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The Desert Music

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.