How an anonymous mover grew into the leading innovator of classical music. Behold the American Dream of composer Steve Reich, told through a web exhibition by MATRIX, commissioned by De Bijloke. A creative solution that has a lot going for it.
Like so many of his colleagues, Steve Reich (New York, °1936) was musically educated with Schubert and Beethoven. But when he heard the first notes of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps at age 14, his horizon was irrevocably shifted towards what he ultimately became: one of the most influential innovators of 20th-century classical music. Reich's first major innovation was phase shifting, a technique in which two instruments play the same melody but first drift apart rhythmically (out of sync) and later resume in unison. The effect is a combination of counterpoint that culminates in an electronic canon. Famous compositions include It's Gonna Rain (1965, for tape), Come Out (1966, for tape) and Piano Phase (1967, for two pianos). Another source of innovation was Reich's (brief) stay in Ghana (1970) where he became acquainted with the Ewe people's tonal language. Shortly thereafter, he began work on the percussion piece Drumming (1971), which consists exclusively of rhythms that vary in pitch, timbre and timing. Melody and tonality are absent.
Gradual compositional process
Reich's world is a village. He draws his ideas from everywhere. From saxophonist John Coltrane and the group Radiohead he borrowed new material for harmonies. In Indonesia he studied gamelan, in Israel he learned Hebrew vocal art. Incidentally, he also picked up an interest in Arabic and Israeli history. This resulted in the multimedia project The Cave (1993), which he developed together with his wife, video artist Beryl Korot. An essential characteristic of Reich's universe is the gradual nature of his compositional process. His ambition is that there must be an audible connection between the steps in the creative process and the way the music sounds, as in Drumming. There are countless other examples of his unguarded hunger for more & different. In Tehillim (1981, "praise"), he mixes contemporary language use with ancient Hebrew, and uses European counterpoint and African percussion. In Different Trains (1988) and Three Tales (2002) he combines pre-recorded sound samples with live music (speech melody). Reich's most successful piece is probably Music for 18 Musicians (1978), in which global music culture is addressed: Javanese gamelan, African percussion, European polyphony from the 12th century, all set against a background of repetitive motifs of piano and percussion, with sustained lines of voices and flute.
Alternative approach
The web exhibition Steve Reich 360° was created on the initiative of music center De Bijloke from Gent and made by MATRIX, Center for New Music, in Leuven. Reich is one of the composers receiving extra attention from De Bijloke this season. Maarten Quanten, programmer of new music at De Bijloke, is enthusiastic about the result. "It was originally intended to create a physical exhibition around Reich, but the corona troubles forced us to take an alternative approach. The result is very interesting, this approach lends itself well to highlighting the main lines of Reich's work," he explains.
The exhibition is structured around an introduction to the five essential characteristics of Reich as a composer. In addition to the aforementioned gradual compositional process, these include the use of tape & sampler and percussion under non-Western influence. Attention is also given to his role as a documentary filmmaker, with his work Different Trains cited as an example. Finally, Reich appears as a social critic: the 9/11 attacks, the 1962 Cuban Crisis and the composition Come Out, in which police violence against Black youth is central. The web exhibition further consists of a long-read by Elias Van Dyck on (American) minimalism and a timeline in which Reich's biography is presented. The whole is completed by trailers and recordings from YouTube plus numerous references to the sections on Reich's compositional characteristics, supplemented with tips on other reading and listening material. The curators have emphasized the informative content of the exhibition. For example, there is less attention to the misunderstanding that Reich especially faced at the beginning of his career. The viewer thus remains uncertain about the elements that determined his later success.
Added value
This web exhibition makes clear that it does not have to be inferior to a physical exhibition. For the listening fragments that require close listening, this digital version provides added value. With all his knowledge and experience in the field of electronics, even Reich would sometimes have to admit defeat to the poor acoustic quality of some concert halls. Instead, headphones and a comfortable chair make the experience of a web exhibition very intense. Limitations of physical space or the number of pages in a program booklet also fall away. Plus: you can even choose to have the long-read read to you (Ann Eysermans). De Bijloke has developed a taste for it. Maarten Quanten: "We definitely want to continue with this. Composers like Ligeti, Berio, Cage, Boulez and Stockhausen lend themselves very well to a web exhibition. Moreover, this format makes a solid contribution to archive building", according to Quanten.
To be continued.
- WHAT: Web exhibition Steve Reich 360°
- WHO: MATRIX, commissioned by De Bijloke
Concept: Melissa Portaels, Rebecca Diependaele
Texts: Elias Van Dyck, Melissa Portaels, Rebecca Diependaele
Design and website realization: Klaas Coulembier - DATE: until 31 July
- LINK: matrix-new-music.be/nl/online-expo-steve-reich
- PHOTOS: MATRIX, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian