Contemporary Music Review, 1992, Vol. 7, Part 1, pp. 39-50 Photocopying permitted by license only

(~) Steve Reich Printed in the United Kingdom

Some Thoughts about Performance Steve Reich

In 1970 Steve Reich made "Some Optimistic Predictions about the Future of Music". These predic- tions, along with some additional comments written between 1969 and 1974, form an introduction to three separate, but related articles. The first, Notes on the Ensemble (1973) has appeared previously in the collection Writings About Music (co-published by the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and New York University Press, 1974). Chamber Music - An Expanded View, originally read as the keynote address to the annual meeting of Chamber Music America in 1989, and On the Size and Seating of an Orchestra (1990) are printed here for the first time. (Editor)

KEY WORDS music, Non-Western music, chamber music, ensemble, orchestra

Electronic music as such will gradual ly die and be absorbed into the ongo ing music of people singing and playing ins t ruments .

Non-Wes te rn music in general and African, Indones ian and Indian music in part icular will serve as n e w structural mode ls for Wes te rn musicians. Not as n e w mode l s of sound. (That 's the old exoticism trip.) Those of us w h o love the sounds will hopeful ly just go and learn h o w to play these musics.

Music schools will be resurrec ted th rough offering instruct ion in the practice and theory of all the wor ld ' s music. Young compose r /pe r fo rmers will fo rm all sorts of n e w ensembles g rowing out of one or several of the wor ld ' s musical traditions.

Serious dancers w h o n o w pe r fo rm wi th pulseless music or wi th no music at all will be replaced by y o u n g music ians and dancers w h o will re-unite rhy thmic music and dance as a h igh art form.

The pulse and the concept of clear tonal center will r e -emerge as basic sources of new music.

I am not in teres ted in improvisa t ion or in sound ing exotic. One hardly needs to seek out personal i ty as it can never be avoided. Obvious ly music should pu t all wi th in l istening range into a state of ecstasy. A pe r fo rmance for us is a s i tuat ion where all the musicians, including myself ,

a t t empt to set aside our individual t hough t s and feelings of the m o m e n t , and try to focus our minds and bodies clearly on the realization of one cont inuous musical process.

This music is not the express ion of the m o m e n t a r y state of mind of the pe r fo rmers while playing. Rather, the m o m e n t a r y state of mind of the per- formers while p laying is largely de t e rmined by the ongo ing c o m p o s e d slowly changing music.

As a pe r fo rmer wha t I wan t is to be told exactly wha t to do within a musical ensemble , and to find that by doing it well I help to make beaut i ful music. This is wha t I ask of m y o w n composi t ions , those of ano ther composer , and this is wha t I looked for and found w h e n I s tudied Balinese and African music. The pleasure I get f rom playing is not the p leasure of express ing myself , bu t of subjugat ing

39

40 S. Reich

myself to the music and experiencing the ecstasy that comes from being a part of it.

In 1963 1 decided that I had to play in all my own compositions, though I am a very technically limited performer. These limits focused my composing on just that music that was natural to my abilities and inclinations as a performer. This resulted in an ensemble music where all the parts are identical, and relatively simple. Complexity arises out of the exact rhythmic relationship of one player to another. Forming my own ensemble was a natural outgrowth of the decision to perform what I composed. This ensemble grew from three musicians in 1966, to five in 1969, to twelve in 1971. Performing my own music has also become my way of earning a living as a composer.

Notes on the e n s e m b l e

Since late in 1966 1 have been rehearsing and performing my music with my own ensemble.

In 1963 1 first decided that despite my limitations as a performer I had to play in all my compositions. It seemed clear that a healthy musical situation would only result when the functions of composer and performer were united.

In San Francisco in 1963 I formed my first ensemble which was devoted to free, and sometimes controlled, improvisation. This quintet met at least once a week for about six months, but because we were improvising on nothing but spur of the moment reactions I felt there was not any musical growth except when I brought in what I called "Pitch Charts", which gave all players the same notes to play at the same time, but with free rhythm. Even with these charts the musical growth was much too limited, and the group was disbanded.

In the fall of 1965 1 returned to New York, and by late in 1966 1 had formed a group of three musicians; pianist Art Murphy, woodwind player Jon Gibson, and myself playing piano. This ensemble was able to perform Piano Phase for two pianos; Improvisations on a Watermelon for two pianos (later discarded), Reed Phase for soprano saxophone and tape (later discarded), and several tape pieces. This trio remained intact with occasional additions, notably that of composer/pianist James Tenney in 1967 to play a four piano version of Piano Phase and other pieces, until 1970 when the composition of Phase Patterns for four electric organs, and Four Organs for four electric organs and maracas created the need for a quintet adding pianist Steve Chambers and occasionally, composer/performer Phil Glass. In 1971, with the composition of Drumming, the ensemble underwent a significant expansion to twelve musicians and singers. At this time I sought out and found a number of fine percussionists, the most outstanding of whom, Russell Hartenberger and James Preiss, continue to play in the present ensem- ble. Also, and for the first time, I had to find singers who had the sense of time, intonation, and timbre necessary to blend in with the sound of the marimbas in Drumming. Joan LaBarbara and Jay Clayton proved to be perfectly suited to this new vocal style. It was in 1971 that the name of the ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, was first adopted.

I have thus become a composer with a repertory ensemble. Each new compo- sition is added to the repertoire and our concerts present a selection of new and/or older works.

Performance 41

The question often arises as to what contribution the performers make to the music. The answer is that they .select the resulting patterns in all compositions that have resulting patterns, and that certain details of the music are worked out by members of the ensemble during rehearsals. Resulting patterns are melodic patterns that result from the combination of two or more identical instruments playing the same repeating melodic pattern one or more beats out of phase with each other. During the selection of resulting patterns to be sung in the second section of Drumming, Joan LaBarbara, Jay Clayton, Judy Sherman and myself all contributed various patterns we heard resulting from the combination of the three marimbas. These patterns were selected, and an order for singing them worked out, with the help of tape loops of the various marimba combinations played over and over again at my studio during rehearsals held throughout the summer of 1971. Similarly, in the resulting patterns for Six Pianos, Steve Chambers and James preiss together with myself worked out the resulting patterns and the order in which to play them during rehearsals at the Baldwin Piano store during the fall and winter of 1972-73 (Fig. 1).

During the summer of 1973 in Seattle I worked with different singers in the marimba section of Drumming who heard and sang very different resulting patterns than the singers in New York. When I returned to New York I showed the new resulting patterns to Jay Clayton and Joan LaBarbara who decided to incorporate some of these patterns into their own version. The details of the music changed when the performers changed.

Selecting resulting patterns is not improvising; it is actually filling in the details of the composition itself. It offers the performer the opportunity to listen to minute details and to sing or play the ones he or she finds most musical.

There's a certain idea that's been in the air, particularly since the 1960's, and it's been used by choreographers as well as composers and I think it is an extremely misleading idea. It is that the only pleasure a performer (be it musi- cian or dancer) could get was to improvise, or in some way be free to express his or her momentary state of mind. If anybody gave them a fixed musical score or specific instructions to work with this was equated with political control and it meant the perfomer was going to be unhappy about it. John Cage has said that a composer is somebody who tells other people what to do, and that it is not a good social situation to do that. But if you know and work with musicians you will see that what gives them joy is playing music they love, or at least find musically interesting, and whether that music is improvised or completely worked out is really not the main issue. The main issue is what's happening musically; is this beautiful, is this sending chills up and down my spine, or isn't it?

The musicians play in this ensemble, usually for periods of three to five years or more, because, presumably, they like playing the music, or at least because they find it of some musical interest. They do not make all their income from playing in this ensemble. Some are Doctoral candidates in the study of African, Indonesian and Indian music, some teach percussion, and all perform professio- nally in a variety of musical ensembles including orchestras, chamber groups, Medieval music ensembles, South Indian, African and Indonesian classical ensembles, free improvisation and jazz groups. It is precisely the sort of musi- cian who starts with a strong Western classical background and then later gravitates towards these other types of music that I find ideally suited for this ensemble.

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42 s. Reich

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Performance 43

The presence of musicians who play certain instruments or sing encourages me to write more music for those instruments or voices. The percussionists and singers ! began working with in Drumming encouraged me to write more percussion and vocal music. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ is one of the results. Since the keyboard music I write involves up and down move- ments of the hand exclusively, instead of conventional keyboard technique, percussionists are better suited to play pieces like Six Pianos, than most pianists are. Most of the musicians in my ensemble are therefore percussionists who double on the keyboard.

These musicians are also my first and most important critics. During early rehearsals when a first version of a new piece is being tried out, the reactions of the players will often tell me whether the new composition really works, or not. Not only direct verbal comments during or after rehearsal, but an appreciative laugh or an embarrassed averted glance may be enough to let me know I am on the right or wrong track. This was particularly the case in the early fall of 1972 when the reactions of James Preiss, Russell Hartenberger and Steve Chambers were enough to make me throw away several attempts at multiple piano pieces that preceded the finished version of Six Pianos.

There is also the question of frequency of rehearsals. Most new pieces of about 20 minutes in length will be rehearsed once or twice a week for two or three months. Drumming, which lasts about an hour and twenty minutes took almost a year of weekly rehearsals. This amount of rehearsing allows for many small compositional changes while the work is in progress and at the same time builds a kind of ensemble solidity that makes playing together a joy.

C h a m b e r M u s i c - an e x p a n d e d v i e w

This morning I would like to speak to you about a kind of music and ensemble that may not come to mind immediately when the words "Chamber Music" are spoken. My perspective in this will be personal.

I am a composer who has, among other things, written music for his own ensemble. This ensemble has between four and nine percussionists in almost every piece. It is common for audiences to see multiple marimbas, vibraphones, glockenspiels, bass drums and so forth on stage when we perform, in addition to keyboards, strings, winds, voices and usually, microphones. All in all a different world from the string quartet or woodwind quintet, and yet, we play music with one player to a part and without a conductor.

My ensemble, begun in 1966 with three musicians, has grown to over eigh- teen. Yet when we play large works like Music for 18 Musicians we are perform- ing with one player to a part and have no conductor. That particular piece was written with a vibraphone part that would serve as an audible cue to players to inform them of changes to the next bar, after a variable number of repeats, so that a conductor would not be necessary for that purpose. Since the initial tempo is maintained throughout, with room for human fluctuation, a conductor was not necessary for tempo either. Throughout the piece the lead bass clarinet player must give eye contact cues to other players for entrances and exits. All in all, chamber music practice, but with 18 musicians on stage one doesn't think of "Chamber Music" as the descriptive term.

44 S. Reich

What sort of musicians are in this ensemble? First, they were all trained at Eastman, Curtis, Julliard, Oberlin, Manhattan and other conservatories. Later, many of them became involved in either Non-Western music, early music or jazz. For example:

Russell Hartenberger, a percussionist, did a Ph.D. in Mrdangam, the South Indian side drum, at Wesleyan University, while also playing African and Indonesian music.

Bob Becker, another percussionist, studied Tabla, the North Indian drums, at Wesleyan, while also playing African and Indonesian music.

Cheryl Bensman, a soprano, sang with Waverly Consort and other early music groups.

Ben Harms, still another percussionist, plays with Calliope - A Renaissance Band.

Jay Clayton, an alto, is primarily a jazz singer.

Nurit Tilles, a pianist, studied Sundanese Gamelan in 1973.

Why are Non-Western music, early music and jazz good playing experiences for musicians in this ensemble? One reason is rhythm. I need musicians who have, and enjoy using, a strong rhythmic sense. Most early music shares with jazz, and most Non-Western music, a fixed pulse. For a player to master such music, and to find satisfaction in performing it, he or she must have a markedly firm sense of regular time and enjoy exercising it, in contrast to the player who prefers, for example, the more gestural rhythm found in German romantic music.

My ensemble has between four and nine percussionists who have a major role in most pieces of mine. In African and Balinese music the rhythmic skills demanded from percussionists in particular are formidable, since they have the main role. That is to say that percussion is the dominant voice in African and Indonesian ensembles as strings are generally the dominant voice in Western classical ensembles. In my ensemble, percussion is often the dominant voice, though that percussion is certainly not used to achieve either an African, Indonesian or any other Non-Western effect.

I have found that the best way for me to deal with Non-Western music as a composer is to learn from Non-Western structures, but not Non-Western sounds. Imitating the sounds of Non-Western music can lead to the sitar in the rock band, or what used to be called "Chinoiserie". Learning from Non-Western structures, while using the scales and timbres one has grown up with here, can lead to something genuinely new. To understand this better think of learning a Western contrapuntal technique like infinite canon or round. One can hear canons in "Sumer is a Cumin In", in Josquin des Pres, in Bach, in Bartok, in Webern and in my own music. Do these canons sound alike? Not at all, because the idea of having a musical line followed by the identical musical line but rhythmically displaced is basically free of information about sound. Similarly with the rhythmic structural ideas in African and Balinese music - they can be applied to any sound you like.

Performance 45

Another reason early music and jazz are valuable backgrounds for musicians in this ensemble is vocal style. In Medieval, Renaissance and even Baroque music the vocal style is generally a lighter, more natural voice, with less vibrato than that found in Bel Canto or Wagnerian opera. It is this style that I find well suited to my own music. Why? The operatic voice was developed, among other things, to be heard above an orchestra in a fairly large hall well before the invent ion of the microphone. The invent ion of the microphone and its ubiqui- tous use in popular music in the twent ie th century has made it possible for a much smaller voice with little or no vibrato to be easily heard in great detail over even a very loud band or orchestra. This has created a climate in which I find the operatic voice to be generally artificial, loud and abrasive to listen to. Since we have microphones , I for one choose to use them with singers w h o are at ease with them. These singers can then be heard in great detail, even over an ensemble with considerable percussion, while singing with a smaller voice and little or no vibrato. Altogether, a voice well suited to the kind of contrapuntal music that I write. Singers who have this kind of voice can be found in the worlds of early music and jazz, and in my ensemble that is where they have come from.

The musicians in this ensemble also have wha t I would call a "chamber musician's mental i ty". As a music s tudent I r emember one att i tude from those s tudents who p lanned to enter an orchestra and another f rom those w h o p lanned to make chamber music their life. The difference could be traced to some obvious facts. The orchestral player could be hired by an on-going organiz- ation and hope to stay there, or move to a better one, while for the chamber musician, with the exception of a rare vacancy in a small number of name chamber groups, they had to form their o w n groups and/or play in several ensembles in order to survive. In other words, a chamber musician has to create his or her own livelihood.

In my own ensemble the musicians cont inue to be involved with several other per forming groups, since we play only a limited number of concerts, here and abroad, each year. Being of an i ndependen t turn of mind, m a n y of the musicians in this ensemble have formed their own groups, for example:

Russell Har tenberger and Bob Becker are founding members of the percussion ensemble, Nexus.

Nuri t Tilles and E d m u n d Niemann began the duo keyboard team, Double Edge.

James Preiss is the founder of the Manhat tan Marimba Quartet .

Ben Harms is a founding member of Calliope - a Renaissance Band.

These players are commit ted to these groups as well as to m y o w n ensemble, so w h e n we schedule concerts my manager mus t take their schedules with these ensembles into account. It all seems to work out.

These facts about making a living are hardly the only factors. There are musical realities at the base of it all. In chamber music the stress is on the ensemble, not the soloist. My own music is often s t ructured with the use of multiple unison canons with different rhythmic positions going on in three, four or more voices. The difficulties in playing this music, at least the pieces of the 1960s and '70s, are generally not in the individual parts but in fitting these parts

46 S. Reich

into precise and sometimes unusual rhythmic positions in an overall contrapun- tal web. This is often not so easy as a cursory glance at the part itself would suggest. It presents a challenge to the kind of musician who enjoys being part of a finely tuned ensemble where all the details can be heard. This is the kind of musician I seek, and it is in the world of, let us say, "expanded chamber music", that they are to be found.

Finally, some new developments in an old form, a piece for string quartet and tape called Different Trains.

After telling you that I write music for unusual ensembles with a great deal of percussion I must now tell you that I also write for string quartet, but not quite what you might expect. Different Trains, completed in 1988, was commissioned by Betty Freeman for the Kronos Quartet. The piece is for string quartet and tape and begins a new way of composing that has its roots in my early tape speech pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). The basic idea is that speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments.

The idea for the piece comes from my childhood. When I was one year old, my parents separated. My mother moved to Los Angeles and my father stayed in New York. Since they arranged divided custody, I traveled back and forth by train frequently between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1942 accomp- anied by my governess. While these trips were exciting and romantic at the time, I now look back and think that, if I had been in Europe during this period, as a Jew I would have had to ride very different trains. With this in mind I wanted to make a piece that would accurately reflect the whole situation. In order to prepare the tape, I had to do the following:

1. Record my governess Virginia, now in her 70s, reminiscing about our train trips together.

2. Record a retired Pullman porter, Mr. Lawrence Davis, now in his 80s, who used to ride lines between New York and Los Angeles, reminiscing about his life.

3. Collect recordings of Holocaust survivors Rachella, Paul and Rachel, all about my age and now living in America, speaking about their experiences.

4. Collect recorded American and European train sounds of the '30s and '40s.

The process of combining the taped speech with the string instruments was to select small speech samples that are more or less clearly pitched and then to notate them as accurately as possible in musical notation. For example:

from Chi-ca - go to New Yo rk

Figure 2 Different Trains (1988). Notated speech sample.

Performance 47

The strings then literally imitate that speech melody. The speech samples and train sounds were transferred to tape with the use of sampling keyboards and a computer. Three separate string quartets were also added to the pre-recorded tape and the final live quartet part is added in performance.

Different Trains is in three movements, though that term is stretched here since tempos change frequently in each movement. They are:

America - Before the war Europe - During the war After the war

The piece thus presents both a documentary and a musical reality and begins a new musical direction by introducing a kind of theatrical element into a traditio- nal chamber music form. In this particular piece the theater is, so to speak, in the mind, since there is nothing visual beyond the musicians. However, Different Trains points in a direction that may very well lead to a new kind of documentary music video theater in the not too distant future.

From all this I conclude that the history of chamber music is very much in progress.

On the size and seating of an orchestra

In 1979, after more than 15 years of composing for my own ensemble, I gradually became interested in composing for the orchestra. One of my main interests was to transfer certain techniques I was developing in smaller ensembles to the orchestra. In particular, I was interested in interlocking unison canons for instruments of identical timbre. For instance, three flutes in unison canon simultaneously with three clarinets, three oboes and all the first violins divided in three equal groups also playing harmonically related unison canons. These ideas found orchestral form in 1984 in The Desert Music, for chorus and orchestra, and in 1987 in The Four Sections for orchestra. In both pieces I found questions of orchestral size and seating to be essential for a solid performance.

In 1984 in Cologne, during the rehearsals and first performance of The Desert Music by the West German Radio Orchestra, chorus and members of my own ensemble conducted by Peter E6tvOs, I became aware of certain ensemble difficulties within the orchestra that were related to its size and seating arrange- ment. Later that same year, during the rehearsals for the American premier of the piece at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, chorus and members of my own ensemble conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, I was able to implement changes both in the size and seating of the orchestra that proved to make a significant improvement in performance, not only for The Desert Music, but also for The Four Sections.

Most major orchestras employ about 18 or more first violins. This gargantuan string section may be appropriate for Sibelius, Mahler and Bruckner (and several neo-romantic composers today), but I have found that it is much too overblown for me. By trial and error I have come to the conclusion that when I write for orchestra I generally need no more than 12 first violins and an overall string force of about 48 players - the size of a full classical as opposed to romantic

48 s. Reich

orchestra. 1 As a general principle I find that fewer players on stage m e a n s more intense concentrat ion.

The desire for a clear cont rapunta l texture has also forced me to re-seat m e m b e r s of the orchestra in order to achieve it. Specifically I have pu t the mallet players , wi th mar imbas , xy lophones or v ib raphones , w h o often play continu- ously in m y orchestral pieces, directly in front of the conductor . This is done not mere ly to enact the "percuss ionis ts ' r evenge" ( though this m a y be of merit), but because if they are in their cus tomary place, 40 to 60 feet f rom the conductor and are p laying cont inuous ly in a br isk t empo , then, as a result of the acoustical delay in sound traveling, the rest of the orchestra will see one beat f rom the conductor and hear ano ther f rom the mallet ins t ruments . By put t ing t h e m directly in front of the conductor there is one t e m p o seen and heard by all the orchestra. With the mallet p layers s u r r o u n d e d by the strings, w o o d w i n d s and brass the entire orchestra can see and hear the conductor and the " r h y t h m section" as a unif ied t ime-keeping g roup (Fig. 3).

I also found it necessary in The Desert Music to re-seat the str ings since they are p laying divisi in 3 par ts wi th each par t p laying the same repea t ing pa t te rns but in different rhy thmic posit ions. As you m a y know, orchestral string players like to follow the leader in front of them, and if he or she is p laying in a conflicting r h y t h m y o u can count on str ing confusion. By seat ing the strings in three separa te smaller g roups - similar to the two g roups in Bartok 's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste - each str ing g roup can bo th follow its o w n section leader and s imul taneous ly contr ibute its o w n individual con t rapunta l voice.

I wou ld encourage all compose r s to re- think the orchest ra in t e rms of forces and p lacement in order to best realize their musical ideas. Whe the r such re- thinking, a long wi th the added need for considerably greater rehearsal t ime and electronics, will be we l com ed by orchestras is clearly ano ther - and thornier - issue.

Notes

1 In addition, I made a chamber version of The Desert Music for two reasons. One is that this arrangement sounds good and one could argue as to whether or not it is better than the full orchestral original. Another is that large flexible chamber ensembles, particularly European groups like the Ensemble Intercontemporain in France, the Schoenberg Ensemble in Holland, the Group 180 in Budapest, the Ensemble Modern in Germany and the London Sinfonietta in England are interested in playing my music but need this version in order to play The Desert Music.

Performance 49 14U

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50 S. Reich

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