The Genius of Minimalist Music- Steve Reich

Do you want to know the name of the musician who transformed the contemporary music scene treating the listeners to hypnotic beats and repetitive formulas? Everybody who is interested in music should know the name of Steve Reich. His music can be identified immediately because of stable pulses, gradual transformations, and fascinating textures. It has been said that there are few people who at one point in their life did not feel a pull towards music that is simultaneously easy to listen to and endlessly intriguing; if you have ever experienced this phenomenon, then you have at least dipped your toes into the waters of the influence of Steve Reich, and you never even knew it.

This article is going to take us back in time to find out more about this great musician known as Steve Reich and his contribution using minimalism to change the way he and all of us listen to music. Be prepared to find out the mind behind Music for 18 Musicians, Clapping Music and Different Trains.

Steve Reich Composer: A Life of Innovation

Steve Reich (born 1936, New York City) is one of the most creative geniuses of 20th and the 21st century music. He grew up in New York and California and was exposed to jazz, classical and non-western musical influences. At Cornell University he also studied philosophy and subsequently apprenticed with such legendary composers as Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio, at Juilliard and Mills College.

Peak in the mid-1960s, Reich was also ahead in a musical tendency about to be known as minimalism. His music has been characterized by a repetitive figure, minute transitions and gradual processes. Now, listeners could be able to hear the process, which became the trademark of Reich as a composer.

Minimalism Music Steve Reich: the definition of a genre

Minimalism music is all about achieving more with less and there is no better person to describe this as Steve Reich. Reich does not use dramatic chords or turns, but instead his work underlines stable beats, repetition and smooth but magnificent changes through the time.

This was revolutionary in the 1960s and 70s. Reich brought the music of changing music to be a listenable affair and that offering introduced something novel to listeners and that new thing was the opportunity to actually track the transformation as it took place. His music moved even not only the classical musicians, but also electronic musicians, rock bands and even film composers.

Steve Reich Phasing Technique: The Representation of Sound Shifting Patterns

The phasing technique is one of the trademarks of the work of Reich. The inspiration behind this was in the mid-1960s when he worked with tape recorders. The method is by playing the identical pattern on 2 devices or instruments yet with one a little faster. When they get out of balance, the new rhythm and texture are created.

You may listen to it in such pieces as It and Gonna Rain and Come Out, and live pieces as Piano Phase. The outcome is hypnotic: out of a mere (one) idea emerges a total world of sound.

Steve Reich Tape Loops: Beginning Of It All

Reich composed musical thoughts using tape loops prior to the introduction of digital loop and DAW. In It Gonna Rain (1965) he recorded a preacher’s voice and made loops that slowly slipped out of time. He does the same with the voice of a young man in a case related to civil rights in Come Out (1966).

It was a revolutionary technique of stratification and phasing of audio loops. It was not only a precursor of the works of Reich but of a great number of electronic and ambient music that followed.

Steve Reich Music for 18 Musicians – An Incredible Minimalist Creation

Probably the most recognizable work by Reich is Music for 18 Musicians (1976). It has a rather small orchestra with voices, pianos, percussion, strings and winds. Notwithstanding the almost an hour in length, the composition never gets dull owing to its miniscule variations and harmonic changes.

The composition is composed of a cycle of 11 chords and a section is constructed on each of the chords. Otherwise, the piece is dynamic as every cycle happens since there are small variations in rhythm, melody or instruments used. It is an ideal testimony to the ability of Reich to create complexity out of simplicity.

Steve Reich Clapping Music: ‘Pure Rhythm

Clapping Music (1972) goes one step further – in simplicity. It is in the form of written instructions in the event two people clapping a single rhythm and it is written so that one person slowly pulls the rhythm a beat at a time by using the phasing technique.

However, Clapping Music is appealing and full of content even with the absence of instruments. It shows that even trivial things like human hands and the accompaniment of a basic heartbeat can result in phenomenal accomplishments through minimalism.

Steve Reich Drumming: The World Inspired The World

Reich wrote Drumming (1971) after some period of study African drumming in Ghana. This work is a combination of African polyrhythms and minimalism of Reich. It consists of four parts with the use of drums, voices, marimbas, glockenspiels, and piccolo.

It takes approximately 90 minutes and is constructed on a single rhythmic pattern which gradually develops. It depicts how hugely Reich admires non-Western music tradition and how he incorporates the concepts in his voice.

Steve Reich Piano Phase – A Live Experiment

The Piano Phase (1967) has two performers on pianos playing the same, but brief melodic gesture. One of the pianists gradually picks up the tempo and produces the phasing effect in real time on the stage. With patterns drifting and coming together, new rhythms and textures are felt by the listeners.

It was the earliest composition when Reich used phasing with live instruments, and it was one of the greatest changes in the composition and performance of music.

Steve Reich Come Out: Message-bearing Sound

Reichs second masterpiece tape was Come Out (1966). He re-recorded the words of Daniel Hamm, one of Harlem Six, saying come out to show them and then looped the words until they were incomprehensible.

This song is musical as well as political. It reveals how repetition and transformation could be used to bring a heavy emotional punch to a single phrase.

Steve Reich Four Organs: Lengthening Time

Four Organs (1970) by Reich involves the single chord and stretches it gradually. One organ keeps tones longer and longer and a maraca keeps regular time. This expression of time and tranquility disorumbed certain viewers, and it challenged the limit of musical possibility.

In the present days, it is considered a daring and significant composition that reflects the concerns of Reich in the perceptions of time in music.

Steve Reich Different Trains: Memory in Motion

Such pieces as Different Trains (1988) were one of the most poignant compositions of Reich. In string quartet and tape form, it compares the train trips which Reich took as a child across America, with the trains that took Jews to the Nazi concentration camps.

The music is overlaid with the recorded voices of Holocaust survivors and of Reichs governess, among other things. The outcome is sinister, gorgeous and heartbreaking. It also received a Grammy Award and a strong combination between music, memory and the history.

Legacy of Steve Reich: A Legacy that is Surviving

The music of Steve Reich had shaped the generation of composers, performers as well as listeners. His breakthroughs in rhythm, form, and sound engineering have permeated well into non-classical musical genres such as electronica, ambient music, rocks and film.

His ideas in ability to produce fusion of minimism within music done by Steve Reich, the tape loops, phasing and other works such as different trains and music of 18 instruments, still influence the current sound. The legacy of Reich is no-holds barred experimentation, listening deeply, and permanence of beauty.

Conclusion

Steve Reich can be considered one of the ringleaders of minimalist music. His innovative ideas to work with phasing and tape loops, the concentration of sound on rhythm as in Clapping Music and Drumming have redefined the face of contemporary music. And with Reich having such an emotional impact at work on pieces such as Different Trains and the remaining greatness of Music for 18 Musicians, the impact of Reich is widespread. His music opens a door to re-pay attentive listening, relishing of slow change as well as engulfing richness within repetition.

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Learn about the music and life of Steve Reich who is a minimalist music composer of Music for 18 musicians, phasing, tape loops, and others.