Description
Steve Reich is an American composer and leading exponents of Minimalism, a style based on repetitions and combinations of simple motifs and harmonies. Join me, as we take a minute to get the scoop!
Fun Fact
In commemoration of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, Reich composed WTC 9/11: For Three String Quartets and Pre-recorded Voices (2010), incorporating recordings of emergency personnel and New York residents that had been made on the day of the tragedy.
About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more.
A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.
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Steve Reich is an American composer and leading exponent of Minimalism.
His compositions reject the complexity of mid-20th-century classical harmony and tonality instead focusing on sometimes a single chord, a brief musical motif, or spoken exclamation.
In his essay entitled, “Music as a Gradual Process,” Reich states, “I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.”
His first official piece was, It's Gonna Rain where he manipulated a recording of a Pentecostal preacher. This actually came about by chance as he was fiddling with two identical tape loops that got out of synch.
This happy accident opened a door to a new way of composing for Reich and helped launch his career.
His early works included Four Organs, Drumming and Clapping Music, later scoring for larger ensembles. [His composition Double Sextet won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Music.]
Reich often cites Pérotin, J. S. Bach, Debussy, Bartók, and Stravinsky as composers whom he admires and who greatly influenced him when he was young.