Chekhov's Mistress
Steve Reich Steve Reich Steve Reich Steve Reich Steve
I didn’t get to attend any of the concerts during Carnegie Hall’s ”Steve Reich @ 70” series, which is too bad because I’ve been a fan for about 18 years now, remembering how struck I was by the Kronos Quartet performing “Different Trains” on my first trip to New York City in 1988. I’ve been following his often austere music since, but have yet to find anyone to volunteer going to one of his concerts with me.
Reich is one of those artists/composers that you feel like you’re alone in your appreciation because few are divided in their opinion of his work and most everyone I know comes solidly down on the side of finding his work annoying in the extreme. If you want to know why, then this quote from Reich on his early music might help: “My way of dealing with the 12-tone row was to never invert it, never play it backwards, never change it to another key, never start it on another note, just repeat it over and over again.”
Oddly, I’m not much of a follower of minimalist music outside of Arvo Pärt’s beautiful take on the form and an occasional 
dabble with Philip Glass’s music. But it’s Reich that I’ve been captivated with and it his music where I sense power and relevance. I’m partial to his work with the human voice, Come Out, It’s Going to Rain, Different Trains, each with it’s socially conscious theme, but also love the African drumming influence and this sound that somehow to me mimics modernity that is probably the source of its real power.
Fortunately for those of us who couldn’t make it to the concert, Carnegie has put together a terrific companion site with snippets of Reich talking about his music and lots of samples and even a piece where you can turn on and off different parts of a piece to isolate its components. It’s a great introduction if you don’t know his music or even if you do. One piece Reich talks about on the site is the Daniel Variations, which I’ve not yet heard. Here’s an excerpt from the site:
The piece is in four movements using texts from the biblical book of Daniel for the first and third movements and from the words of Daniel Pearl, the American Jewish reporter, kidnapped and murdered by Islamist extremists in Pakistan in 2002, for the second and fourth movements.
The texts/movements are:
I saw a dream. Images upon my bed & visions in my head frightened me. (Daniel 4:2 [or 4:5 in Christian translations])
My name is Daniel Pearl. (I’m a Jewish American from Encino, California.)
Let the dream fall back on the dreaded. (Daniel 4:16 [or 4:19 in Christian translations]) I sure hope Gabriel likes my music, when the day is done.
The first text, from the book of Daniel, is spoken by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon (modern day Iraq). He is asking Daniel to interpret his dream of terror. Right now it is unfortunately possible to feel a chill of identification with these words.
Sounds great, doesn’t it. Also see David Schiff’s remembrance of Reich’s music in ” A Rebel in Defense of Tradition ” in The Nation.
comments
I have always enjoyed Reich’s music. I still like his earlier stuff, Music for 18 Musician’s, Octet, Drumming.
I find his music less “poppy”, more refined and subtle than Glass.
I hear shades of “minimalism” in a lot of classical music, including some Beethoven and Bruckner.
– Garnet (11/03 at 07:13 PM)
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