Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians | Composer: Steve Reich, Performer: Steve Reich Ensemble |...

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians | Composer: Steve Reich, Performer: Steve Reich Ensemble | Great stuff

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Steve Reich: Music...

	Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians Composer: Steve Reich, Performer: Steve Reich Ensemble Ecm Records, 2000 average customer review:based on 25 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This has to be Steve Reich's most difficult work to perform; but he's done it. Several times. Music for 18 Musicians is for violin, cello, two clarinets doubling bass clarinet, four women's voices, four pianos, three marimbas, two xylophones, and a metallophone (vibraphone with no motor). It's a 1974 composition that focuses entirely on the rich staccato that gives minimalism its unique sound. However, Reich turns all of this into actual music by adding the richness of the metallophone and the women's voices. Whatever else people may have said about minimalism, pro or con, a work such as Music for 18 Musicians demonstrates its legitimacy. --Paul Cook

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Riveting

Music for 18 Musicians is a minimalist masterpiece. Minimalism is not a readily accepted or appreciated genre of modern classical music, so I suggest you listen to the piece before you buy it. Even if you don't like it upon the first listen, I would encourage you to try and appreciate it anyway. The first time I heard "In C" by Terry Riley, I was not particularly enthralled. The more I listen to pieces like this one, the more they grow on me. Reich's piece written for violin, cello, 2 clarinets doubling bass clarinet, 4 pianos, 3 mirimbas, 2 xylophones, 1 metallophone and 4 women's voices is structured in a way unlike much of what people think of as classical music. It starts with a steady pulse from the instruments with different instruments swelling and fading while the instruments outline a series of simple chords. What follows is a set of variations in which different instruments and voices sing different melodic motives on top of one another to create an intricate contrapuntal texture over the steady pulse. Many will call it monotonous, I like to think it is somewhat mesmerizing. And if the composer and his ensemble perform the work, it must be about as close to the sound Reich envisioned.

For those who see this music as uninteresting and monotonous, I would like to explain what makes the piece more than just of bunch of stacatto eigth note chords played in what seems like eternal succession. The whole concept of "Music for 18 Musicians," is that the music just breathes. Reich writes in the liner notes that the whole concept of the piece is to allow the musicians to repeat the motives for as long as a deep breath will allow them to comfotablly play for before they reiterate the phrase. The result is music that seems to be inhaling and exhaling as someone meditating in the lotus position. The musical breaths create an atmospheric sonic tapestry that is incredibly relaxing. If you keep this in mind, you may be able to better appreciate Reich's famous work. If you're like me, you'll walk away from the piece as if you were walking on air.

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Great stuff

This is really my favourite minimalist recording. I never warmed up to Philip Glass' stuff but this is really one exceptional piece of work. It completely blew my mind when i bought this twenty years ago and I was in a new wave and punk phase. This is really what this kind of music should be like. This is a completely indispensable CD to any collection.

Amazing! Just what I thought it would be!

I heard parts of this cd on a show on npr radio and was intrigued enough to look it up and order a copy. The entire cd is a beautiful flow of and interesting mix of instruments not really like anything else I've heard. It's relaxing and inspiring at the same time. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys instrumental music that is much more than the usual.

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Entertaining, if approached as proto-dance music instead of modern-classical

As a fan of modern-classical music I've often considered the minimalism of Steve Reich to be a disappointing path. I'd much rather listen to the complexity-in-cosmic-unity of Per Norgard, the frenetic textures of Magnus Lindberg or Pierre Boulez, or the zahlenmystik in the unabashedly Orthodox music of Sofia Gubaidulina. Yet, I'm also an occasional listener of progressive house music, and viewed from this perspective MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS is a interesting work indeed.

The hour-long work was written in 1976, and was the final statement in a musical line Reich had been following for nearly a decade. This is music as a process, where 11 chords are introduced at the beginning, and then each is slowly explored in turn over the piece. Yet, this is far from dry or boring, though it could certainly be called repetitive. For me, the piece is remarkable for sounding like the intelligent dance music which reached maturity two decades later. The steady tempo of the word makes it danceable. The eerie vocal writing and peculiar instrumental effects look forward to the exploitation of electronics. And each of the eleven sections is about as long as, and fades out similarly to a track in a house set.

There's little chance that most house producers have heard this work, but the idea of inducing an enchanting hypnotic effect through repetition and a hi-end and bass double hit could understandably have come to different people independently. Nonetheless, if you're a fan of late 90s/early 2000s progressive house, the sort pitched by Anthony Pappa, John Digweed, and Danny Howells at the time, I'd recommend MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS for the mere pleasure of hearing these effects coming live from an acoustic ensemble.

For that other crowd, fans of new music, a better introduction to Steve Reich might be the Variations disc in Deutsche Grammophon's "Echo 20/21" series, which contains three works and gives a larger view of his early pieces (I found the DG "Echo 20/21" disc Drumming disc disappointing, however). Still, MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS is an entertaining work, and might be worth a listen.

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