Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

REICH, Steve

(b 3 October 1936, NYC) Composer. From a musical family, he studied philosophy at Cornell, music at Juilliard, then at Mills College near San Francisco with Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio, where John Cage's ideas were influential. He formed his own ensemble in 1966, studied drumming in Ghana '70, Balinese gamelan '73. He deliberately rejected the increasing complexity of contemporary 'serious' music in favour of a reduced vocabulary, searching in ethnic and ancient music for ideas; his style often involved repetition, such as a chord changing one note at a time, and has been described as minimalist, modular, phase music and pulse music. It is both modern and elemental; Nicholas Slonimsky invented the word 'hynopompic' to describe it. By thumbing his nose at the academics and causing some critics to question his seriousness he came to the attention of the avant-garde in pop, which he has influenced.

Recordings on Nonesuch: 'It's Gonna Rain' is a recording of a black Pentecostal street preacher played back on two tape players, gradually getting out of phase, an effect congenial with the message of the end of the world. 'Come Out' looped the voice of a black youth who's been beaten by police; 'Clapping Music' had two musicians clapping their hands in an interlocking rhythm (all on Early Works 1965-72, together with Piano Phase). Drumming '71 has eight small tuned drums, three marimbas, three glockenspiels, two female voices, whistling and a piccolo. The Desert Music '84 uses poems by William Carlos Williams in cyclical pulsing chordal movements, again about the apocalypse: 'Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize them, he must either change them or perish.' Different Trains '88 compares the trains he rode in the USA as a child to those transporting Jews to death camps; on the same CD is Electric Counterpoint '87 for guitar and tape (with Pat Metheny). Another CD combines Music For Mallet Instruments with Four Sections for orchestra. A multi-media epic The Cave '93 is about the common heritage of Jews and Muslims in modern Israel. City Life '95 blends 'speech melodies' (musical mimicking of spoken phrases) with sounds of urban life; on the same CD are Nagoya Marimbas and Proverbs, a Proms commission '95, with text from Wittgenstein: 'how small a thought it takes to fill a whole life'. ECM CDs include Tehillim '81 for wind, strings, percussion and voices; Music For 18 Musicians '76, Music For A Large Ensemble/Octet/Violin Phase '67-79. Others on DGG, Angel (EMI/USA), Globe, Hungaroton, Argo, Philips etc.

A ten-CD set Steve Reich: Works 1965-1995 appeared on Nonesuch '97. A new recording of Music For 18 Musicians by the new music ensemble at a Midwestern university, Grand Valley State, on an Innova label 2008 was highly praised by Charlie Wilmoth in Signal To Noise #49.