CDOTD 1/5/2023

 Steve Reich: Pulse/Quartet (Nonesuch)

Borrowed from library

I have a pretty substantial personal library of records, discs and tapes. It's not nearly as large as some of my friends', but it's many many hours of information nonetheless. While this writing project of mine is partially for the purpose of forcing myself to go back into my collection and relisten to more of it, I still check things out from the public library.

We have an excellent library system here. I'm sure there libraries that are bigger and better, but our resources (particularly the music collection) can be pretty amazing sometimes. I'm frequently surprised by finding that one score by that one composer I heard on a collection, who I knew nothing about previously.

So here I am, listening to a relatively recent pair of works on CD by Steve Reich, from our public library's main branch. I largely like Reich's music. I'd even say that Music or 18 Musicians is one of the truly great works of the past hundred years.

Reich is a notoriously prickly character. I can't say I know this from personal experience. Maybe it's like I've been reminded by several friends: sometimes it's better not to meet your heroes. I saw Steve Reich and Musicians at a new music festival in 1986, I think was the year. A friend volunteered to push chairs around on stage in order to score tickets that he couldn't otherwise afford. He later said to me after the experience, "I know serialism is out and minimalism is in, but Milton Babbitt is a really nice guy, and Steve Reich is a jerk." 

At least, I think the word he used was jerk. It might have been something harsher.

What am I to make of these late era Reich pieces? I guess it's fair to say late period, as he is currently 86 years old. He may be like Elliot Carter and keep composing for another fifteen years. Maybe I'll reassess in the future. 

I find the music to be neither urgent, nor bad. It all sounds like Reich, though not his greatest works. It's a mistake to try to write a "masterpiece," and it's equally a mistake to expect one as a listener. After all, at his age, hasn't Reich earned the right to sound like Reich?

I give him credit that all of his music doesn't sound exactly alike. For as much as I like some of Philip Glass' music, to my ears he has written very similar works multiple times over. 

Glass came to the CMU Music Department a few years back. Someone asked about the term minimalism, and being so closely identified with it. He said, if you listen to him, or Terry Riley or Fred Rzewski or Louis Andreisson, what's interesting is how different the music of each composer is. Am I the only person to have noticed that he left out Steve Reich's name from that list? The two men have a long history together, having played in each others' groups.

I know Reich bristles at the very term minimalism. It's an opinion I understand; nobody likes categorization, it puts you in a proverbial box. I ask though, what is more minimalist than "Clapping Music"?

Easy call to make: if you know Reich's music and like it, check this recording out. If you don't know it, find the Phases five-CD collection.