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While at work on his current project, Three Tales, Steve Reich discusses the techniques, influences, and decisions of some of his compositions, starting with Music for 18 Musicians. The interviews took place at his New York City apartment on October 12, 2000, and by telephone to his Vermont home on October 25, 2000.
Music for 18 Musicians (1974-76)
What musical issues were you thinking about when composing Music for 18 Musicians?
Well, harmony and orchestration were very high on the list. Rather than starting with a melodic cell, which had been the starting point for Piano Phase, Violin Phase, Drumming, and basically all the pieces preceding Music for 18 except for Four Organs, the way I composed Music for 18 was by starting with a series of chords. The idea was to extend the middle register, not the bass-see Debussy, see flute melody in The Afternoon of a Faun, see same melody being repeated with different bass notes-so that bass becomes color and middle register becomes structure. In other words, key signature is structure and bass is color.
Works like Six Pianos, Four Organs, Violin Phase, and Piano Phase had been dealing primarily with multiples of instruments of the same timbre, and this was done not as an aesthetic choice but as an acoustical choice. It was necessary to have instruments of the same timbre playing against one another so that all the sub-patterns would emerge clearly. When you have six pianos, after a while you don't know who's playing what; all you know is that all this is happening, and you begin hearing all kinds of sub-patterns because everything blends together. If you were to play Piano Phase on harpsichord and piano, then this wouldn't happen. You could do it on two harpsichords and on two synthesizers of the same timbre, but you would just have to mate them.
With Music for 18, I began to think, "Well, there's an awful lot of music for dissimilar instruments; why don't I check it out." Therefore, Music for 18 Musicians was, in a sense, a riot of color compared to what came before it. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ is the parent and is certainly lurking there in the background; that's where beautiful sound...