Steve Reich facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Stephen Michael Reich
Steve Reich at the Holland Festival, c. June 1976
Born	(1936-10-03) October 3, 1936 (age 88) New York City
Era	Contemporary
Notable work	Piano Phase Clapping Music Drumming Music for 18 Musicians Different Trains Three Tales WTC 9/11

Stephen Michael Reich (/raɪʃ/ ryshe), better known as Steve Reich, was born on October 3, 1936. He is an American composer famous for being a pioneer of minimal music in the 1960s. Reich's music often uses repeating musical ideas, slow changes in harmony, and canons (where different parts play the same melody but start at different times).

He explained his idea in an essay called "Music as a Gradual Process." He said he wanted listeners to clearly hear the musical process happening. For example, in his early works, he experimented with "phase shifting." This is when one or more repeated musical phrases play slightly slower or faster than others. This causes them to go "out of phase," creating new and interesting patterns that you can easily hear.

Reich's new ideas included using tape loops to create these phasing patterns. You can hear this in early pieces like It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). He also used simple, clear musical processes, like in Pendulum Music (1968) and Four Organs (1970). Later works, such as Drumming (1971) and Music for 18 Musicians (1976), became very important in the minimalist movement. They also influenced experimental music, rock, and modern electronic music. In the 1980s, Reich's music became more serious. He started including themes from history and his Jewish heritage, especially in Different Trains (1988).

Many modern composers and music groups, especially in the United States, have been influenced by Reich's unique style. Music critic Andrew Clements from The Guardian newspaper said that Reich is one of the few living composers who has truly changed the direction of music history.

Early Life and Musical Journey

Steve Reich was born in New York City. His parents, June Sillman (a Broadway lyricist) and Leonard Reich, were Jewish. When he was one year old, his parents divorced. He then spent his childhood living in both New York and California. He has a half-brother, the writer Jonathan Carroll.

As a child, he took piano lessons. He grew up listening to popular "middle-class favorites" and didn't hear much music from before 1750 or after 1900. When he was 14, he started to study music seriously. This happened after he discovered music from the Baroque period (like Bach) and earlier, as well as 20th-century music. Reich also studied drums with Roland Kohloff because he wanted to play jazz.

He went to Cornell University and studied music as a minor. In 1957, he graduated with a degree in Philosophy. His college thesis was about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Later, Reich would use texts by Wittgenstein in his music, such as Proverb (1995).

After college, Reich studied composition privately for a year with Hall Overton. Then, he went to Juilliard (1958–1961) and later to Mills College in Oakland, California (1961–1963). At Mills, he earned a master's degree in composition.

Reich also worked at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. There, he met other composers like Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley. He helped with the first performance of Riley's famous piece In C. Reich suggested using a steady eighth-note pulse, which is now a key part of how the piece is played.

How His Music Changed

Early Experiments with Sound

In his early compositions, Reich tried out twelve-tone composition, but he found the rhythmic patterns more interesting than the melodies. He also created music for films by Robert Nelson. One of these, Plastic Haircut (1963), was a short collage of sounds on tape. This might have been Reich's very first tape piece.

Reich was inspired by Terry Riley, another minimalist composer. Riley's In C uses simple musical patterns that are slightly offset in time. This creates a slowly changing, unified sound. Reich used this idea to create his first major work, It's Gonna Rain. This piece, from 1965, used a recording of a street preacher talking about the end of the world. Reich took the words "it's gonna rain!" and put them on several tape loops. These loops slowly moved out of sync with each other.

His 13-minute piece Come Out (1966) used a similar technique. It features a spoken line from Daniel Hamm, one of the "Harlem Six," who was injured by police. Hamm said, "I had to, like, open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them." Reich recorded the phrase "come out to show them" on two tape channels. They start together but quickly drift apart, creating an echo effect. The two voices then split into four, then eight, and so on. Eventually, the words become unclear, leaving only the rhythm and sound of the speech.

Melodica (1966) applied this "phase looping" idea to instruments. Steve Reich played a simple tune on a melodica and recorded it. He then played the recording on two separate channels, slowly moving them out of phase. This created a complex, interwoven melody. This piece was his last one made only for tape. He saw it as a bridge from tape music to music for live instruments.

Phasing in Live Performance

Reich's first attempt to bring the phasing technique from tape to live musicians was Piano Phase (1967). This piece is for two pianos. The players repeat a fast, twelve-note melody. One player keeps a steady beat, while the other speeds up just a tiny bit. They speed up until their parts line up again, but now they are one sixteenth note apart. Then the second player returns to the original speed. This cycle continues, creating new patterns. Violin Phase (1967) uses the same ideas for violins.

A similar piece is Pendulum Music (1968). It involves microphones swinging over loudspeakers, creating feedback sounds. Reich never recorded this piece himself, but the rock band Sonic Youth introduced it to rock fans in the 1990s.

Reich also wanted to create a phasing effect using only the human body. He realized that simple phasing wasn't quite right for this. Instead, he wrote Clapping Music (1972). In this piece, two performers clap a 12-eighth-note pattern. One performer keeps the pattern steady, while the other shifts their pattern by one eighth note beat every 12 bars. They keep shifting until they are back in sync 144 bars later.

Four Organs (1970) explores the idea of making sounds much longer without changing their pitch. In this piece, maracas play a fast eighth note pulse. Four organs hold a long, sustained chord, emphasizing certain eighth notes. This piece focuses on repetition and subtle rhythmic changes. It was Reich's first piece performed in a large, traditional concert setting.

Expanding His Sound

In 1970, Reich traveled to Ghana for five weeks to study music with master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. He also studied Balinese gamelan music in Seattle in 1973 and 1974. His experiences in Africa inspired his 90-minute piece Drumming. He wrote it for a nine-piece percussion group with female voices and piccolo. This piece marked a new phase in his career. Around this time, he formed his own group, Steve Reich and Musicians. This group became his "living laboratory" for his music, and many original members are still active today.

After Drumming, Reich moved beyond his "phase shifting" technique. He started writing more complex pieces, exploring other musical processes like augmentation. This means making musical phrases and melodies longer in time. During this period, he wrote works like Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973) and Six Pianos (1973).

In 1974, Reich began Music for 18 Musicians. This piece introduced many new ideas while also recalling his earlier works. It's built around a cycle of eleven chords played at the beginning (called "Pulses"). Then, there are sections of music based on each chord, before returning to the original cycle. This was Reich's first time writing for a larger group of musicians. The increased number of performers allowed for more interesting sound effects. Reich noted that he wanted to explore this idea further. He also said that this one piece had more harmonic movement in its first five minutes than any other work he had written before.

One of Reich's unique ways of composing minimalist music is to leave out bass notes. He did this to avoid creating a strong tonal center, which he felt would make the music too traditional. Music for 18 Musicians keeps its minimalist feel through these "phases" and harmonic shifts. Even though it's about an hour long, the repetitive rhythmic structure is very important.

Reich continued to explore these ideas in Music for a Large Ensemble (1978) and Octet (1979). In these works, he experimented with using "the human breath as the measure of musical duration." This meant that the trumpet chords, for example, were written to be played in one comfortable breath. Human voices are also part of Music for a Large Ensemble, but they sing without words, just adding to the overall sound.

With Octet and his first orchestral piece Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards (1979), Reich's music showed the influence of Biblical Hebrew cantillation (chanting). He had studied this in Israel since 1977. After this, the human voice singing actual words became more and more important in his music.

He explained this technique: "It involves taking existing melodic patterns and joining them together to form a longer melody for a holy text. If you remove the text, you're left with the idea of combining small musical ideas to create longer melodies – a technique I hadn't seen before."

In 1974, Reich published Writings About Music, a book of essays on his ideas and musical projects. A larger collection, Writings On Music (1965–2000), came out in 2002.

Deeper Themes and Collaborations

Reich around 1982–1984

In the 1980s, Reich's music became more serious. He started including themes from history and his Jewish heritage. Tehillim (1981), which means psalms in Hebrew, was his first work to directly use his Jewish background. This piece is for four women's voices and an ensemble of instruments. It uses texts from the Psalms. Tehillim was different from his earlier works because it used longer texts, making melody a more important part. It also used traditional counterpoint (combining melodies) and harmony, which was a change from his earlier, less structured minimalist pieces.

Different Trains (1988), for string quartet and tape, uses recorded speech. But this time, the speech creates melodies, not just rhythms. In Different Trains, Reich compares his childhood train journeys between New York and California (1939–1941) with the very different trains that took European children to their deaths during Nazi rule. The Kronos Quartet's recording of Different Trains won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in 1990. One critic called it "one of the few adequate artistic responses in any medium—to the Holocaust."

In 1993, Reich worked with his wife, video artist Beryl Korot, on an opera called The Cave. This opera explores the origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam through the words of Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans. These words are then echoed musically by the performers. The work is like a musical documentary, named after the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, where Abraham is said to be buried.

Reich and Korot also worked together on the opera Three Tales. This opera looks at events like the Hindenburg disaster, nuclear weapon tests on Bikini Atoll, and modern topics like Dolly the sheep (the cloned sheep) and cloning.

Reich used sampling techniques for pieces like Three Tales and City Life (1994). He then returned to writing purely instrumental works for the concert hall, starting with Triple Quartet in 1998. This piece can be played by one string quartet with a recording, or by three string quartets, or by a 36-piece string orchestra.

Recent Works and Recognition

His instrumental works continued with Dance Patterns (2002), Cello Counterpoint (2003), and several pieces based on variations: You Are (Variations) (2004), Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings (2005), and the Daniel Variations (2006). You Are goes back to the vocal style of Tehillim. The Daniel Variations are "much darker" and were partly inspired by the death of Daniel Pearl.

In December 2010, Nonesuch Records and Indaba Music held a remix contest for Reich's music. Over 250 entries were received. Reich said in an interview that once he finishes a piece, he doesn't change it himself. However, he recognized that remixes have a long history, like how old religious melodies were developed into new songs.

Reich premiered WTC 9/11 in March 2011. This piece, for string quartet and tape (similar to Different Trains), was his response to the September 11 attacks. It uses recordings from emergency services and family members who were in New York during the attacks. The Kronos Quartet performed its first show.

On March 5, 2013, the London Sinfonietta performed the world premiere of Radio Rewrite. This work was inspired by the band Radiohead.

Music for Ensemble and Orchestra was first performed on November 4, 2018. This marked Reich's return to writing for orchestra after more than thirty years. Since 2006, Reich and his wife Beryl Korot have lived in upstate New York.

Awards and Influence

Steve Reich has received many important awards for his music:

• In 2005, he received the Edward MacDowell Medal.
• In October 2006, he was given the Praemium Imperiale Award in Music.
• On January 25, 2007, he was named a recipient of the Polar Music Prize.
• On April 20, 2009, Reich won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his piece Double Sextet. The award called it "a major work that displays an ability to channel an initial burst of energy into a large-scale musical event, built with masterful control and consistently intriguing to the ear."
• In May 2011, he received an honorary doctorate from the New England Conservatory of Music.
• In 2012, he received the Gold Medal in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
• In 2013, Reich received the US$400,000 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in contemporary music. This was for creating a new kind of music that uses everyday sounds and elements from traditional African and Asian music.
• In September 2014, he was awarded the "Leone d'Oro" (Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music) from the Venice Biennale.
• In March 2016, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Music in London.

His Impact on Other Artists

Many other composers and musical groups have been influenced by Steve Reich's style. These include John Adams, Michael Nyman, Aphex Twin, Björk, Sonic Youth, and the band Radiohead.

John Adams once said about Reich, "He didn't reinvent the wheel so much as he showed us a new way to ride." Reich has also influenced visual artists like Bruce Nauman. Many famous choreographers, including Eliot Feld and Jerome Robbins, have created dances to his music.

In 1990, the British electronic group the Orb used a sample from Reich's Electric Counterpoint (1987) in their song Little Fluffy Clouds. This introduced his music to a new generation of listeners. In 1999, an album called Reich Remixed featured remixes of his works by various electronic dance-music producers.

Reich often mentions Pérotin, J. S. Bach, Debussy, Bartók, and Stravinsky as composers he admired when he was young. Jazz has also greatly shaped Reich's musical style. He was influenced by jazz vocalists Ella Fitzgerald and Alfred Deller. John Coltrane's style, which Reich described as "playing a lot of notes to very few harmonies," also had an impact. Reich's influence from jazz also comes from its roots in West African music, which he studied.

Works

Compositions

• Pitch Charts variable instrumentation (1963)
• Soundtrack for Plastic Haircut tape (1963)
• Music for two or more pianos (1964)
• Livelihood (1964)
• It's Gonna Rain tape (1965)
• Soundtrack for Oh Dem Watermelons tape (1965)
• Come Out tape (1966)
• Melodica for melodica and tape (1966)
• Reed Phase for soprano saxophone or any other reed instrument and tape, or three reed instruments (1966)
• Piano Phase for two pianos, or two marimbas (1967)
• Slow Motion Sound concept piece (1967)
• Violin Phase for violin and tape or four violins (1967)
• My Name Is for three tape recorders and performers (1967)
• Pendulum Music for 3 or 4 microphones, amplifiers and loudspeakers (1968) (revised 1973)
• Pulse Music for phase shifting pulse gate (1969)
• Four Log Drums for four log drums and phase shifting pulse gate (1969)
• Four Organs for four electric organs and maracas (1970)
• Phase Patterns for four electric organs (1970)
• Drumming for 4 pairs of tuned bongo drums, 3 marimbas, 3 glockenspiels, 2 female voices, whistling and piccolo (1970/1971)
• Clapping Music for two musicians clapping (1972)
• Music for Pieces of Wood for five pairs of tuned claves (1973)
• Six Pianos (1973) – also arranged as Six Marimbas (1986), adapted as Six Marimbas Counterpoint (2010) and Piano Counterpoint (2011) by the others
• Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973)
• Music for 18 Musicians (1974–76)
• Music for a Large Ensemble (1978, rev. 1979)
• Octet (1979) – withdrawn in favor of the 1983 revision for slightly larger ensemble, Eight Lines
• Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards for orchestra (1979)
• Tehillim for voices and ensemble (1981)
• Vermont Counterpoint for amplified flute and tape (1982)
• The Desert Music for chorus and orchestra or voices and ensemble (1983, text by William Carlos Williams)
• Sextet for percussion and keyboards (1984, rev. 1985)
• New York Counterpoint for amplified clarinet and tape, or 11 clarinets and bass clarinet (1985)
• Three Movements for orchestra (1986)
• Electric Counterpoint for electric guitar or amplified acoustic guitar and tape (1987, for Pat Metheny)
• The Four Sections for orchestra (1987)
• Different Trains for string quartet and tape (1988)
• The Cave for four voices, ensemble and video (1993, with Beryl Korot)
• Duet for two violins and string ensemble (1993, dedicated to Yehudi Menuhin)
• Nagoya Marimbas for two marimbas (1994)
• City Life for amplified ensemble (1995)
• Proverb for voices and ensemble (1995, text by Ludwig Wittgenstein)
• Triple Quartet for amplified string quartet (with prerecorded tape), or three string quartets, or string orchestra (1998)
• Know What Is Above You for four women's voices and 2 tamborims (1999)
• Three Tales for video projection, five voices and ensemble (1998–2002, with Beryl Korot)
• Dance Patterns for 2 xylophones, 2 vibraphones and 2 pianos (2002)
• Cello Counterpoint for amplified cello and multichannel tape (2003)
• You Are (Variations) for voices and ensemble (2004)
• For Strings (with Winds and Brass) for orchestra (1987/2004)
• Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings dance piece for three string quartets, four vibraphones, and two pianos (2005)
• Daniel Variations for four voices and ensemble (2006)
• Double Sextet for 2 violins, 2 cellos, 2 pianos, 2 vibraphones, 2 clarinets, 2 flutes or ensemble and pre-recorded tape (2007)
• 2×5 for 2 drum sets, 2 pianos, 4 electric guitars and 2 bass guitars (2008)
• Mallet Quartet for 2 marimbas and 2 vibraphones or 4 marimbas (or solo percussion and tape) (2009)
• WTC 9/11 for string quartet and tape (2010)
• Finishing the Hat for two pianos (2011)
• Radio Rewrite for ensemble (2012)
• Quartet for two vibraphones and two pianos (2013)
• Pulse for winds, strings, piano and electric bass (2015)
• Runner for large ensemble (2016)
• For Bob for piano (2017)
• Music for Ensemble and Orchestra (2018)
• Reich/Richter for large ensemble (2019)
• Traveler's Prayer for 2 tenors, 2 sopranos, 2 vibraphones, 1 piano, 4 violins, 2 violas and 2 cellos (2020)
• Jacob's Ladder for 4 vocalists and large ensemble (2023)

Selected Discography

• Live/Electric Music, (Columbia, 1968)
• Four Organs for four electric organs and maracas (Shandar, 1970; recorded again for Angel, 1973)
• Music for 18 Musicians (ECM, 1978); later: Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble (Innova), Ensemble Modern (RCA); Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman harmonia mundi
• Radio Rewrite, Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman harmonia mundi
• Double Sextet, Ensemble Signal, Brad Lubman harmonia mundi
• Drumming. Steve Reich and Musicians (a few recordings: John Gibson + Multiples, 1971; Deutsche Grammophon and Nonesuch) So Percussion (Cantaloupe)
• Music for 18 Musicians. Steve Reich and Musicians (Two recordings: ECM and Nonesuch, 1978), Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble (Innova), Ensemble Modern (RCA).
• Octet/Music for a Large Ensemble/Violin Phase. Steve Reich and Musicians (ECM, 1980)
• Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards/Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ/ Six Pianos. San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Edo de Waart, Steve Reich & Musicians (Philips, 1984)
• Tehillim/The Desert Music (ECM Records, 1982); Alarm Will Sound and OSSIA, Alan Pierson (Cantaloupe)
• Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint. Kronos Quartet, Pat Metheny (Elektra Nonesuch, 1989)
• Steve Reich: Works 1965–1995. Various performers (Nonesuch, 1997).
• Piano Phase, transcribed for guitar, Alexandre Gérard (Catapult)
• Reich Remixed, (Nonesuch, 1999)
• You Are (Variations)/Cello Counterpoint. Los Angeles Master Chorale, Grant Gershon, Maya Beiser (Nonesuch, 2005)
• Daniel Variations, with Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings. London Sinfonietta, Grant Gershon, Alan Pierson (Nonesuch, 2008)
• Double Sextet/2×5, Eighth Blackbird and Bang on a Can (Nonesuch, 2010)
• Radio Rewrite, Alarm Will Sound, Jonny Greenwood, Vicky Chow (Nonesuch, 2014)
• Pulse – Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Colin Currie Group (Nonesuch, 2018)

Filmography

• Phase to Face, a film documentary about Steve Reich by Eric Darmon & Franck Mallet (EuroArts, 2011) DVD

Books

Images for kids

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  Steve Reich at the Holland Festival, June 1976

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  Reich around 1982–1984

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