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Pendulum Music

source: allmusic

Steve Reich composed Pendulum Music in 1968, the same year in which he penned his famous minimalist manifesto Music As a Gradual Process. “Listening to an extremely gradual musical process opens my ears to it,” Reich wrote in this seminal essay. “That area of every gradual (completely controlled) musical process, where one hears the details of the sound moving out away from intentions, occurring for their own acoustic reasons, is it.” While a number of Reich’s works, particularly those composed before the mid-’70s, reflect this interest in completely transparent musical processes — that is, processes that are clearly audible — Pendulum Music takes the idea one step further by making the process clearly visible, all but eliminating the performer’s role in carrying the process through to a conclusion. Reich composed the piece while working on a project at the University of Colorado. At some point, he apparently got carried away with the cowboy culture of the west and began swinging a microphone around like a lasso; the speaker feedback this produced suggested to him the novel idea for a composition. The resulting piece calls for two, three, or four microphones suspended upside down by their chords so they dangle (like pendulums) above the loudspeakers to which they are connected. The performers’ only task in setting the process in motion is to pull the microphones back and let them loose to swing above the speakers, which are set just loud enough to create a squeal of feedback each time the microphones pass above them. They then seat themselves and, like the audience, observe the process carry itself out. When the microphones come to a standstill above the speakers (and the squeal becomes constant), the performers end the piece by unplugging the amplifiers. This rigorous application of acoustical process has become something of an emblem of minimalism at its most austere; in fact, an early performance of the piece at the Whitney Museum included composer James Tenney, as well as sculptor Richard Serra. The piece also attained something of a cult status when it was performed by experimental rockers Sonic Youth on their 1999 album Goodbye 20th Century.
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source: quavermusicblog

It’s created by using, among other things, ostinatos, which are melodic or rhythmic patterns that repeat over and over in a piece of music, they have a kind of hypnotic effect when layered on top of each other.

Reich uses dynamics in a really cool way as well by having chords and patterns swell up and down a bit like turning the volume up and down on a radio – as you listen, you become compelled to keep listening to it. This style of music is called Minimal Music and Steve Reich was a pioneer and master of it.

Steve Reich created “The Desert Music” for a very unusual group of instruments, 27 singers and full orchestra, which he chose to have seated in unusual combinations. Marimbas also feature very heavily in this piece.
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source: culturecatch

Steve Reich (1936- ), one of the pioneering Minimalist composers, received a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for his 2007 composition Double Sextet. It’s a piece I’ve only read about, as no recording of it has yet been released. But Pulitzers in the arts are as much about honoring careers as specific pieces, and this can obviously apply in the case of Reich, whose career is now in its fifth decade. His work has been a huge influence not only on classical composers but on rock and electronic music as well. Here’s a quick guide to ten albums that, taken as a group, offer a view of his stylistic development while including his most important and most artistically rewarding works.
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source: allmusic

This hour-long work, commissioned by West German Radio and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, marks a transitional period for Reich. Based in the rhythmic pulse of Music for 18 Musicians, he adds a text by William Carlos Williams (sung by a full chorus), uses the more traditional sounds of a full orchestra (strings and brass are suddenly prominent), and snatches of melody dot the musical canvas here and there. The use of vocals here looks forward to such projects as Different Trains and The Cave. If Reich is trying to encapsulate the grandeur of the American west without falling back on typical “Western” tropes, he does so successfully.
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source: carnagenews

L’Ensemble Avantgarde interpreta queste prime opere reichiane, opere alla stregua dei lavori di nastro che mescolavano registrazioni, manipolazioni di loop che portano allo sfasamento delle sezioni audio (…) rendendo alienante e, nel contempo, ricontestualizzato il materiale prodotto

Steve Reich – Carnage News“Swinging ’60s”, potrebbe essere una piccola nota di ironia al sottotitolo di questa raccolta di opere di Steve Reich. Intanto perché composte alla fine degli anni ’60 e il ’70, opere giovanili in cui includiamo Four Organs, Phase Patterns e Pendulum Music. Un altro motivo può essere il richiamo allo “swinging” se posto accanto a Pendulum Music, il processo in cui quattro microfoni, sospesi in mezzo ad uno schieramento di amplificatori e casse, vengono messi in moto, a dondolare.
La musica viene creata dai loro feedback che, durante il dondolio, vengono scanditi. Il moto alternato, è possibile trovarlo anche nelle altre tracce in cui brevi pattern vengono gradualmente sfasati presentandosi ipnotiche trappole di fascinazione.

L’Ensemble Avantgarde interpreta queste prime opere reichiane, opere alla stregua dei lavori di nastro (come It’s Gonna Rain, Come Out, Reed Phase) che mescolavano registrazioni, manipolazioni di loop che portano allo sfasamento delle sezioni audio (poche, secondo una poetica dello scarno) rendendo alienante e, nel contempo, ricontestualizzato il materiale prodotto: un invito ad una carrellata a spirale in cui le ascensioni passano il testimone a discese lievi, buche, dossi dal lento andamento. Ritmo, impalcatura ultima (e prima) dell’estetica di Reich (il suo compimento Drumming è effettivamente la vera essenza del compositore).Queste quattro tracce sono quattro stadi di ipnosi che in nuce conservano un continuo inganno alla griglia del solfeggio. Four Organs, shaker che scandisce apaticamente i colpi in 130/140 bpm, mentre progressivamente i quattro organi si sormontano occupando volta volta una celletta della misura, guadagnando terreno, riempiendola, amalgamandosi in un unica coda d’organo ad aria stratificata. Pendulum music alterna starnazzii che richiamano il suono dei videgiochi in 8 bit (o degli oboe strozzati), le cui oscillazioni, come detto sopra, costruiscono un movimento simile a quello progressivo degli organi, verso un’ineluttabile stasi. Phase Pattern, che ha l’aria di fuga, gioca nello spazio di quattro quarti il gioco di alternanze di accordi tra organi acuti tessendo un vero e proprio pattern armonico.

La musica di Steve Reich ha ancora da insegnare per quanto riguarda quello che può riservare di essenziale nell’elementare, nel continuo sforzo di scavare la sostanza della forma loop, all’interno dell’esecuzione, interrogando un canone che egli stesso inganna, di cui egli stesso si prende forse gioco, con cui egli stesso ha coperto una vasta gamma di possibilità .