation of it while (p.23)

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Early Works (196568)
(p.24)

enjoying a new
and extremely
satisfying way
of playing that
was both
completely
worked out
beforehand,
and yet free of
actually
reading
notation,
allowing me to
become totally
absorbed in
listening while
playing.
In the next
few months,
Arthur
Murphy, a
Example 1-1. Score of Melodica.
musician
COPYRIGHT 1986 BY HENDON
friend, and I,
MUSIC, INC., A BOOSEY & HAWKES
both working
COMPANY. REPRINTED BY
in our homes,
PERMISSION.
experimented
with the
performance of this phase shifting process using piano and
tape loops. Early in 1967, we finally had the opportunity to
play together on two pianos and found, to our delight, that we
could perform this process without mechanical aid of any kind.

While this piece, Piano Phase, was later completely written out
in musical notation with dotted lines between one bar and the
next to indicate the gradual phase shifting, it was not
necessary for us to read this notation while we played, nor is it
necessary for any other musicians who play the piece. The
musical material in Piano Phase (see ex. 1-2) is simply a
number of repeating melodic patterns that may be learned and
memorized in several minutes. The score then shows that two
musicians begin in unison playing the same pattern over and
over again and that while one of them stays put, the other
gradually increases tempo so as to slowly move one beat
ahead of the other.

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Early Works (196568)
This process is repeated until both players are back in unison,
at which point the pattern is changed and the phasing process
begins again. The piece is divided into three sections marked
off by changes of notes and pattern length. The first is twelve
beats in E minor, the second eight beats forming an apparent
A dominant chord, and the last is four beats in A (probably
major but lacking a stated third degree).

To perform the piece, one learns the musical material and puts
the score aside because it is no longer necessary, it would only
be a distraction. What you have to do to play the piece is to
listen carefully in order to hear if you've moved one beat
ahead, or if you've moved two by mistake, or if you've tried to
move ahead but have instead drifted back to where you
started. Both players listen closely and try to perform the
musical process over and over again until they can do it well.
Everything is worked out, there is no improvisation whatever,
but the psychology of performance, what really happens when
you play, is total involvement with the sound: total sensuous-
intellectual involvement.

Looking back on the tape pieces that preceded Piano Phase, I

see that they were, on the one hand, realizations of an idea
that was indigenous to machines, and, on the other hand, the
gateway to some instrumental music that I would never have
come to by listening to any other Western, or for that matter
non-Western, music. The question may then arise as to what it
is like to imitate a machine while playing live music. I believe
there are human activities that might be called imitating
machines, but that are, in reality, simply controlling your
mind and body very carefully as in yoga breathing exercises.
This kind of activity turns out to be very useful physically and
psychologically, as it focuses the mind to a fine point. (p.25)

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