This particular piece is significant as it has a special connection with The Holocaust. The music was written for contemporary music ensemble Eighth Blackbird.
Clapping Music , an exciting work scored for two percussionists…who are doing nothing but clapping their hands in and out of sync with each other.
Electric Counterpoint , scored for a guitarist performing over a pre-recorded track. The music is buoyant and sounds like a cross between lighthearted new age and contemporary classical music. YES Classical Music is one of the leading sources for classical music news, reviews, and opinion online!
November 14, Home Composers A Guide to…. Related post. January 17, The only prior solo recording of any note, by Rough Fields in , fell prey to some of them, with a misconceived palette that emphasized blurting repetition. The piece was a turning point for Reich, who flooded his severe, unpopular minimalism with 18 musicians some of them playing two parts at once and toothsome harmonic motion—more of it in the first five minutes than in the entirety of any one of his prior works, he said.
What it did have was melody and motion, and listening to it makes you feel immortal. At the outset, 11 chords are played through two breath cycles each.
Then, each becomes a stage for a study in interlocking pulses that kaleidoscopically glimmer and whirl. The changes are marked by a rare non-repeating metallophone phrase watch the tall man with glasses waiting so patiently in the terrific Eighth Blackbird performance.
For instance the pulse in pianos and marimbas in sections 1 and 2 changes to marimbas and xylophones in section 3A, and to xylophones and maracas in sections 6 and 7.
The low piano pulsing harmonies of section 3A reappear in section 6 supporting a different melody played by different instruments. The process of building up a canon, or phase relation, between two xylophones and two pianos which first occurs in section 2, occurs again in section 9 but building up to another overall pattern in a different harmonic context.
The relationship between the different sections is thus best understood in terms of resemblances between members of a family. Certain characteristics will be shared, but others will be unique. Changes from one section to the next, as well as changes within each section are cued by the metallophone vibraphone with no motor whose patterns are played once only to call for movements to the next bar, much as in Balinese Gamelan a drummer will audibly call for changes of pattern in West African Music.
This is in contrast to the visual nods of the head used in earlier pieces of mine to call for changes and in contrast also to the general Western practice of having a non-performing conductor for large ensembles.
Audible cures become part of the music and allow the musicians to keep listening. Album descriptions on Last. Feel free to contribute! All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. Don't want to see ads? As they sing those short pulses, they move their heads from one side of the microphone to the other, so they are passing the microphone, slowly fading in and then slowly fading out.
The effect is incredible: like listening to cicadas, or the white noise of a freeway. But, after all that watching during a live performance — which does indeed put me into an otherworldly state, as though I'd just received a massage — I still sometimes close my eyes and just listen. I also listen to recordings of the piece at home, and those pulse sections that begin and end the piece lasting for about the first and final five minutes are definitely my favorite sections.
It's the bass clarinets that get me every time. The world can be closing in on all sides, seem much too harsh and bright and sharp. But when I first hear those bass clarinets pulsing, the same way the vocalists pulse back and forth — softer, louder, softer again — I am transported somewhere warm and soft.
Music for 18 Musicians is a marathon of a piece for the performers. Once, years ago, I experienced it on a marathon drive. I was driving across the country both ways. I put the piece on while driving in Utah's desert at sunset. It was probably as close to a religious experience as I have ever come, or ever will.
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