Steve Reich's legacy seems assured. Hailed by some as the greatest living American composer, he and his fellow minimalists—Terry Riley, Philip Glass, La Monte Young—are credited with pulling western art music from the mire of discordance dug by Schoenberg and fellow serialists. In addition, Reich claims to have reunited serious music with the popular, or "folk" as he likes to describe it.
To mark Reich's 70th birthday, the Barbican has just staged a week-long festival in his honour, setting high-profile recitals of his works alongside full-on homage evenings, hosted by dance groups, DJs and leftfield composers. Yet most of Reich's oeuvre is relatively unknown, and notwithstanding the Barbican extravaganza, concerts of his works still woefully few.
A philosophy graduate from Cornell, Reich studied under experimental Italian composer Luciano Berio, with whom he dabbled in electronics and the infamous twelve-tone rows of serialism. In 1960s New York he continued to explore formal processes handed down by Stravinsky, Bartók and Stockhausen, but also mixed with an avant-garde art crowd obsessed with new modes of film, dance and painting. On the streets he encountered musical blends from the American melting pot, including the modal jazz of John Coltrane, resulting in early works such as It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). More art installation than music, these pieces played out phase shifting tape loops of recorded speech like schizophrenic medieval canons. They provided him with a process on which to base later compositions using traditional instruments. But it was his pioneering decision to study the internal structures of Balinese gamelan and Ghanaian drumming which made Reich one of the few genuine crossover composers of our age.
Having spent time in Africa, Reich rejected the idea of importing indigenous musicians and their instruments to graft on to western-style compositions (think of the Beatles and Ravi Shankar), regarding such exoticism as a kind of "chinoiserie." Instead, he adapted versions of the structures and rhythms he encountered abroad for western instruments, allowing our ears to enjoy a new style of music in timbres to which they were already accustomed. His approach to the orchestra was just as radical. Spurning large string sections and bel canto voices, necessary in the times before amplification when musicians and singers competed to be heard, Reich favoured softer, microphoned voices and small string sections which could be balanced with a mixing desk like a modern rock band. Percussion players, who form the basis of many of his compositions, were moved from their traditional seats at the back of the orchestra to a prominent position in front of the conductor, frequently changing instruments during a performance. As Reich himself pointed out, the orchestra was continually adapting right up until the end of the romantic era. So why shouldn't it now?
With such iconoclasm and disparate cultures expressed in his work, it was inevitable that Reich should attract an eclectic following. He is credited with influencing whole generations of well-known producers and artists—from John Adams and Arvo Pärt to Brian Eno and Sonic Youth. The formation of his own ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, surrounded him with specialist percussion players adept at the rich polyrhythms he favoured, enabling him to develop compositions-in-progress over periods of time. Though dubbed "minimalist" by critics, a term inspired by the repetitive nature of his simpler, early pieces, his new works were far from basic. His masterpiece, Music for 18 Musicians (1976), which concluded the Barbican's festival on 8th October, is complex and charged, miraculously combining numerous influences—jazz, African and Indonesian rhythms, process music, medieval canon, even philosophy—into a shifting continuum of mesmeric and occasional transcendent beauty.
Though Reich's more recent offerings, such as The Cave (1993) or Three Tales (2002), lack the vitality of his earlier works, perceived by some as rehashes of an old idea with a political twist, he is far from a one-trick pony. Reich has attempted—and substantially succeeded—in liberating serious western music from outmoded traditions that have stifled music creativity over the last half century. And for this we should thank him. Happy birthday Mr Reich.
