Steve Reich

Music today would be unthinkable without the dynamic energy of Steve Reich. In the late sixties he was one of the pioneers of minimalism, which with him always invited maximal attention to melodies of intriguing rhythmic bounce caught up in patterns of change. He developed his early style by listening to how identical loops of magnetic tape, played on two tape recorders, would gradually move out of synch. It was a new technique, but it connected with the ancient device of canon, as practiced by Stravinsky, by Bach and, eight centuries ago, by Perotin. Reich learned from those affiliations, and learned, too, from studying other musical cultures: west African drumming, the tuned percussion orchestras of Bali and Java, and Jewish sacred chant. Like a minimalist composition itself, his whole output has become steadily more various and rich.

Until the late seventies Reich reserved his scores to his own group, but since then the Sinfonietta has played an active role in presenting his music—notably City Life, a portrait of New York for instrumental and sampled sounds, which the ensemble jointly commissioned, and Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings, of which the Sinfonietta gave the world première and made the first recording.