7/29/2019 Music Marathon Steve Reich http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/music-marathon-steve-reich 1/36 Phases – The Music of Steve Reich Music Marathon Days SATURDAY 7 OCTOBER Session 1 11am LSO St Luke’s In the Beginning page 6 Session 2 2pm LSO St Luke’s Distant Voices page 8 Freestage 2.45pm Barbican Foyer Lila Cita (gamelan) page 11 Session 3 4pm Barbican Theatre Diversions page 12 Freestage 4.15pm Barbican Foyer Powerplant page 11 Freestage 6.15pm Barbican Foyer Music for Airports page 15 Session 4 7 .30pm Barbican Hall Remixing Reich page 16 SUNDAY 8 OCTOBER Session 5 11am LSO St Luke’s Extensions page 18 Session 6 2pm LSO St Luke’s New York page 20 Freestage 3.45pm Barbican Foyer Konono No.1 page 21 Session 7 5pm Barbican Theatre Responses to Reich page 22 Freestage 6.45pm Barbican Foyer Bang on a Can All-Stars page 25 Session 8 8pm Barbican Hall Quintessential Reich page 26 Foyer installation 3pm–7pm Brian Eno: 77 Million Paintings page 15 F o r det ail s of comp os er s /perf o r mers pl ease s ee pag es 28–35. Saturday 7 October – Sunday 8 October, 2006 Barbican Hall/Barbican Theatre/LSO St Luke’s The Barbican Centre is provided by the City of London Corporation as part of its contribution to the cultural life of London and the nation. 9976_STEVE_REICH_PROG 4/10/06 16:20 Page 1
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Traced Overhead –The Musical World of Thomas AdèsA festival celebrating the composer, pianist and conductor Thomas Adès.
New Crowned Hope – A Festival by Peter SellarsNew works by John Adams,Kaija SaariahoandOsvaldo Golijov plus the Mark Morris Dance Group.
International OrchestrasFeaturing theBerliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of AmsterdamandDresden Staatskapelle.
World-class soloistsDavid Daniels, Renée Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu,Evgeny Kissin, Anna NetrebkoandRolando Villazón, Andreas SchollandMaxim Vengerov in concert.
Opera and Vocal MusicHandel’s Theodora, Ariodante, Giulio Cesare andAmadigi di Gaula as well asperformances from Les Arts Florissants with William Christie and theMonteverdi Choir with Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
by Steve ReichBeyond conventional boundariesIn 1966, at the age of 30, I formed my first ensemble ofthree musicians. The possibility that in 40 years therewould be festivals of my music around the world tocelebrate my 70th year was unimaginable.
My music has never submitted to conventionalboundaries. In 1973, after my ensemble played a concert
in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, a young man with long hairand lipstick came up and said, ‘Hello, I’m Brian Eno’.Three years later in Berlin, David Bowie showed up for theEuropean premiere of Music for 18 Musicians .
In the 1990s I found myself remixed by a youngergeneration of DJs. For the young student who sat inclubs in the Fifties and Sixties listening to Miles Davis,
Kenny Clark and JohnColtrane, you could say thiswas poetic justice. I wastaught by Hall Overton,Vincent Persichetti, DariusMilhaud and Luciano Berio.But I was as influenced byGhanian drumming, Balinesegamelan and Hebrew chantas I was by Bartók, Stravinsky,Pérotin and Bach.
People assumed there was a mathematical basis for what
I composed, since there were clearly musical processesworking themselves out in my music. But they were wrong.All these processes were founded on musical intuition: Ijudged the results by ear. I’ve sometimes used samplersand computers, but have also felt the need to rid myself oftechnology and just write for musicians and singers. Andso it has continued and grown to this day.
We have good reason to celebrate Steve Reich’s 70thbirthday. Recently called ‘... the most original musical thinkerof our time’ (The New Yorker ), Reich, in his lifetime, has seenand (to a large extent) caused a revolution to take place.
Alienation, isolation, frustration was the beginning. In the1950s and 1960s, conventional Western musicalcomposition had become paralysed. Systems oncegroped for by Arnold Schoenberg and the SecondViennese School at the beginning of the 20th century hadbecome magnified and codified to the virtual exclusion of
emotional message, let alone joy. Tonality, recognisableform and rhythm had become virtually taboo.Composers were writing for themselves and othercomposers. If audiences were baffled, it didn’t matter. Ifaudiences stayed away, it didn’t matter. Serialism with itsrigorous organising of pitch, rhythm, dynamic and formwas squeezing the life-blood out of ‘serious’ music.
European radio stations, American and Europeanacademic music departments jumped on the band-wagon. Art music no longer charmed and entertained;
indeed, if it did, it was deemed frivolous. Complexity forits own sake was revered. Many young composers werestuck. Perhaps the principal challenge had to come fromAmerica – ‘The Land of the Free’ (and of jazz) – but therewas something in the air in Europe too. It took guts to takeon the musical establishment and it took tremendoustalent.
Reich, born in New York City, graduated in philosophyfrom Cornell, going on to study composition at Juilliardand Mills College, California, with Darius Milhaud and
Luciano Berio. His fellow students in 1961 were writing
enormously complicated scores which remained ‘papermusic’: they were never performed – Mills had no orchestra.But John Coltrane was playing modal jazz at the JazzWorkshop. ‘This was the most interesting music for me atthe time – by day I was learning about what I did notwant to do, but by night I was learning about somethingthat I did want to work into my life.’ Reich resolved thatwhatever his limitations (he played piano and percussion)he must play in performances of his own music andcreate his own ensemble – like jazz musicians have alwaysdone. (It is a not insignificant hallmark of those
composers in the same revolution – Philip Glass, LouisAndriessen and Michael Nyman – that each set up theirown bands, Nyman and Glass at one time playing inReich's ensemble.)
Paradoxically, Reich at first countered the rigidity ofserialism with an alternative approach, no less rigid. Music as a Gradual Process spelt it out: ‘I do not mean theprocess of composition but rather pieces of music that are,literally, processes.’ Soon ‘minimalism’ was coined as aterm for the music of Steve Reich (and others), but its sense
is vague and in no way accurately ‘describes’ the music.But there are some overall principles – repetition as astructural means, non-functional harmony (tonal orotherwise), slow, almost static harmonic change and abeat. The influence of non-Western music, in particularAfrican drumming and the Balinese gamelan is clear butBartók, Stravinsky and Kurt Weill lurk in the bushes. Overthe course of this festival, it will become evident that Reichhas never remained static; indeed his progress from rigidity(to break the mould?) to a wider embracing of colour,
texture and form is remarkable for its inexorable logic.
Reich has influenced a couple of generations ofcomposers and appealed to audiences in vast numbers.Even as far back as 1974, a performance of his seminalwork Drumming at London’s Hayward Gallery sold outin ten days. Some indication of Reich’s immensepopularity today is the fact that on his actual 70thbirthday – 3 October – no fewer than 26 separateperformances take place around the world.
Phases – The Music of Steve Reich is a feast of a festival,an extraordinary collaboration of artists and organisations.
Almost all the key works are to be found and almost allthe key players. The celebration of dance through thechoreographers Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, RichardAlston and Akram Khan – presenting a world premiere,Proverb, and a London premiere, Variations for Vibes ,Pianos and Strings – flags up the dance world's earlysupport for, and fascination with, Reich's pulsatingscores, while ‘Reich on Film’ underlines the importance ofthe visual arts where artists and galleries for so longprovided a natural habitat. The Cave , so rarelyperformed, so technically awesome, so profoundly
disturbing, is a summation of many directions and atriumph of collaboration with the video artist, Beryl Korot,Reich’s wife.
The central core of the festival – aptly called ‘MusicMarathon Days’ – is on 7 and 8 October where oneach day four ‘sessions’ take place. ‘In the Beginning’[Session 1] includes 1960s ‘process’ pieces – It’s Gonna Rain andCome Out – which use identical tape-loops soproducing a kaleidoscopic sound effect of enormousenergy as they drift in and out of phase with each other.
‘Phasing’, as this technique became known, was one of
Reich’s earliest trademarks, and Drumming [Session 4‘Remixing Reich’] – shifting machine-phasing to live humanperformers on drums, glockenspiels and marimbas – isarguably still his greatest work. Reich uses speech andwordless vocal sound for meaning, colour and rhythm. Hisvocal and mixed media works embrace the political andthe biblical – Reich’s life has been centred on Jewishthought over many years – but remain, to an extent,impersonal and objective, paradoxically delivering thegreater emotional punch. Different Trains [Session 2],The Cave , and Daniel Variations , which receives its world
premiere [Session 8], more overtly confront the Jewishdilemma, while Tehillim andYou Are (Variations) [bothSession 3] are philosophically more abstract.
Another Reichian trait is multi-tracking and sampledmusic, where performers play simultaneously with andagainst pre-recorded versions of themselves: Different Trains [Session 2] , New York Counterpoint [Session 6],Electric Counterpoint [Session 7], and Cello Counterpoint [Session 8] are astonishing, vibrant feats of technology.
The galaxy of stars performing – the Steve ReichEnsemble ( his own ensemble still with players from the1960s), Synergy Vocals, Kronos Quartet, Theatre ofVoices, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Icebreaker, UK trip hopDJ/producers Coldcut, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BrittenSinfonia, soloists Maya Beiser, Glenn Branca and USelectronica pioneer DJ Spooky (to name but a few) –promises much. It’s rare to witness a revolution in 11 days.And it’s even rarer to be a part of it!
It’s Gonna Rain is Reich’s opus 1. The piece beginsexactly as the process of its composition began, with arecording the composer made in San Francisco late in1964 of a black Pentecostal preacher, Brother Walter, outin the street. Back in the studio Reich discovered, almostby accident, that two tape recorders, playing the sameloop of tape, would run at slightly different speeds, sothat the sound loops would gradually move out of phasewith each other and back again. This is the effectreproduced in the first part of the piece, where it seems attimes that other words are being spoken. Also present
from the original tape is the sound of a pigeon taking off,like a drum beat, and the rumble of city traffic. Thesecond part of the work takes another sentence ofBrother Walter’s, and this time the phasing process isopen-ended, reducing the words and the voice to noise.In both parts the musical processes depend on relativelynew technology, but the essential principle – of identicallines being separated in time – is that of a long-established form: the canon or round. As Reich hasrecalled, the piece came about shortly after the Cuban
Missile Crisis, when words about coming ‘rainfall’ had aparticular resonance. In the second part, he hassuggested: ‘The emotional feeling is that you’re goingthrough the cataclysm; you’re experiencing what it’s liketo have everything dissolve.’
Having developed phasing in his tape pieces of 1965–6,Reich wondered if the same principle of slowly slippingone musical line past another could be applied in liveperformance. His first success came with Piano Phase
(1967), reinterpreted here by David Cossin as Video
Phase . In the original piece, one pianist plays a figureover and over while, rather as in the first part of It’s Gonna Rain , a second moves gradually ahead. Thishappens three times, with ever shorter figures. Each timethe two players start together and end together, aftermoving through a cycle of ‘misalignments’ dappled withnew patterns resulting from the different combinations. InCossin’s version, he plays MIDI-percussion pads thattrigger the piano figures, and does so in dialogue with hisown video-recording. This is a spectacular 21st-centuryremake of the composition, but at the same time it recalls
the piece’s studio origins, when Reich began exploringpossibilities by playing against a tape loop he hadrecorded.
Reich composed his second tape piece, Come Out , in1966, soon after he had returned to New York. Hecreated it for a benefit concert, in aid of six boys who hadbeen charged with murder after the Harlem riots of 1964;hence the choice of source material from testimony given
by one of the boys, Daniel Hamm, describing theaftermath of a beating he had suffered at police hands.He had to open a bruise, because only those with visiblebleeding were taken to hospital. ‘Essentially a refinementof It’s Gonna Rain ’, as Reich has described it, the work’sphase process produces an effect of ‘slowly increasingreverberation which gradually passes into a canon orround for two voices, then four and finally eight’.
Soon after Piano Phase Reich turned to giving ensemble
performances with electronic means, including a device
Saturday 7 October Session 1 11am LSO St Luke’s
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Session 1: In the BeginningSteve Reich (b. 1936) It’s Gonna Rain (1965) 17’ solo tape
Steve Reich Video Phase (1967/2002) UK premiere 15’ David Cossin
Steve Reich Come Out (1966) 13’ solo tape
Steve Reich Four Organs (1970) c. 16-22’ Icebreaker
Michael Gordon (b. 1956) Yo Shakespeare (1992) 11’ Icebreaker
he constructed himself to measure out pulses and changethe phase relationships between electronic or performedsounds.Four Organs , completed in January 1970,came as a reaction to the unyielding accuracy ofelectronic time. The music still depends on regular pulses,but these are now delivered by a player shaking maracasat the same rate throughout, and so maintaining anaudible clock for the other four musicians. They keep tothe same chord (a dominant 11th of A major), at first inirregular jabs, but then with notes progressively pickedout and sustained for longer and longer periods. It is as if
a line of colour were gradually bleeding across a wholesurface, or as if the chord, rhythmically alive to beginwith, were congealing. Reich’s choice of notes to be heldresults in an extremely slow resolution, followed by arestoration of harmonic tension – though now in theultimately non-tense form of continuous sound.
Four Organs was played, as other Reich pieces hadbeen, in museums and galleries in New York and otherU.S. cities, but the work soon brought him much wideraudiences. In 1971 he and his ensemble took it on their
first European tour, and Michael Tilson Thomas invitedhim to play it with members of the Boston SymphonyOrchestra. Born in the electronic studio just a few yearsbefore, Reich’s music was ready to come out.
Michael Gordon, 20 years younger than Reich, countsYo Shakespeare as his breakthrough piece. By hisown account, it came about again by means of a newtechnology, the possibility of composing on a computer –
not creating new sounds but typing in notation, and
being free to ignore the rhythmic conventions natural to acomposer writing on paper. Gordon found himselfcomposing unusual rhythms, especially combinations inwhich one instrumental line is out of synchrony withanother by a third of a beat. He was not sure such thingswould be performable, but found in this morning’s groupmusicians who were up to it.
Marked ‘Aggressive and joyful’, the piece proceeds at auniform tempo, with jumps from one texture to anotherand constant rhythmic irregularities in how the
instruments have to work together. The effect, thecomposer has said, is ‘almost as if there are threedifferent dance rooms with three different dance bandsplaying at the same time – as if they’re playing differentsongs and different tempos, but somehow you coulddance to it or somehow you could feel that there was acommon rhythm’.
It was Reich who advised Gordon to preface his scorewith a note on the music’s rhythmic oddity: ‘If people lookat this score, they’re going to think you’re an idiot. But if
you actually tell them on the front page that you knowyou’re an idiot, then they’ll take you seriously.’ Gordonduly dedicated the piece to the senior composer.
For details of composers/performers please see pages 28–35, Session 1
The medieval pieces that start this programme were, PaulHillier has explained, ‘chosen to illustrate various aspectsof Steve Reich’s musical style’. Here are the composer’sancestors.
Gloria ad modem tubae (Gloria in trumpet mode), ashort piece by the greatest master of his time, has two pairsof canonic voices, of which the lower pair was originallyinstrumental but is set for singers in this performance.
The four hockets that follow exemplify a kind of joltingcounterpoint where each of two lines keeps stopping and
the other fills in the gap. These four, from the seeminglyinstrumental collection known as the Bamberg Codex ,are here sung to the four syllables of ‘alleluia’, onesyllable to each hocket in turn. The two hocketing uppervoices are freely constructed over a third line, which is thesame in each hocket but given a different rhythmicpattern, and the effect is heightened by how the vowelcolour only changes at the end of each hocket.
Canons and hockets are everywhere in Reich’s music; notso unaccompanied melody, such as Pérotin offers in
Beata viscera . The text is by Philip the Chancellor, animportant figure in the Parisian intellectual world ofaround eight centuries ago, when Pérotin was composingmusic for the new cathedral of Notre Dame. The inclusionof this piece needs no justification, but Hillier points outthat it provides ‘a musical contrast such as Reich ofteninserts into his pieces. It always seems he can’t wait to getback to the canons and hockets, but, even so, he writesdelicious moments of slow music in the process.’
TheBenedicamus Domino , sung at the end of mass,
was often made a moment of musical display in the 13th
and 14th centuries. This keyboard version, with elaboratefiguration, comes from the Faenza Codex.
Finally, Pérotin’s Viderunt omnes is one of the gloriesof its epoch and a piece astonishingly suggestive of Reichin how the four voices interlock in great cycles ofrepetition and change, how lines can be both individualand responsive to harmonic gear changes, how just afew words can sustain an immense composition, or howhuman speed and eternal slowness can happen at once.The entire piece is based on a Christmas chant, which, in
extreme deceleration, supports a glorious stretch ofcounterpoint on each of its notes, the other voicespointing the move from one note to the next and joiningin magnificent cadences that end sections. Just twice thechant is heard alone, a steady foundation without itssuperstructure.
There are direct links to Reich’s Proverb , for this piecewas proposed and first conducted by Paul Hillier, andReich has stated that he found ‘guidance and inspiration’
in the works of Pérotin. The result is a graceful homage, aslow salute across so many centuries.
Like Pérotin, Reich needs only a seed of text, and hefound something perfect for his purpose in the writings ofWittgenstein: ‘How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life.’ These words are set to a beautiful falling phrase,which the three sopranos extend in ever slower canons,stopping to brace – and listen to – livelier duets from thetenors. Electric keyboards enter to accompany the voices;vibraphones come later to bring forward the shifting
groups of two and three beats, such as Reich often uses to
Saturday 7 October Session 2 2pm LSO St Luke’s
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Session 2: Distant VoicesTexts and translations are available separately at this session.
Guillaume Dufay (1397–1474) Gloria ad modem tubae 4‘ • anon. Four hockets (Alleluia) (13th-century) 4‘
Theatre of Voices, director Paul Hillier • Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen
Steve Reich (b. 1936) Proverb (1995) 14’ Theatre of Voices, director Paul Hillier
Steve Reich Different Trains (1988) 27’ Kronos QuartetDavid Harrington violin • John Sherba violin • Hank Dutt viola • Jeffrey Zeigler cello 1. America – Before the War • 2. Europe – During the War • 3. After the War
contribute rhythmic liveliness. After almost five minutes,magically, the sopranos turn their phrase upside-down,so that now it rises, and the harmony turns from B minorto E flat minor. ‘The last part’, the composer notes, ‘is onelarge augmentation canon for the sopranos returning tothe original key of B minor with the tenors singing theirmelismatic duets continuously as the canon slowlyunfolds around them. This is concluded by a short codawhich ends, as the piece began, with a single soprano.’
Reich tells us also that the paragraph in which he foundhis Wittgenstein proverb includes another: ‘If you want togo down deep you do not need to travel far.’
Contrastingly a work of travel, Different Trains wascomposed in 1988 for the Kronos Quartet. The playersinteract with recorded sounds: themselves and, mostcrucially, fragments of speech, together with train noises.Thus the piece presents, Reich has said, ‘both adocumentary and a musical reality’, and as such itprovided preparation for The Cave . About this most
autobiographical of his pieces – yet typically objective –he has further commented:
‘Different Trains has its roots in my early tape piecesIt’s Gonna Rain andCome Out. The basic idea is thatcarefully chosen speech recordings generate the musicalmaterials for musical instruments.
‘The idea for the piece came from my childhood. When Iwas one year old my parents separated. My mothermoved to Los Angeles and my father stayed in New York.
Since they arranged divided custody, I travelled back and
forth by train frequently between New York and LosAngeles from 1939 to 1942 accompanied by mygoverness. While the trips were exciting and romantic atthe time I now look back and think that, if I had been inEurope during this period, as a Jew I would have had toride very different trains. With this in mind I wanted tomake a piece that would accurately reflect the wholesituation.
‘To prepare the tape I recorded my governess Virginia,then in her seventies, reminiscing about our train tripstogether, and also a retired Pullman porter, LawrenceDavis, then in his eighties. I also collected recordings ofHolocaust survivors Rachella, Paul and Rachel, all aboutmy age and then living in America, and of American andEuropean train sounds of the Thirties and Forties.
‘In order to combine the taped speech with the stringinstruments I selected small speech samples that aremore or less clearly pitched and then notated them asaccurately as possible in musical notation. The stringsthen literally imitate that speech melody.
‘The speech samples as well as the train sounds weretransferred to tape with the use of sampling keyboardsand a computer. Three separate string quartets are alsoadded to the pre-recorded tape and the final live quartetpart is added in performance.’
Different Trains was commissioned by Betty Freeman for the Kronos Quartet.
For details of composers/performers please see pages 28–35, Session 2
Written in the year of Reich’s birth, Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta could have beenthe infant composer’s horoscope, foretelling a life of folkand art traditions vigorously integrated, of musicalprocesses and of percussion instruments made central.The work is an abstract drama in which two identicalstring orchestras, to right and left, are played off againsteach other and against a central percussion group led bya piano.
There are four movements, of which the first is anelaborate symmetrical canon: the subject, played by theviolas of both orchestras and in a tight chromatic mode,starts out from A, and on each return it moves stepwisealternately up and down in fifths. The pattern iscompleted at E flat (marked by a climax) and then morecursorily played backwards. At the end, two joined violinlines put the movement in a nutshell. What follows is abrilliant and furious scherzo on a variation of the sametheme, often using the string and percussion ensembles indialogue; here the ending comes with imitations andreflections between the string groups.
The nocturnal third movement is again symmetrical, infive main sections marked off by quotations from the firstmovement’s initial melody, which once more seems to bethe germ from which a whole movement grows. So it istoo in the finale, a dance medley which continues thequestion-answer games of the earlier Allegro , but whichat once emerges into a brighter harmonic light: at theculmination, which comes with a broadening of tempo,the main theme is transfigured in C major – albeitBartók’s C major, a scale with raised fourth and flattened
seventh which he learnt from Romanian folk musicians. At
this moment, with Hungary present too in the ascendingfourths of the melody and Bulgaria in the complex metre,the work realises a vision of community just as such valueswere being betrayed in Nazi Germany.
You Are (Variations) belongs to the cascade of worksthat have come out of the next piece, Tehillim – works inwhich short sacred texts or proverbs are sung across livelymusical designs. In this case there are four movementsand four texts:
1. You are wherever your thoughts are (Rabbi Nachmanof Breslov, a Hasidic mystic of Beethoven’s time)
2. Shiviti Hashem l’negdi (I place the Eternal before me,from Psalm 16)
3. Explanations come to an end somewhere (LudwigWittgenstein)
4. Ehmor m’aht, v’ahsay harbay (Say little and do much,from Rabbi Shammai’s contribution to the Talmud)
Short, these phrases form suitable material for a set ofvariations – or, rather, for four different but linkedvariation sets. Typically, all are varied variations. As Reichhas noted: ‘As I went on, the harmonies departed fartherfrom the original ground plan. I frankly enjoyed thisimmensely, since I was following spontaneous musicalintuition.’
The first movement, which accounts for very nearly halfthe length, stretches the syllables out. From this, thesecond emerges as a break into brightness and speed,
but the voices rapidly decelerate to join in ‘a kind of slow-
Saturday 7 October Session 3 4pm Barbican Theatre
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Session 3: DiversionsBéla Bartók (1881–1945) Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) 27’
motion canon with marimbas, vibes and pianos driving iton in constantly changing metres’. There is a breakbefore the slow third movement, from which, as before,the next movement jumps out. ‘What unites the pieceharmonically’, Reich has said, ‘is a constantly recurring Dmajor dominant chord – usually with G, rather than A, inthe bass. This bright ray of D major light illuminates mostof the piece, most intensely in the final movement.’
In the 1970s Reich found his music resonating with
traditions from West Africa and Indonesia. Then hestarted to wonder what he might learn from a culture towhich, as a Jewish musician, he was more directly heir. Tofind out, he made himself a student all over again – ofHebrew, the Torah and cantillation (the traditional Jewishways of chanting sacred texts) – and set out on anotherjourney, to Israel. Once again he learnt a lot. Once againhis creativity was recharged. And once again he gainedconfirmation from the fact that contemporary andtraditional cultures, western and non-western, wereleading him to the same conclusions. Tehillim (1981), hisfirst explicitly Jewish piece, is his symphony of psalms.
The title is the Hebrew word for ‘psalms’ (itself a Greekterm), and a few verses from the Biblical Book of Psalmsprovide the text for the entire 30-minute composition.Reich notes in the score that his tuned tambourineswithout jingles may approximate the sound of the tofmentioned in the first verse he chooses from Psalm 150,and that his other small percussion instruments –maracas, crotales and hands (clapped) – are similar to
those that had a place throughout the Middle East in
Biblical times. So the essential sound of Tehillim – ofvoices with percussion – is archaeological.
Not so the music. Reich remarks also that one of hisreasons for choosing psalm texts was the fact that theancient tradition of psalm singing has been lost (exceptamong Yemenite Jews). He was therefore free to inventhis own melodies, and he made them in his own way, sothat they keep up an ebullient mobility, reboundingbetween different modes and metres. They do so partlybecause of their self-similar structure, in which smallgroups of notes keep reappearing transposed orotherwise changed. The voices dance on, all the timesinging the same things in different orders andperspectives, and gaining more rhythmic liveliness fromjostling against the percussion.
The work is in four parts, each defined by its text andassociated melody. Techniques of canon – for two voices,then for four – are introduced in the first part. Thenwithout a break, but with the arrival of a new melody, thesecond section offers the new sound of voices in two-partand three-part harmony. After that there is a pausebefore the third and fourth sections begin interminglingcanonic and harmonic conceptions. All the time thetextural complexity broadly increases, though nearlyalways keeping at the centre the ancient combination ofvoices and percussion.
For details of composers/performers please see pages 28–35, Session 3
(For a list of the musicians in the BBC Symphony Orchestra please seeaccompanying freesheet, available with the text ofTehillim at this session.)
Schütz Seven Last Words;Gubaidulina Canticle of the Sun
BBC Singers, Fretwork, Stephen Cleoburyconductor ,Alexander Ivashkin celloRichard Benjafield percussion,Chris Brannick percussion,Iain Farrington organ
Friday 12 January Saturday 13 January Sunday 14 January
77 Million Paintings is the next evolutionary stage of BrianEno's exploration into light as an artist’s medium and theaesthetic possibilities of ‘generative engines’. With the arrivalof high-definition monitors and the increased processingpower of computers, whole new possibilities are opened upto an artist. 77 Million Paintings has been installed on theBarbican’s new plasma screens which utilise the computer’sunique capacity as a generating processor to produceoriginal visual compounds out of a large quantity of hand-painted elements.
The audio, played on the foyer PA system, is processed ina similar way, combining layers of sound, ensuring younever hear exactly the same thing twice, even if running24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. The title 77 Million Paintings reflects the possible permutations of the piece.
Freestage/Barbican Foyer – Brian Eno Saturday 7 October
Saturday 7 October 6.15pm Barbican Foyer Freestage
Brian Eno Music for Airports (1978)
Bang on a Can All-Stars
When we first heardMusic for Airports in thelate 1970s/early1980s itwas like a door crackingopen. This record-longpiece was a redefinitionof how we relate to musicin our everyday lives.
Brian Eno was exploringthe question of wheremusic could go. Could its
home lie somewhere outside the muzak of elevators anddentists’ offices and outside the concert hall as well?Could it exist somewhere in between? Eno was essentiallydefining ambient music. 28 years ago there were noambient departments in record stores. There were nonew age or techno sections, no chill rooms. Music for Airports kicked off a whole web of musics that hadn'texisted previously. But the unique factor about Eno’s workwas that, although it could and can exist in thebackground of everyday life, it is music that carries apotency and integrity that goes far beyond the incidental.
It is music that is carefully, beautifully, brilliantlyconstructed and its compositional techniques rival themost intricate of symphonies.
What Eno didn’t imagine was that his piece would berealised with live musicians. In his analogue studio,methodically stringing out bits of tape and looping themover themselves, he hadn’t anticipated that a newgeneration of musicians would take his music out of the
studio and perform it on live instruments in a publicforum. At Bang on a Can, we have always searched forthe redefinition of music, exploring the boundariesbeyond what is expected. This project represents afurther step in this exploration. After 28 years, wheredoes this landmark piece fit into our ever-expandingdefinition? The effect has only begun. The Music for Airports revolution is just starting to unfold. The liverealisation of Music for Airports stays close to the source.
recently fallen, Drumming rejoices in a world wheremodern and ancient, western and non-western are nolonger separate. Before writing it Reich had gone toGhana to study traditional drumming, and had not onlylearnt much but received an important confirmation. Thevisit showed him that the rhythmic processes with whichhe had been working in California and New York werealive also in the towns and villages of west Africa. Hecame back refreshed and enthused.
He had other reasons to feel that way. The late Sixties hadopened doors for him personally, as much as for musicand for society. Concerts he had given in galleries in theSoHo district of New York, within a highly influentialavant-garde milieu, had quickly brought him aninternational reputation. He was ready to make a bigstatement. Drumming was it: an immense sound machinewhich, while holding its ensemble of percussionists andvocalists in a firm grip, also gives them the means to exultin the immediacy of performance – for one thing thatcame out of SoHo as well as Africa was a renewed sense
of communality in music-making. Performers andlisteners are as one, exploring notions of sound and timethat belong to neither party but are joint property. Andthe composer is more a proposer, setting the limits withinwhich this exploration can take place.
Drumming is divided into four parts, lasting altogetheraround an hour, the precise duration depending on howmany times the performers choose to repeat theirpatterns. The first part is for tuned bongos, the second forthree marimbas played by nine players together with two
women’s voices, the third for three glockenspiels played
by four players together with whistling and piccolo, and
the fourth for all these resources combined.
The idea of adding vocal sounds to percussion occurredto the composer spontaneously as he put the scoretogether, working at drums in his studio, though it alsoprovided yet another link with popular music (the‘backing group’) and musical practices in non-westerncultures, besides adding colour and excitement.
Throughout the piece the basic processes are those ofphasing. The voices, singing wordlessly or whistling, and
the piccolo bring out patterns resulting from the interplayof like percussion instruments, the female singersaccompanying the marimbas while the higherglockenspiels require whistlers and piccolo. Sections arejoined by having new instruments follow the steps ofthose already playing, without change of tonality. AsReich has observed: ‘Drumming shows that it is possibleto keep going in the same key for quite a while if thereare instead considerable rhythmic developmentstogether with occasional, but complete, changes oftimbre to supply variety.’ To quote him further:‘Drumming begins with two drummers building up thebasic rhythmic pattern of the entire piece from a singledrum beat, played in a cycle of twelve beats with rests onall the other beats ... There is only one basic rhythmicpattern for all of Drumming . This pattern undergoeschanges of phase position, pitch and timbre, but all theperformers play this pattern, or some part of it,throughout the entire piece.’
INTERVAL
Saturday 7 October Session 4 7.30pm Barbican Hall
16
Session 4: Remixing ReichSteve Reich (b.1936) Drumming (1971) c.60–70’ Steve Reich and Musicians • Synergy Vocals
Interval
Steve Reich, remixed by DJ Spooky and Kronos Quartet City Life: Check it out (1995) c.15–18’
DJ Spooky • Kronos QuartetDavid Harrington violin • John Sherba violin • Hank Dutt viola • Jeffrey Zeigler cello
Steve Reich, remixed by Coldcut Music for 18 Musicians (1976) c.30‘
Konono No.1 Congotronics (album released 2005) c.30’
DJ Spooky ‘That Subliminal Kid’ likes to mix things,
beginning with his personas, which include that of thewriter and artist Paul D. Miller; his D.J. alias he found inthe work of William Burroughs. Born in Washington D.C.,in 1970, he sees the remix as a modern form, responsiveto how recent technology has enabled us to cross-cutrapidly between different sources of information, but alsoas a continuation of well-established African andAfrican-American practices of reusing the products offoreign cultures to produce something new and vividlyexpressive of the reuser’s experience. There are, of
course, implications for the ownership of culture that‘classical’ music has barely begun to entertain, and that –in the high value such music places on the score, thecomposer’s personal style and the recording as adocument – it may resist. Reich has been at the forefronthere, as in so many other ways. He sanctioned the 1999album Reich Remixed , which included a remix by DJSpooky of the opening movement of his City Life – itself aremix of spoken and intrumental sounds, recorded andlive. On this occasion DJ Spooky will be sampling, too,the real-time contribution of the Kronos Quartet.Kronos Quartet engineered by Brian Mohr
Also included on Reich Remixed was a track by Coldcutbased on Music for 18 Musicians , the piece sampled here.Coldcut was born in London from the combined talents ofJonathan More, a former art teacher, and Matt Black, acomputer programmer. The pair’s debut recording, Say Kids, What Time Is It? (1987) was the first remix recordreleased in Britain, and in 1993 they set up the highlysuccessful independent record company Ninja Tunes.
Exemplifying the African remix tradition to which DJ
Spooky has referred, Konono No.1 is a group ofmusicians from the Angolan-Congolese border region ofBazombo who have built cymbals and microphones fromold car parts, turned kitchen hardware into percussioninstruments, and used loudspeakers discarded bydeparting European colonists. According to theBarbican’s contemporary music programmer, BrynOrmrod, ‘Konono No.1 is arguably the most obliqueinclusion in the programme for the “Remixing Reich”session, partly because the group is not actually
performing or remixing Reich's repertoire, and partlybecause at first glance Konono No.1 seems to have littlein common with Reich. Indeed before being invited to thefestival it is unlikely the musicians had even heard Reich’smusic before. What makes the group a relevant andfascinating inclusion is that its African Bazombo Trancemusic drifts close to Reich’s (as it does to Kraftwerk, andKrautrock) creating an accidental connection. Familiarityresounds in the repetition and structure of the music, theapproach to harmony, and the DIY nature of Konono’sprimitive electronica to create a hypnotic trance andrhythm that somehow links these distant musical relatives.’
For details of composers/performers please see pages 28–35, Session 4
Steve Reich Eight Lines (1979, rev. 1983) 17’ Britten Sinfonia • Tim Weissconductor
Julia Wolfe (b. 1958) Lick (1994) 9’ Bang on a Can All-Stars
David Lang (b. 1957) Cheating, Lying, Stealing (1993) 15’ Bang on a Can All-Stars
Sunday 8 October Session 5 11am LSO St Luke’s
Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ ,
completed in May 1973, was Reich’s next big piece afterDrumming . Again the music’s skeleton – by no meansobvious beneath its exuberant and colourfulembodiment – is a gradual process; or rather, there aretwo processes, which happen at the same time and areinterrelated. One is a matter of gradually forming a copyof a pattern, out of phase with the original. The other –’triggered’ by the first, to use Reich’s term – is theprogressive deceleration of a different pattern. The firstprocess is executed by marimbas or glockenspiels, and its
tendency is to increase rhythmic activity. There is thereforean evident contrast with the contributions of the women’svoices and the organ, involved in the second process andso producing longer and longer notes. But there isconnection, too, in that the mallet players’ progressivefiring up seems to give rise to the ever-steadier glow ofthe singers and organist. Also, one singer duplicatespatterns coming from the marimbas, and one malletplayer keeps track of the voices and organ. When theirprocess has reached its maximum extent, as measured byhow long a singer is physically able to sustain a note, thisaccompanying player moves into high speed and theother mallet instruments come back into synchrony,allowing the voices and organ to come down from theirdrawn-out ecstasy. All of this happens four times over,with changes of tonality and metre.
Right from his student days Reich has found himselfworking with mixes of live performers and recordeddoubles. Along the way have come his Counterpoint
series (of which three examples will be heard later today),
Different Trains and a second piece for the Kronos,
Triple Quartet , in which the players perform with tworecorded images of themselves (though the piece canalso be done with all three quartets live). The work hasthree movements, fast-slow-fast. In the first, a cycle of fourminor-key dominant chords (to appear again in Daniel Variations ) is run through twice in slow motion.Meanwhile, the two recorded quartets play chords ininterlocking rhythms and the live first violin and violaunfold slow melodies in canon with the second violin andcello. The slow movement develops into a canon
involving all 12 instrumental parts, and the finale returnsto the speed and the chords of the opening, but now withquicker changes of key.
Reich has revealed that his starting point was ‘the energy’of the last movement of Bartók’s Fourth Quartet, and thattwo contemporaries also entered his working field. Theconflicting rhythms of Michael Gordon’s Yo Shakespeare contributed to how the two recorded quartets worktogether, and he was impressed also by the quartets ofAlfred Schnittke: ‘Listening to the “density” of his music
goaded me to thicken my own plot harmonically andmelodically.’ ‘The result’, he concludes, ‘is a piececonsiderably more dissonant and expressionistic thanexpected.’
Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet with funds provided bythe National Endowment for the Art s, David A. and Evelyne T. Lennette, Patricia Unterman andTim Savinar, and Meet the Composer/Arts Endowment Commissioning Music/USA, which ismade possible by generous support from The Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and The Catherine FileneShouse Foundation.
Eight Lines , similar in length to the Triple Quartet , was
originally written in 1979 for an ensemble of two pianos,string quartet and two wind players, who perform onflute and piccolo as well as clarinets and bass clarinets(though separate players may be employed for the twokinds of instrument). Reich initially called the piece Octet –a classical name for a piece of classical delightfulness –and then retitled it in 1983, when he decided to shareeach of the difficult string parts between two players.There are five sections, with the second and fourthdistinguished by sustained notes from the cello, and the
first, third and last sporting bright, longer melodies in theflute and piccolo – melodies affected by the composer’srecent studies of Jewish cantillation, soon to lead on toTehillim . As he has pointed out, however, the moves fromone section to another are by no means conspicuous.Indeed, the piece can be enjoyed as one continuousstate, one slowly revolving object, sparkling with internalreflections. The pianos play constantly and are central,the other instruments often doubling them or holding theprevailing harmony.
Julia Wolfe has been associated since 1987 with MichaelGordon and David Lang in Bang on a Can, a New Yorkmusical organisation they set up for mutual support andconcert-giving, by no means eschewing the rudeenergies of rock. Reich was to some extent their musicalgodfather, and he has responded with close interest.Wolfe’s nine-minute Lick is scored for a rock-likeensemble of soprano saxophone, electric guitar,percussion, piano, cello and double bass, all amplified,
and is heavily into rock clichés, which it treats with some
humour. The marking is: ‘On the attack, funk’. Reich has
drawn particular attention to the opening: ‘You hear avery sharp attack and then utter silence. It’s all counted –but you don’t hear that. And then there will be anotherincredibly sharp attack, maybe two notes this time. Andthen there’s nothing again, and you’re just waiting untilanother one comes.’
Reich has also spoken admiringly of David Lang’sCheating, Lying, Stealing : ‘Basically what he’s doing
is to take a cadential figure where the notes really work,they’re very strong, and he keeps varying the cadencerhythmically by an eighth note off each time. It keeps thematerial, which might be dull if you were just to repeat it,off-kilter in a way that keeps your attention.’ The piece,headed ‘an ominous funk’, is scored for bass clarinet,cello, piano and percussion, with two players on brakedrums stationed at either side of the platform. Towardsthe end the cello has a high line in long notes like alament, after which the piece goes back to whereit started.
For details of composers/performers please see pages 28–35, Session 5
Reich’s music is inseparable from the city of his birth and
long-term residence – from its race of vehicular andpedestrian tempos, its mix of traditions, its grid of blocks.His affectionate and amused, yet also at times darkening,portrait City Life duly opens this New York concert.Completed in 1994, the work brings the sounds of the cityinto the concert hall by means of recordings which can beplayed by two performers at keyboard samplers.Fragments of speech, traffic noises, subway bells,heartbeats and sirens can thus be introduced into theorchestral texture alongside figures on pianos, strings or
woodwinds, and the two kinds of sound, recorded andinstrumental, can enjoy the same sort of rhythmic flexibility.
Like such earlier works as Eight Lines, City Life exemplifiesthe ABCBA form that Bartók often favoured. The Bmovements are slow, include no speech, and involve aregular rhythmic background, suggestive of a heartbeat inthe second movement and then actualised as such in thefourth. In contrast, the middle movement starts out as aspeech duet and has speech sounds continuing all through,imitated and developed by the instruments. As in It’s Gonna
Rain , Reich found his material at an outdoor gathering ofblack Americans – this time a political rally near City Hall(not far from his apartment). The first movement – within ahymn-like enfolding that might be a homage to an earlierNew Yorker’s vision of home, Copland’s Quiet City – isguided by a street vendor saying: ‘Check it out!’ Technologyallows the man’s speech melody to change its key. Thefinale again includes intermittent words, but the mood isvery different. Here Reich drew on the Fire Department’sfield communications at the time of the ineffective 1993bombing of the World Trade Center, the voices heardthrough hazes of instrumental-recorded sounds.
The intimate combination of speech fragments with
instrumental lines seems to answer an expressive impulseto deal at once with the city’s actuality and with its myth.Commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, the EnsembleInterContemporain and the Ensemble Modern, City Life isdirected at an audience familiar with New York from adistance, a distance mediated by films, novels, poetryand other music. At the same time, it contains awkwardedges of the real, some of which appear in a differentlight now than they did in 1994.
Text1. Check it out •3. It’s been a honeymoon – can’t take no mo’
5. Heavy smoke (speech samples)“Heavy smoke” / “stand by, stand by” / “it’s full ‘a smoke” / “full a’ smoke” / “urgent” etc. / “Guns, knives or weapons on ya’?” / “Wha’ were ya’ doin’?” / “Be careful,” / “where you go” / “careful” / “stand by, stand by” / “careful” / “stand by”
Michael Gordon’s Gotham , taking one of the city’s
nicknames, is for an orchestra of moderate size withoutrecorded actuality – though not without references to citynoises and entertainments. The score was composed in2003, and then the projections were set to it, created bythe film-maker Bill Morrison, the visual artist LaurieOlinder and the director Bob McGrath. According to thecomposer, this is ‘the anti-picture-postcard New York: theeveryday, lived-in, grimy, muscular New York’. The 10-minute first movement has a dreamlike opening for pianoin downward-upward scales with a solo violin alsoproceeding scalewise but much more slowly. Steadily bothtexture and intensity accumulate, and an alien presence
Sunday 8 October Session 6 2pm LSO St Luke’s
Session 6: New York Steve Reich (b. 1936) City Life (1994) 24’ Britten Sinfonia • Stefan Asbury conductor
1. Check it out • 2. Pile driver/alarms • 3. It’s been a honeymoon – Can’t take no mo’ • 4. Heartbeats/boats and buoys • 5. Heavy smoke
Michael Gordon (b. 1956) Gotham (2003) 27’ Britten Sinfonia • Stefan Asbury conductor 1. Spacious • 2. Intense and relentless • 3. Exuberant
Steve Reich New York Counterpoint (1985) 11’ Evan Ziporyn clarinets, tape
Michael Gordon The Sad Park (2005) UK premiere 36’ Kronos QuartetDavid Harrington violin • John Sherba violin • Hank Dutt viola • Jeffrey Zeigler cello 1. two evil planes broke in little pieces and fire came • 2. there was a big boom and then there was teeny fiery coming out •3. I just heard that on the news that the buildings are crashing down • 4. and all the persons that were in the airplane died
Session 6 2pm LSO St Luke’s/Freestage 3.45pm Barbican Foyer Sunday 8 October
arrives about two thirds of the way through. The second
movement is pulse-driven, with searing slow downwardglissandos from the woodwinds and trumpets. The third,is a dance, led off by the two groups of violins in a 12-barperiod that steadily rises, gaining canons andcounterpoints, and then pushes forward a second, longerprocess of general rising.
New York Counterpoint , for clarinet with 10 recordedclarinets and bass clarinets, was the second in asequence of mirror dances that began with Vermont
Counterpoint (1982) for flute and continued with theelectric guitar and cello pieces to be heard this afternoonand evening. This piece, in three linked movements,features pulses out of Music for 18 Musicians and canonsout of everywhere in Reich’s music, created by the liveplayer and unseen echoes. The middle movement goesat half speed, and the finale plays characteristicallyReichian games of syncopation in 12-beat bars that canbe interpreted as containing three fours or four threes. AsReich puts it: ‘The function of the bass clarinets is to
accent first one and then the other of these possibilities,while the upper clarinets essentially do not change. Theeffect is to vary the perception of what is in fact notchanging’– and to create a kind of jazz mobile.
The story of the city comes up to date in The Sad Park ,which Michael Gordon composed last year for theKronos Quartet. This is a piece aptly placed here, since itcarries at least two Reichian strands. Like City Life andDifferent Trains , it interweaves instrumental parts and
recorded speech. It also makes extensive use of a
procedure Reich imagined in 1967, before the technical
means existed, that of ‘slow motion sound’, wherebysounds – in this case speech sounds – are slowed downwithout change of pitch or colour. The composer writesfurther: ‘The recordings used in this piece of children,ages three and four, were made by Loyan Beausoleil,pre-kindergarten teacher at University Plaza NurserySchool in Lower Manhattan, between September 2001and January 2002. (My son Lev was in Ms. Beausoleil’sclass during this period.) Her ongoing work with thesechildren is chronicled at www.youngestwitnesses.com.
When I heard these recordings I was struck by the rawtunefulness of the children’s speech. These specificsegments were chosen for their musicality as well as fortheir content. I worked with sound designer Luke DuBoison the post-production of these tapes. In Parts 1 and 3,the sound clips are gradually slowed down to reveal thehidden acoustical properties of the speech. Parts 2 and 4use an electronic music technique called granularsynthesis, in which tiny “grains” of sound from the originalsource are captured and compacted together.’
Text1. two evil planes broke in little pieces and fire came
2. there was a big boom and then there was teeny fiery coming out
3. I just heard that on the news that the buildings are crashing down
4. and all the persons that were in the airplane died
The Sad Park was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet through the generosity of Mrs. Ralph I.Dorfman with additional support from the Barbican, London, and the National Endowment forthe Arts.
For details of composers/performers please see pages 28–35, Session 6
There is no interval in this performance.
21
Sunday 8 October 3.45pm Barbican Foyer Freestage
Konono No.1A free performance from
Congolese Trance outfitFor information on Konono No.1 see pages 28-35, Session 4
performance by the musician who plays it here, with avideo environment by Irit Batsry. The soloist plays witheight recorded cellos and is also required to vocalise, in amiddle register comfortable for men or women players.In four movements playing without interruption, the piecelasts a little under 25 minutes.
The first movement has only two recorded cellos, workingwith the live player in a narrow register with lines of smallchant-like motifs. On a parallel plane, the performer’svocalisation gives the movement a direction. With no
change of tempo but a move to quicker note values, thesecond movement introduces jittery activity whichbecomes the accompaniment for a slow high melody forthe live cellist, given the instruction: ‘Float over the top’.
A carpet of rising threads from recorded cellos initiates thethird movement, with the live cello building up anddismantling a slow rising melody that in each of itstransformations comes to rest on its final note. This melodicplay is maintained by a recorded cello as the liveperformer moves to ascending arpeggios in harmonics.
The live cello returns to the melody, but the movement endswith the arpeggios, in a trio for live and recorded cellos.
The finale is begun by the cellist singing, joined by arecorded voice. Then the melody of the precedingmovement is reintroduced by a recorded cello – the onlyone present in this movement – and taken by the soloistas her own.
Glenn Branca explains about the genesis of Lesson
No.3 (A Tribute to Steve Reich) .
Around 1980, when my Lesson No.1 was released, afriend of mine knew someone who knew Steve. (Iwouldn’t meet Steve until years later. I should mention thatI was a serious fan of his work, having got hold of Music for Mallet Instruments, Four Organs and Come Out when I was living in Boston in the mid-1970s – I didn’tstart living in New York until late in 1976. All of thosepieces were incredibly important to me. I was writing a lotof music for my theatre group The Bastard Theatre at the
time. And both process and repetition among otherthings – Penderecki-style clusters and thick beautifulMessiaen chords – were right in the groove with what Iwas thinking about. Not to mention blowing my mind.)My friend reported back that Steve had heard the recordand commented about Lesson No.1: ‘Oh … that’s Phil[Glass]’. But he also mentioned that Steve had liked thepiece on the flip side: Dissonance . I was thrilled.
Earlier this year, when I was talking to Bryn Ormrod of theBarbican about doing something as part of the Reich
festival, I mentioned this story to him and suggested thatmaybe I should write a Lesson for Steve. There had beena Lesson No.2 on my album The Ascension so Isuggested it be called Lesson No.3 (A Tribute to Steve Reich) . Bryn went for it immediately.
This is yet another thrill for me. I still love Steve more thanever. What can I say? The piece is probably as close as Iwill ever get to a classic 1970s Reichian minimalism (exceptfor ‘The Temple of Venus’ in The World Upside Down ).Lesson No.3 (A Tribute to Steve Reich) was commissioned by the Barbican Centre
Sunday 8 October Session 7 5pm Barbican Theatre
Session 7: Responses to ReichDavid Lang (b. 1957) World to Come (2003) 23’ Maya Beiser cello
1. Mysterious and oddly pulsing, like a heavy heartbeat • 2. [no marking] • 3. [no marking] • 4. Angelic and pureGlenn Branca (b. 1948) Lesson No.3 (A Tribute to Steve Reich) (2006) world premiere 15'
John Myers guitar • Regina Bloor guitar • Libby Fabricatore guitar • Greg McMullen guitar • VirgilMoorefield drums
Steve Reich (b. 1936) Electric Counterpoint (1987) 15’ Dominic Frasca guitar
Gavin Bryars (b. 1943) The Stones of the Arch (2006) world premiere 12’ Kronos Quartet David Harrington violin •John Sherba violin • Hank Dutt viola • Jeffrey Zeigler cello Theatre of Voices/Paul Hillier• Philip Jeck turntableist Text of The Stones of the Arch is available separately at this session.
Written just two years after New York Counterpoint , in the
summer of 1987, Electric Counterpoint is somewhatsimilar in having benign arrivals of pulsation, a jump tohalved speed for the middle movement and a finalesashaying between triple and quadruple metres. It playsfor a little longer, around a quarter of an hour, and wascreated for this afternoon’s soloist, in combination withrecordings of 10 electric guitars and two bass guitars. Thefirst movement is based on a theme from Central Africanhorn music, treated in eight-part canon by recordedguitars, with the live player picking out resultant melodic
patterns. This principle – of the live performer exploring arecorded canon, now for nine guitars and on a differenttheme – reappears in the slow movement. There arefurther canons in the finale, where the bass guitars, likethe bass clarinets in New York Counterpoint , swing themusic between three fours and four threes, the latterwinning out.
Gavin Bryars writes about The Stones of the Arch asfollows: ‘This piece for two quartets – one of voices, one of
strings – was commissioned by the Barbican Centre forthis festival celebrating the 70th birthday of Steve Reich,to whom the work is dedicated. The instrumentationcame about because of the practical concern to useplayers who were already involved in the festival (whoalso happened to be known to me personally). The choiceof text, however, as for any vocal work, was most critical. Idecided not to use the Old Testament, which might havebeen a more obvious source – although I have set variousPsalms, lines from Proverbs and parts of Genesis. Instead I
chose two poems by the Scottish poet George Bruce,
whose work I discovered when setting sonnets by Edwin
Morgan. Here the second poem, The Stones of the Arch ,written in 2000 when the poet was approaching his 90thbirthday, is a “reconsideration” of the first, A Gateway to the Sea , from 50 years earlier. It was George Bruce’s ideaof working on something from the past by creatingsomething new, rather than rewrite or edit, that I foundparticularly attractive, especially as the poems are sodifferent.
‘In the music I also sought to avoid any direct reference toSteve’s work, although there are a couple of figures in the
cello that could be seen as allusive, and the piece clearlydoes involve some repetition. I preferred to acknowledge,rather, the fact that neither Steve nor I are constrained byour past work but, at the same time, are inevitablyconditioned by it to some extent. The two poems make upthe two parts of the piece, which is played without abreak.
‘There is an optional part for a solo improviser workingideally with simple live electronics. My choice for the firstperformance was Philip Jeck, who works with vinyl
records on old gramophone turntables and with whom Ihad worked on a performance of The Sinking of the Titanic in Venice. The improvisation starts before thescore proper and overlaps the opening section up to thefirst vocal entry. Thereafter he is free to play at any timebut is more prominent in the interlude between the twopoems, and at the end.’
For details of composers/performers please see pages 28–35, Session 7
APA RT MENT HOUSE ARVE HENR IKSON AXEL DÖRNERBARRY GUY NEW ORCHESTRA B I LL DRUMMONDCHANTALE LAPLANTE CHRISTIAN WALLUMRØD ELISIONEVAN PARKER JAMES TENNEY JENN I F ER WALSHEJÓHANN JÓHANNSSON JOHN BUTCHER LÉ QUAN NINHLUKE FOWLER MARILYN CRISPELL MICHAEL F INNISSYM ICHELLE MAKARSK I PAUL WH I TTY RHODR I DAV I E SSAM HAYDEN S K U L I S V E R R I S S O N S TE V E M A C K E Y
Traced Overhead – The Musical World of Thomas AdèsWed 7 Mar - Sun 22 Apr 2007Prodigious composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Adès explores his musical roots through works by Beethoven,Stravinsky, Kurtag and Nancarrow. His own celebrated compositions are performed by the BerlinerPhilharmoniker with Sir Simon Rattle, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe,Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and by Adès himself. He is joined by close collaborators Ian Bostridgeand Simon Keenlyside.
New Crowned Hope – A Festival by Peter SellarsWed 4 Jul - Sun 12 Aug 2007Invited by the city of Vienna to mark Mozart's 250th anniversary, acclaimed director Peter Sellars created New CrownedHope - a 21st Century response to Mozart through music, dance, film and theatre featuring major new commissions byJohn Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Osvaldo Golijov and Mark Morris. Celebrated performers including the Mark Morris Dance Group, Emmanuel Ax, Dawn Upshaw and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestracome together in this landmark festival.
Freestage – Bang on a Can All-Stars Sunday 8 October
25
Manhatta was written in 2003 to accompany the 1920
silent film of the same name, directed and photographed byPaul Strand and Charles Sheeler. The piece itself is amarathon. Although only 11 minutes in duration, it has adriven, relentless bass line, which interplays with an equallyrhythmic and linear melody line that seems to propel thevisuals, perfectly reflecting Strand and Sheeler'sphotographic style and sharp editing. At 212 beats perminute (also the area code for Manhattan), it is as if Nymanis daring the people in the film to go about their daily lives atan even faster and more furious pace than they already are.
The title for Believing came to me after the music hadbeen written. During the time I was working on the piece Ihad been listening to a song by John Lennon calledTomorrow never knows . It’s a fantastic song – verypsychedelic – written at a time when the Beatles wereexploring spiritual questions. You can hear it in the music,and in the words. There's a line, ‘It is believing’ that comesback again and again. Believing is such a powerful word– full of optimism and struggle. It’s hard to believe and it’sliberating to believe. It is my second piece for the group
ShadowBang is a traditional Balinese wayang kulit with new, non-gamelan music and extended lightingtechniques. Most of the piece is dominated by the voiceand movements of I Wayan Wija, a brilliant dalang in theclassical style. As in all Balinese shadow puppetry, Wijatells two stories at once: a lofty narrative based on Hindumythology, as framed by the adventures and
commentary of various servants and sidekicks, in this
It has always seemed to us in Bang on a Can that LouisAndriessen is one of the European composers wholistened hard to American music, coming up with his own
solutions to our national musical problems. In America ofthe 1960s there were many composers who wereexperimenting with open forms – pieces that leftsomething unspecified, like the choice of instruments, orthe order of musical ideas, or the co-ordination of theindividual parts. A lot of composers were trying to findout how to take the controls away from making music.Workers Union is the young(ish) Andriessen'scontribution to this approach. Everything is specified inthis piece except the notes – the rhythms, the phrases, theattitude are all there, but not the notes. It is clearly a piece
Manhatta , by Michael Nyman and arranged by Andy Keenan, was commissioned for the Bangon a Can All-Stars with generous support from the River to River Festival and the WorldFinancial Center Arts & Events. Believing was commissioned by NPS Dutch Radio for the Bangon a Can All-Stars. The music from ShadowBang was created with the support of the NationalEndowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production Fund.
For information on composers/performers see pages 28–35:Bang on a Can All-Stars and Julia Wolfe, Session 5; EvanZiporyn, Session 6; and Michael Nyman and Louis Andriessen,
Freestage 8 October, page 34.
Sunday 8 October 6.45pm Barbican Foyer Freestage
Bang on a Can All-Stars
Michael Nyman (b.1934) arr. Andy Keenan Manhatta (2003/2006) 11’
Julia Wolfe (b.1958) Believing (1997) 9’
Evan Ziporyn (b.1959) Music from ShadowBang (2001) 15’
Angkat • Ocean • Meditasi • Head
Louis Andriessen (b.1939) Workers Union (1975) 16’
Counterpoint has eight lines, seven of which may bepre-recorded, as here. It has three movements in a fast-slow-fast pattern, and plays continuously. As thecomposer explains: ‘The first and last movements areboth based on a similar four-chord cycle that movesambiguously back and forth between C minor and E flatmajor. This harmonic cycle is treated extremely freely,however, particularly in the third movement. As a matterof fact, what strikes me most about these movements isthat they are generally the freest in structure of any I have
written. The second, slow movement is a canon in E flatminor involving, near the end, seven separate voices.’
About Daniel Variations the composer writes:
The piece is in four movements using texts from theBiblical book of Daniel for the first and third movementsand from the words of Daniel Pearl, the American Jewishreporter, kidnapped and murdered by Islamist extremistsin Pakistan in 2002, for the second and fourth movements.
The first text, from the fourth chapter of the book ofDaniel, is spoken by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon(modern-day Iraq). He is asking Daniel to interpret hisdream of terror. Right now it is unfortunately possible tofeel a chill of identification with these words.
The second text was spoken by Daniel Pearl while hiscaptors videotaped him: ‘My name is Daniel Pearl. I’m aJewish American from Encino, California.’ I use only thefirst five words in the music itself since the statement is soemblematic of this remarkable person. In Jewish tradition,
and in many others, names are indicative of character.
The third text is the Biblical Daniel’s response to
Nebuchadnezzar.The last text is a bit of a surprise and is explained by afriend of Daniel Pearl as follows: ‘Once, during a two-day bike trip up the Potomac River, his friend TomJennings asked about his belief in an afterlife. “I don’tknow,” Danny replied. “I don’t have answers, mainly justquestions.” Then he added: “But I sure hope Gabriel likesmy music.” After Danny died, Tom was going through hisfriend’s vinyl collection (Dvorák, Liszt, Miles Davis, REM)and stumbled across this album: Stuff Smith and the Onyx
Club Orchestra. “Danny loved Stuff Smith – a great jazzviolinist,” Tom says. “Here on side A, track 3, I found this:Stuff Smith playing I Hope Gabriel Likes My Music .” ‘
I have not used any of the music or lyrics of the song andhave even added to the title. I hope Danny would approve.
Musically,Daniel Variations has two related harmonicground plans. One for the first and third movements usesfour minor dominant chords a minor third apart, in Eminor, G minor, B flat minor and C sharp minor. The other
harmonic plan is for the second and fourth movementsand uses four major dominant chords in the relative majorkeys, G, B flat, D flat and E. This gives a darker chromaticharmony to the first and third movements and a moreaffirmative harmonic underpinning to the second andfourth. Since Daniel Pearl was not only a reporter, but alsoplayed the fiddle – particularly jazz and blue grass – thestrings take the lead melodically in the second and fourthmovements, sometimes doubled by the two clarinets.
The piece is scored for two sopranos and two tenors with
two B flat clarinets, four vibes, bass and kick drum, tam-
Steve Reich Daniel Variations (2006) world premiere c. 30’ Steve Reich Ensemble • Synergy Vocals •Brad Lubman conductor 1. I saw a dream. Images upon my bed and visions in my head frightened me. (Daniel 4:2 or 4:5 in Christian translations)
2. My name is Daniel Pearl (I'm a Jewish American from Encino, California)
3. Let the dream fall back on the dreaded (Daniel 4:16 or 4:19 in Christian translations)
4. I sure hope Gabriel likes my music, when the day is done.
Steve Reich Music for 18 Musicians (1976) c. 65’ Steve Reich and Musicians • Synergy Vocals
performance is dedicated to the 5th Daniel Pearl WorldMusic Days (www.music-days.org), 6-15 October.
Text
1. I saw a dream. Images upon my bed and visions in my head
frightened me.
2. My name is Daniel Pearl (I'm a Jewish American from Encino,
California)
3. Let the dream fall back on the dreaded
4. I sure hope Gabriel likes my music, when the day is done.
Daniel Variations was co-commissioned by the Barbican Centre, London, Carnegie Hall in
New York, Cité de la Musique in Paris, Casa de Musica in Porto, Portugal, and in memory ofDaniel Pearl by an anonymous donor in association with ‘Meet The Composer’ and the DanielPearl Foundation, which is dedicated to cross-cultural understanding and music.
INTERVAL
Music for 18 Musicians takes us back for an hour to 30years ago, when Reich was at the peak of his earlymaturity, and when it was more easily possible to beoptimistic about the world. The piece is a joy machine.Reich wrote it in 1974–76 for an unusually large ensemble,with his commonly central mallet instruments and pianos
joined by musicians of breath – four women singers andtwo clarinettists – as well as by two string players. Twokinds of rhythm are thus built into the fabric: the pulsationsso natural to hands at keyboards and the slower periodsof breathing. But the pulsations are omnipresent, andwhen taken up by the singers and clarinettists, often inlong crescendos, they suggest the great waves ofharmony that make this music exultant and new.
A sequence of 11 chords underpins everything. Thesequence is heard alone at the beginning, after which
each chord supports a whole section of patterned
counterpoint. Figures, pulses and processes (such as those
of gradually assembling or changing a figure) recur fromone section to another. As the composer has put it: ‘Therelationship between the different sections is bestunderstood in terms of resemblances between membersof a family. Certain characteristics will be shared, butothers will be unique.’ When the chord sequence hasbeen completed in this extended and decorated form, itemerges again, unadorned and still pulsing with energy.
The work went around the world in the late Seventies inthe form of a recording, but it gains a lot from being
experienced in live performance, when one can both seeand hear how the vibraphone player chimes signals, likecourses of bells from a tower, to which the others respondwith a gearing up or down of harmony, or how musiciansmove from one instrument to another to bring aboutchanges in the texture. Watched as well as heard, Music for 18 Musicians is a kind of ceremony, voiced inrepeating bits of tune, in harmonic progressions, insumptuous sonorities, in time. The wheels of the clock goround smoothly at their different rates– a few seconds
for a breath, an hour for the giant cycle that is the entirework – and the clearly marked passing of time is notbaneful but exhilarating.For details of composers/performers please see pages 28–35, Session 8
Paul Griffiths has recently published A Concise History of Western Music (Cambridge) and giventhe U.S. premiere, with Frances-Marie Uitti, of there is still time , for speaking voice and cello(recorded on ECM). A selection of his criticism – including reviews of Steve Reich performancesover a period of 30 years – came out last year as The Substance of Things Heard .
Tan Dun’s Grammy and Oscar winning score to Ang Lee’s film
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon .
SESSION 2 Sat. 7 Oct. 2pm
Theatre of VoicesTheatre of Voices is one of the world’s foremost vocal
ensembles, created by Paul Hillier to be flexible in size, focusing
on medieval and renaissance polyphony, contemporary
composers of the ‘new tonality’ school, and electronic and
experimental work. Theatre of Voices has appeared throughout
the world, and has performed extensively with Steve Reich and
Musicians. Recordings by Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices,
(which were the subject of a series of six radio shows) include
works by Josquin, Mouton and Lassus and such highly-
acclaimed contemporary CDs as Arvo Pärt’s De Profundis and
a collection of works by John Cage, Litany for the Whale .
Else Torp*, Louise Skovbæch Pedersen, Klaudia Kidon soprano
• Risto Joost* tenor/countertenor • Christopher Watson*,
Tomas Medici tenor • Paul Hillier* bass/director
* Session 7: Bryars The Stones of the Arch
Paul Hillier bass/director, Theatre of Voices Paul Hillier studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
In 1973 he co-founded the Hilliard Ensemble, and remained its
music director until 1990, when he founded Theatre of Voices.
His recordings have won many awards including the Edison
Prize, German Critics Prize, Gramophone Early Music Record
of the Year, and have attracted countless Grammy nominations.
He is editor of Collected Writings of Steve Reich . In 2001 Hillier
became principal conductor of the Estonian Philharmonic
Chamber Choir. He is an Honorary Professor in Music
(University of Copenhagen) and Chief Conductor of Ars Nova,
Copenhagen. In 2006 he was awarded an OBE.
Athelas Sinfonietta CopenhagenAthelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen is Denmark’s foremost new
music ensemble. Concert series, participation in operas and
festivals, international tours, recordings of new Danish and
international music and an imaginative concert programme have
singled Athelas out as a remarkable organisation. It has
performed around 350 works written in the last half of the 20th
century and gives many premieres of works by Danish and other
composers. In addition to many international tours and projects it
enjoys collaborations in the fields of film, dance and theatre.
Anders Beyer is the ensemble’s first non-composer artistic
director, succeeding Klaus Ib Jørgensen, Poul Ruders, Karl Aage
Rasmussen and Hans Abrahamsen.
Anne Marie Fjord Abildskov, Thomas Rischel keyboard Mathias Friis-Hansen, David Hildebrandt percussion
Kronos QuartetSince its formation over 30 years ago, the Kronos Quartet has
become one of the most celebrated and influential ensembles
of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide,
releasing more than 40 recordings, and commissioning
hundreds of works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos
has collaborated with artists of diverse disciplines and styles,
including Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich; Azerbaijani
Franghiz Ali-Zadeh and Argentinian Osvaldo Golijov; vocalistsranging from the iconic Tom Waits and Inuit throat singer Tanya
Tagaq to Indian ‘Bollywood’ playback singer Asha Bhosle and
Malian Rokia Traoré; instrumentalists such as Chinese pipa
virtuoso Wu Man, pianist Irina Schnittke and Nubian oud
player Hamza El Din; Beat poet Allen Ginsberg; electronic duo
Matmos, choreographers Merce Cunningham and Twyla
Tharp; and many more. The quartet’s work has been
recognised with many awards, including a Grammy for Best
Chamber Music Performance (2004) and ‘Musicians of the
Year’ (2003) from Musical America.
David Harrington violin • John Sherba violin • Hank Dutt viola •
Jeffrey Zeigler cello
Larry Neff lighting designer • Scott Fraser sound designer •
Brian Mohr audio engineer
Janet Cowperthwaite Managing Director • Laird Rodet Associate Director • Sidney ChenArtistic Administrator • Caiti Crum Administrative Assistant • Scott Fraser Sound Designer •Christina Johnson Production and Communications Associate • Larry Neff Production Director • Lucinda Toy Business Operations Manager • U.K. Representation : David Jones, Serious Ltd.
CD Deviations . A dazzling architecture of modern sound looms
behind the eight tracks of the acoustic guitarist’s solo debut,
which includes Glass’s Two Pages , as well as Frasca’s own
23-minute title-track centrepiece. Growing up in Akron, Ohio, inthe late 1970s, Frasca studied classical guitar before branching
out in a fruitful partnership with composer Mark Mellits. Frasca
is equally at home with Philip Glass, post-rock legends Tortoise,
or late underground acoustic legend John Fahey, working from
The Monkey, his utopian rehearsal studio/laboratory/
performance space in midtown Manhattan.
Gavin Bryars composer
Gavin Bryars, born in Yorkshire, was first of all a jazz bassist
and pioneer of free improvisation with Derek Bailey and TonyOxley. He subsequently worked in the USA with John Cage, and
in Britain alongside Cornelius Cardew. His early iconic works
The Sinking of the Titanic (1969) and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed
Me Yet (1971) both enjoyed major recording success in various
versions. He has written extensively for the stage, including three
full-length operas and dance works for, among others, Merce
Cunningham, Edouard Lock and William Forsythe. He has been
associated with many visual artists, as well as with early music
performers, and has a long list of instrumental, orchestral and
vocal works to his credit, for artists such as the Hilliard
Ensemble, Red Byrd, Trio Mediaeval, Latvian Radio Choir and
the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Gavin Bryars now lives in
Leicestershire and British Columbia and, as well as composing,
performs internationally with his own ensemble. Current
projects include Paper Nautilus , a staged cantata with Theatre
Cryptic in Glasgow; a new theatre piece with Von Krahl
Theatre, Tallinn; and Nothing Like the Sun , settings of
Shakespeare sonnets with the RSC and Opera North.
Philip Jeck turntableist
Philip Jeck studied visual art before working with record-playersand electronics in the early 1980s. He has made soundtracks
and toured with many dance and theatre companies as well as
creating solo concert work. His award-winning, best-known
work is Vinyl Requiem (with Lol Sargent): a performance for 180
1950s/1960s record-players, nine slide-projectors and two
16mm movie-projectors. Projects include Vinyl Codas I-IV for
Bavarian Radio, which won the Karl Sczuka Preis for Radio Art.
He has recently returned to visual art making installations using
from six to 80 record-players including Off the Record for
‘Sonic Boom’ at the Hayward Gallery. Philip Jeck works with old
records and record-players salvaged from junk shops, creating
an intensely personal language. Recent engagements include
the Shanghai Biennale.
David Lang see Session 5, page 32
Kronos Quartet see Session 2, page 29
Theatre of Voices see Session 2, page 29
Paul Hillier see Session 2, page 29
FREESTAGE Sun. 8 Oct. 6.45pm
Michael Nyman composer 2006 marks the 30th anniversary of the start of Michael
Nyman’s distinguished career as a professional composer:
1976 saw his first soundtrack for an art film (Peter Greenaway’s
1-100 ), his first commercial film (Robert Young’s Keep It Up
Downstairs ), his first record release (Decay Music on Brian
Eno’s Obscure label) and the debut of the prototype Michael
Nyman Band, assembled as a theatre band to perform his
score for Goldoni’s Il Campiello at the National Theatre. It is
also 21 years since he wrote his first string quartet, 20 years
since his first opera The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
and 15 years since he wrote his Mozart homage Letters, Riddles
& Writs and the Six Celan Songs .
Louis Andriessen composer Born in Utrecht in 1939, Louis Andriessen’s music draws upon
Stravinsky, jazz and the avant-garde to create a unique mix of
propulsive energy, economical material and distinctive
sonorities, often led by pungent wind and brass, pianos and
electric guitars. His five key works for large ensemble – De
Staat, De Tijd, De Snelheid, De Materie andTrilogy of the Last
Day – explore the subjects of politics, time, speed, matter and
mortality, while his operas De Stijl (created with Robert Wilson)
andWriting to Vermeer (with Peter Greenaway) deal with art.
Find out first Why not download your GreatPerformers programme before the concert? Eachprogramme is now available online five days inadvance of each concert. For details visitwww.barbican.org.uk/greatperformers
Programme edited by Edge-Wise, artwork by Jane Denton; printed by Vitesse London; advertising byCabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450)
Please make sure that all digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched off during theperformance. In accordance with the requirements of the licensing authority, sitting or standing in anygangway is not permitted. No smoking, eating or drinking is allowed in the auditorium. No cameras,tape recorders or any other recording equipment may be taken into the hall.