Reich, Music for Pieces of Wood

Steve Reich has been called “the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker), and “among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times). So begins Reich’s biography on the Boosey & Hawkes website. It concludes by quoting another superlative from The Guardian: “There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them.”

Those appraisals are supported primarily with the argument that Reich “helped shift the aesthetic center of musical composition worldwide away from extreme complexity and towards rethinking pulsation and tonal attraction in new ways.” Whether you end up agreeing that Reich is among the greatest living composers, it seems clear that he is one of the most original and influential.

Professor Carol likes to talk about the collapse of styles at various points in history. The complex counterpoint of the late Renaissance gave way to monody, a clear melodic line with supporting accompaniment in the early Baroque. The 18th-century galant style provided a refreshing change from the dense textures of J.S. Bach. Neoclassicism replaced the monumental resources of late Romanticism. The virtuosity of Big Band music was eclipsed by the simple patterns of rock ‘n roll.

The minimalism pioneered by Reich provided an answer to the complexity of composers like Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. A few years back we discussed his unusual treatment of rhythm in Drumming. Music for Pieces of Wood, a 1973 work for tuned claves, also explores rhythm, but from a different perspective.