The Glasshouse

Music for Pieces of Wood (1973)

Steve Reich’s Clapping Music (1972) is a 20^th century masterpiece – a work of breathtaking rhythmic complexity and fascination that requires for its performance no instruments and not even any trained musicians: just two people clapping. Music for Pieces of Wood followed in 1973, and, according to Reich, “grows out of the same roots…a desire to make music with the simplest possible instruments.” The instruments in question were five pairs of claves. Reich explains further:

The claves, or cylindrical pieces of hard wood, used here were selected for their particular pitches (A, B, C-sharp, D-sharp, and D-sharp an octave above), and for their resonant timbre. This piece is one of the loudest I have ever composed, but uses no amplification whatsoever. The rhythmic structure is based entirely on the process of rhythmic “build-ups” or the substitution of beats for rests, and is in three sections of decreasing pattern length: 6/4, 4/4, 3/4.

But Reich’s only hinting here at the intricacies, the surprises and the richness of sound that he generates from deceptively simple material. The percussionist Laurent Warnier, perhaps, describes it better: “To understand the piece, imagine listening to a kaleidoscope. A pattern is established, then it shifts as with the click of the kaleidoscope”. That single change of perspective transforms a seemingly rigid rhythmic pattern into something startlingly new and beautiful. Who needs an orchestra?

Music for 18 Musicians (1976)

We go back to 1976, but not to the same world as Clapping Music or Music for Pieces of Wood. In Steve Reich’s own words:

 Although its steady pulse and rhythmic energy relate to many of my earlier works, its instrumentation, structure and harmony are new.

As to instrumentation, Music for 18 Musicians is new in the number and distribution of instruments: violin, cello, 2 clarinets doubling bass clarinet, 4 women~s voices, 4 pianos, 3 marimbas, 2 xylophones and metallophone (vibraphone with no motor). All instruments are acoustical. The use of electronics is limited to microphones for voices and some of the instruments.

There is more harmonic movement in the first 5 minutes of Music for 18 Musicians than in any other complete work of mine to date. Though the movement from chord to chord is often just a re-voicing, inversion or relative minor or major of a previous chord, usually staying within the key signature of three shapes at all times, nevertheless, within these limits harmonic movement plays a more important role in this piece than in any other I have written.

Rhythmically, there are two basically different kinds of time occurring simultaneously in Music for 18 Musicians. The first is that of a regular rhythmic pulse in the pianos and mallet instruments that continues throughout the piece. The second is the rhythm of the human breath in the voices and wind instruments. The entire opening and closing sections plus part of all sections in between contain pulses by the voice and winds. They take a full breath and sing or play pulses of particular notes for as long as their breath will comfortably sustain them. The breath is the measure of the duration of their pulsing. This combination of one breath after another gradually washing up like waves against the constant rhythm of the pianos and mallet instruments is something I have not heard before and would like to investigate further.

Changes from one section to the next, as well as changes within each section are cued by the metallophone (vibraphone with no motor) whose patterns are played once only to call for movements to the next bar, much as in Balinese Gamelan a drummer will audibly call for changes of pattern in West African Music. This is in contrast to the visual nods of the head used in earlier pieces of mine to call for changes and in contrast also to the general Western practice of having a non-performing conductor for large ensembles. Audible cures become part of the music and allow the musicians to keep listening.