12th to 15th March 2009

"Music as a gradual process"

A Weekend with the Composer Steve Reich:
Minimal Music and Balinese Gamelan Music

When Steve Reich began his studies in 1958, any deviation from the serial norms, any shift towards tonality, was viewed in avant-garde circles and by the majority of composition professors as a sin against the soul of contemporary music. As this doctrine was never advocated as strongly in the US as it was in Europe, and due also in part to Reich’s teachers who included the controversial composer Darius Milhaud, the young man stayed true to what he construed to be a musical heartbeat – tonality, the rhythm of jazz, and the sounds of early Stravinsky.
Reich’s greatest achievement was developing an unmistakably singular but also “contemporary music” from these sources. He didn’t seek to ingratiate himself with the masses and their tastes, but that didn’t preclude his music having a wide impact.
The term “minimal music” (first used in the late 1970’s by Michael Nyman) doesn’t sufficiently define Reich’s music. Reich did not ignore the achievements of the Schoenberg-School. Instead, he integrated them into his own style that incorporated traditional American music (especially jazz), the appeal of tonal centers and the allure of repetition, which music composed after 1945 is usually devoid of.
Reich’s credo is not the terse style of Webern and his successors but “music as a gradual process”, as a continuous and naturally progressive sound-occurrence. Of particular importance for Steve Reich’s development of an autonomous style, which separates him more-or-less from his minimalistic colleagues Glass, Riley, Adams, Nyman and others, is his concentration on African and Balinese music as well as his studies of Hebraic biblical song. In Reich’s music, the combination of classic Western traditions, Eastern art, folk music and jazz result in a surprising yet successful synthesis.
The intensive adaptation of Balinese gamelan music led to a novel polyrhythmic counterpoint. Reich has chosen gamelan music for the presentation of his work in Salzburg. International contemporary music ensembles will meet traditional musicians from Bali during this weekend. Also included in the program are works by György Ligeti. Although distinct from Reich, he similarly resisted the serial school and concentrated on music from the Far East.