Lord Lucan
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Edited Oct 19, 2006, 14:51
Drumming - Steve Reich
Oct 19, 2006, 14:50
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Drumming is great. I didn't really get it when I first bought it over a decade ago. It sat in my CD rack gathering dust for a year or so, as Music for 18 Musicians got played a lot more. Then I had the idea of putting it on at home during a chill out after an MDMA fuelled night of raving. It was a revelation to everyone there, and three of us got up and started dancing again to it. It's always sounded different to me since. Great to watch being performed live, too.
And Reich's more recent stuff isn't much cop, but it's still better than the cack Philip Glass churns out these days. Actually some of the VERY early Philip Glass stuff is good, but it quickly descends into insipid, populist crap. Best stuff is: Music in Similar Motion and Music with Changing Parts.
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Lord Lucan
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Re: Music for 18 musicians - Steve Reich
Oct 19, 2006, 14:54
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Not much of a fan of Shri Camel myself. Too New Age-y for my taste. Rainbow in Curved Air is pretty good, as is Poppy Nogood - All Night Flight; and of course there's the wonderful Church Of Anthrax album with John Cale.
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Jim Tones
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Re: Music for 18 musicians - Steve Reich
Oct 19, 2006, 14:56
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>Church Of Anthrax
Good call LL!
Brilliant album !
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Leonard
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Re: Drumming - Steve Reich
Oct 19, 2006, 15:25
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Was playing Glass earlier today, 12 parts, wasn't in the mood really although I caught myself sketching in time with it. So I put annum per annum on, and now I'm schized out, chin tugging and generally scratchy in a nice and deep way.
Anyways, as this is turning into a modern composers thread allow me to plug Arvo Part. Arvo Part people, fucking get some. As it goes get annum per annum which is darned good, has cage and scelsi on it too, New Albion Records. Its organ music.
Annum per Annum - Part, Souvenir - Cage, In nomine lucis - Scelsi,
Pari Intervallo - Part, Mein Weg hat Gipfel und Wellentaler - Part and Trivium I-III. Amply played by Christoph Maria Moosmann.
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head-first
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Re: Music for 18 musicians - Steve Reich
Oct 19, 2006, 16:34
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For me 'Music for 18 musicians' is a modern masterpiece, but it's definitely not without precedent in composers like Riley, Nancarrow, or even Bach. I'd stick my neck out though and say that it surpasses anything by Riley or the 'Minimalist' school of the time.
I saw it performed by Steve Reich and musicians a few weeks ago, and had no idea it was such a physical piece of music. There are more musical parts than there are performers, so the musicians have to move around and play different instruments!
Without a doubt, it was the best piece of live music I've ever seen.
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mojojojo
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Re: Drumming - Steve Reich
Oct 19, 2006, 16:41
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I only have a cheap CD collection of Arvo Part, and a few bits and bobs I found on the net, but what I have is fantastic (although it's mostly choral rather than organ music).
Talking of organs Leonard (teeheehee), you know much about Olivier Messiaen? Looads of his organ stuff on emusic - think I'll get me some when I might account's renewed.
x
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Leonard
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Re: Drumming - Steve Reich
Oct 19, 2006, 19:15
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Olivier Messiaen ? I've liked the very little I've heard, I just asked Fairy and she said 'Is he good ? Bloody hell. Yeah!' So I'll have to hunt some down meself now, will get recommendations from her. On the Arvo front AFAIK the recordings on annum are the only pieces he's written for organ , most of his work is choral, Litany being the best IMO.
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mojojojo
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Messiaen - La Nativite du Seigner
Oct 20, 2006, 09:20
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Just had a look and this was on the library shelves. Description I found sounds good.
"According to Messiaen, La Nativité du Seigneur represented a musical coming-of-age for the young composer. The organ became for Messiaen became a self-contained orchestra, capable of endless variety and limitless expression, but also transcended the orchestra in terms of the possibilities of duration, resonance, and timbre. Timbre, in fact, is central to the work, and, as musicologist John Milsom points out, what appears on paper to be music dominated by melodic and harmonic concerns within a carefully constructed contrapuntal texture instead turns into "flashes of color and light...an astonishing display of fireworks" when performed. The work consists of nine "meditations," foreshadowing the symbolic nine-movement structure of the Méditations sur le mystère de la Sainte Trinité of 1969. Musically La Nativité is significant, for it represents the first explicit use of Messiaen's famous chromatic modes, the "modes of limited transformation" to which the composer draws attention in the work's preface. As a whole, the work is a mixture of the beautiful and the bizarre: the density of timbre is at once breathtaking and overwhelming, and the sheer variety of registration makes for a piece that is not always easily accessible. It represents a step for Messiaen toward the later, decidedly esoteric and atmospheric pieces of the late 1940s and 1950s."
x
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IanB
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Edited Oct 21, 2006, 09:39
Re: Music for 18 musicians - Steve Reich
Oct 21, 2006, 06:42
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If you like this then you will probably enjoy Six Marimbas.
There is a great mid 80s recording on Nonseuch with Sextet on the other side.
It's everything you want from a piece that is profoundly spiritual and horny at the same time. You'd think the guy was Pagan to the core.
Put on repeat and have a lie down.
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Brother Johnno
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Re: Music for 18 musicians - Steve Reich
Oct 23, 2006, 18:34
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Apologies if someone else has added this (haven't read all the posts) but there is a month long Reich Fest at London's Barbican at the moment which may interest someone.
BJx
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