"The Mind is Listening": Listening forMeaning in Steve Reich's 'The Desert Music'

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Authors Fisher, Sarah Lynn

Publisher The University of Arizona.

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“THE MIND IS LISTENING” LISTENING FOR MEANING IN STEVE REICH’S THE DESERT MUSIC

by

Sarah Lynn Fisher

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

SCHOOL OF MUSIC

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2007

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STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.

SIGNED: Sarah Lynn Fisher

APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below: ______________________________ November 20, 2007 Janet L. Sturman Date Associate Professor of Music

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am especially grateful to my advisor, Dr. Janet Sturman, for her patience and encouragement throughout these last two years of research and writing. Her enthusiasm for my ideas and confidence in my abilities were crucial in times when my own confidence wavered. She has introduced me to works of music criticism that have forever changed (for the better) the way I think about music and has inspired an interest in ethnographic research that I hope to pursue in the future. Our conversations helped to both improve and clarify many of the ideas presented in this document and for this I am most obliged. I also wish to thank the other two members of my graduate committee, Dr. John Brobeck and Dr. Jay Rosenblatt, for kindly offering helpful criticism and for providing examples of the level of scholarship to which I aspire. My immediate family has been unfailingly supportive during this challenging period of my life, and their love means more to me than anything. I wish to acknowledge the loving support of family and friends, including Annette, April, and Autumn McMurrian; Rachelle Mechenbier; my OMA partners and friends Kathryn Mueller and Nathan Kruger; Andrew Diggs; Dan, Kelsey, and Levi Bowman; the staff of Radiocarbon and Meteoritics and Planetary Science; Anishka Lee-Skorepa; Laura Weirich; and Peanut (in memoriam). Alan McMurrian kindly helped to edit and revise several versions of this thesis and has always been available to discuses my ideas and concerns throughout the entire process. This journey has very much been one that we have taken together, and I owe the successful completion of this project to his steadfast encouragement. Finally, I would like to thank my undergraduate professor, Daniel Dominick, for first introducing me to Steve Reich and for playing the Brooklyn Philharmonic recording of The Desert Music for our 20th-Century Music class one Friday afternoon.

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DEDICATION

For my musical patriarch

Ronald G. Clark

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………... 6

ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………..................... 7 EPIGRAPH…………………………………………………………………………….. 8 INTRODUCTION - “Is there a sound / addressed / not wholly to the ear?”………… 9 CHAPTER ONE - “Begin, my Friend”: The Genesis and Composition of The Desert Music………………………………………………………………………… 15 CHAPTER TWO - “Well, shall we / think or listen?”: Selected Literature Review…. 29 CHAPTER THREE - “The / theme is difficult / but no more difficult / than the facts to be / resolved.”…………………………………………………………………….. 38 I. Musical Meaning: Definition and Theory………………………………………… 38 II. The Listening Analysis……………………………………………………………47 III. Locating the Desert……………………………………………………………… 53 CONCLUSION - “who most shall advance the light – call it what you may!”……….. 68 APPENDIX: LISTENING TABLES………………………………………………....... 72 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………… 104

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LIST OF TABLES1

Table 1: Movement I – Fast……………………………………………………………. 72 Table 2: Movement II – Moderate……………………………………………………... 76 Table 3.1: Movement IIIA – Slow……………………………………………………... 81 Table 3.2: Movement IIIB – Moderate………………………………………………… 86 Table 3.3: Movement IIIC – Slow……………………………………………………... 90 Table 4: Movement IV – Moderate……………………………………………………. 95 Table 5: Movement V – Fast…………………………………………………………... 98

1All tables document my listening analysis and appear in the Appendix. Page numbers denote the

first page of each table.

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ABSTRACT

This thesis examines The Desert Music by Steve Reich in the context of the

composer’s artistic perspective and advocates studying the subjective listening

experience as a tool for musical analysis. Challenging conventional approaches in

musicology and music theory, this work examines how a specific analytical approach in

turn shapes the values assigned to that work. Systematic documentation of the author's

listening experience is presented as an application of this premise and as a template to use

in subsequent investigations of how other listeners respond to the work. The author

concludes, mirroring the ideas implied in The Desert Music itself, that instead of

suppressing individual responses as opinions too myriad and divergent to be relevant, we

should recognize that these reactions are products of shared cultural experience and that

discussing them collectively may lead to powerful revelations about artistic meaning that

may not emerge any other way.

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Leaving California to return east, the fertile desert, (were it to get water) surrounded us, a music of survival, subdued, distant, half heard…

William Carlos Williams “The Desert Music”

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Introduction “Is there a sound addressed / not wholly to the ear?”

In the early 1960s, while studying composition at Mills College in San Francisco,

California, Steve Reich spent many hours at jazz venues listening to performances by

John Coltrane:

When I was at Mills College from 1961 to ’63, most of the graduate students were writing pieces which they didn’t play, which one could doubt whether they heard in their heads, and which were so enormously complex that they made the page virtually black, but you wondered if they’d ever be performed.

And at night I went to hear John Coltrane, who picks up his saxophone and plays and the music comes out. It was almost a moral dilemma. It would’ve been almost immoral not to follow in Coltrane’s direction because of the musical honesty and authenticity involved.2

Reich recognized that he valued the affective experience of music too highly to continue

composing serial music; this calculated, intellectual style, while an appropriate response

to World War II in Europe, was “a musical lie” coming from a composer so keenly aware

of the American social and musical environment during the 1960s.3 Returning to New

York a few years later, Reich began composing in a new style, and his first mature

compositions, It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966), achieve their emotional

weight from their musical processes as well as their subject matter.

These aspects of Reich’s biography illuminate an important artistic position that

has guided his compositional career from the 1960s to the present. Reich’s style

mentioned above (labeled minimalism by critics) not only grew out of his desire for

musical integrity, but it also clarified his intended audience, i.e., who he was writing for

2Steve Reich, “Steve Reich,” interview by Edward Strickland (January 1987), in American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), 38.

3Ibid., 46.

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and how he envisioned his compositions would be heard. While his colleagues at Mills

College wrote for music academics at universities, Reich was more at home in the art

galleries of downtown New York City, where artists of several disciplines gathered to

share their works with a perhaps less critical, but still enthusiastic, crowd.4 By his own

admission Reich requires an engaged listener, not necessarily an educated one.5 Aside

from his early tape pieces, he also has been careful never to remove completely the

human element of live performance from his works, following his interest in the

communal performance practices of West African drumming and Balinese gamelan

ensembles. While the individualized experience of his compositions remains important,

it is clear that Reich also recognizes the affective power of live performance.

Given Reich’s musical values, it is puzzling that critical discussions of his works

continue to emanate almost exclusively from methods of analysis traditionally applied to

Western art music. These methods, which focus on the absolute musical elements of

harmony and structure, presuppose that the goal of analysis is to uncover the composer’s

compositional process and that the critic should have unlimited access to the musical

score, which is primarily a guide for the performer. The consensus of a work’s meaning

that emerges from these discussions may not be entirely consistent with Reich’s

intentions. For Reich musical processes are not ends in themselves but are instead a way

to guide the affective experience of the listener. Thus what is often missing from critical

4It is only more recently that works by Reich have premiered in concert halls in Europe and the

United States. However, his core audience remains those who attend performances by his ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, often in venues not traditionally associated with classical music.

5In his essay “Music as a Gradual Process” (1968), Reich explains how the gradually changing musical elements of his compositions that have defined his style were developed to “facilitate closely detailed listening.” In Writings on Music: 1965-2000, edited with an introduction by Paul Hillier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 34.

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discussions of Reich’s works is consideration of the subjective listening experience.

Studying how a listener evaluates meaning as it unfolds in time, just as it would in

performance, could deepen critical understanding of Reich’s compositions by explaining

how and why they are effective for the listener.

Such an approach may also be able to draw attention to works by Reich that have

been unduly neglected by critics and performing ensembles by providing a new context

in which to interpret them. Stylistically, The Desert Music, a five-movement work for

chorus and orchestra with text excerpted and arranged by Reich from poetry by William

Carlos Williams, is not particularly innovative in the context of Reich’s works in the

1970s and 1980s; its expanded musical forces, multiple concurrent textures, and more

complex harmonic language amplify musical ideas first presented in Music for Eighteen

Musicians (1976).6 Perhaps this is why few critics consider The Desert Music to be one

of Reich’s major works. It is not often mentioned in textbooks, included in historical

anthologies, or discussed in detail in books about Reich and his minimalist colleagues.

Furthermore, focus on the structure and harmony of The Desert Music has diverted

critical attention from the conceptual trends it exemplifies. The Desert Music is Reich’s

first conventional text setting in English, and it also marks his return to the incorporation

of social and political subject matter into his compositions, a feature first included in his

early tape pieces of the 1960s. Both aspects, the use of speech or text and references to

current events, have appeared in most of Reich’s compositions since The Desert Music.

6Reich, hoping to make the piece accessible to ensembles that regularly perform his works,

composed a revised chamber version of The Desert Music in 1986. A recording of this version (Alarm Will Sound and Ossia, Steve Reich: Tehillim and The Desert Music, Cantaloupe B00006H6B5, 2002) is used for the listening analysis in Chapter 3.

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These elements play an important role in guiding the listening experience. The

title and text indicate that The Desert Music is about something other than the music

itself, i.e., there is some kind of extramusical idea that Reich intends for the audience to

perceive. It is therefore an appropriate mental occupation on the part of the listener to

think about the external references suggested by The Desert Music. And it can be argued

that, as they are more likely considering the work as a whole, listeners who are attending

a performance of the work or simulating this experience using a recording may be better

equipped to discuss this level of meaning. Critics with access to the score may be

distracted by specific musical details. While historically ignored by critics, the meaning

of The Desert Music created in the intersection of music and text is a significant aspect of

the piece.

While listening it is easy to recognize that The Desert Music is about

something, but the exact subject is initially mysterious. Reich has chosen textual excerpts

from several different poems by Williams with varying subjects, and none of the lines

Reich has chosen specifically refers to a desert.7 The text of The Desert Music suggests

that a conversation is occurring (“Begin, my friend,” “Well, shall we / think or listen?,”

“Say to them:”) about an important problem (“The / theme is difficult / but no more

difficult / than the facts to be / resolved.”) with dire consequences (“Now that he can

realize / them, he must either change them or perish.”).8 Additionally, the text equates the

7Reich has also not chosen to set any lines from Williams’ long poem of the same title. 8Reich knew when he selected the textual excerpts for The Desert Music that Williams was

concerned about atomic warfare: “Dr. Williams was acutely aware of the bomb, and his words about it, in a poem entitled The Orchestra, struck me as to the point.” Reich, “The Desert Music – Notes by the Composer,” in Writings on Music 1965-2000, 124. However, due to the oblique nature of the textual

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difficulties of communication with the difficulties of musical composition, performance,

and interpretation (“it is a principle of music / to repeat the theme,” “it is the relation of /

of a flute note / to a drum”). The harmonic and lyrical ambiguities of the music echo the

uncertainty implied in the text. Repetition in the form of canons, ostinato harmonic

progressions, and a cyclic form, all of which are clearly audible, reinforce the theme in

the text that the problem is being continually discussed.

Reich has said that he does not compose works with references to current

events in order to change the world through music. In an essay published in the New

York Times after Reich completed The Cave (1993), a work that explores the varied

religious significances of Abraham’s cave and, by association, the contemporary conflict

in the Middle East, Reich and his collaborator Beryl Korot write:

We do not think that The Cave or any other artwork can directly affect peace in the Middle East. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica had no effect on the aerial bombing of civilians, nor did the works of Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, and many other artists stop the rise of Hitler. These works live because of their quality as works of art. Their message survives through the quality of their artistry, and some individuals who see or hear them can be changed by the experience, as if a fire in the mind of one lighted a fire in the mind of another.9

Thus, like the two tape pieces that began his search for an authentic compositional

perspective (It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out), Reich uses language and its meanings in

The Desert Music not as a cogent argument for social change but instead as a meditation

excerpts Reich selected, the message of the text could be applied to a wider range of social problems, such as globalization or environmental destruction.

9Steve Reich and Beryl Korot, “Thoughts About the Madness in Abraham’s Cave (1994),” Reprinted in Writings on Music 1965-2000, 180. Interestingly, a quote by Williams concludes the paragraph quoted above: “Williams Carlos Williams wrote in Patterson, Book V, ‘through this hole / at the bottom of the cavern / of death, the imagination / escapes intact.’ ”

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on, in Williams’ words, “the facts to be / resolved.”10 Through performance The Desert

Music becomes a metaphor for the discussion of contentious social issues, as well as the

difficulties of communicating meaning through music.

This thesis uses the subjective listening experience, made more objective through

detailed explanation of the thought processes that inspired it, as an analytical tool. As the

discussion of meaning and musical communication in Chapter 3 will suggest, a particular

determination of meaning in music is always dependent on the context in which it arises.

My goal is to discuss the meaning of The Desert Music in the context of Reich’s artistic

perspective and to advocate the value of studying the subjective listening experience in

critical discussions of musical works. We all have emotional reactions to music, and

instead of suppressing them in critical discussions as opinions too myriad and divergent

to be relevant, we should recognize that these reactions are products of shared cultural

experience and that discussing them collectively may lead to powerful revelations about

artistic meaning that may not emerge any other way.

10William Carlos Williams, “The Orchestra,” in The Desert Music and Other Poems (New York:

Random House, 1954), 63-4.

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Chapter One “Begin, my friend”

The Genesis and Composition of The Desert Music

As a composer, Steve Reich admits he walks a fine line between continuing the

traditions of Western art music and subverting the genre’s expectations: “my persistent

interest is to continue to make a literature which is basically new, and which has roots in

the radical as well as in the traditional.”11 In a conversation with journalist Mark Dery,

conducted at the time of the American premiere of The Desert Music (October 1984),

Reich remarks that while The Desert Music was well received by audiences,12 “there are

many techniques [in The Desert Music] that have been in my work since the late ’60s,” a

decade when critics considered Reich to be a member of the musical avant-garde.13

Indeed the genesis of The Desert Music can be traced through several aspects of Reich’s

early musical education and compositions: the influence of musical traditions other than

Western art music, his interest in speech and text setting, and his desire to create works

with social and cultural relevance.

11Quoted in Robert K. Schwarz, Minimalists (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1996), 92. Reich

outlines his “traditional” influences, including J.S. Bach, Josquin, and Stravinsky, in his interview with Edward Strickland. See “Steve Reich,” in American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music, 33-50.

12At the Brooklyn Academy of Music premiere, The Desert Music “played to three full houses.” See Andrew Porter, “Desert Song,” New Yorker, 19 Nov. 1984, 178. Reich’s former teacher William Austin notes that The Desert Music is the first of Reich’s works to be published in full score and released as a professional recording shortly after the world and American premieres. “Review of Score of The Desert Music,” Notes 43 (1987): 914. This recording, released on the Nonesuch label in 1985, immediately entered the US Billboard charts. Reich, “Steve Reich,” in American Originals: Interviews with 25 Contemporary Composers, ed. Geoff Smith and Nicola Walker Smith (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1994), 211.

13Reich, “As If I Were Writing Directly Before God,” interview by Mark Dery, High Performance 7, no. 4 (1984): 95.

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When Steve Reich (b. 1936) entered Cornell University at the age of 16, he felt

that he was too old to begin studies in composition, considering Mozart and Mendelssohn

had already written operas by their sixteenth birthdays. Instead, he declared a philosophy

major. Reich had studied piano and later percussion as a child growing up in New York

and Los Angeles. While he was aware of what he calls “middle-class favorites,” such as

the works of Beethoven and Schubert, it was the music of J.S. Bach, Stravinsky, and jazz

musicians such as John Coltrane that held his rapt attention.14 Fortunately, Reich

received encouragement from his music history professor, William Austin, and after

graduation from Cornell began composition studies at Juilliard and later Mills College in

San Francisco.

When Reich returned to New York in 1965, he was frustrated with what he felt

were the two schools of American composition at the time: followers of John Cage’s

aleatoric musical “happenings” and composers devoted to Arnold Schoenberg’s legacy of

serialism, such as Luciano Berio, his teacher at Mills College. Reich did not feel a close

affinity with either tradition. As discussed in the introduction, Coltrane’s radical and

spiritual improvisations fascinated Reich during his tenure at Mills College. He longed to

write music that echoed the organic humanity that Coltrane achieved in works such as

Africa/Brass (1961) and A Love Supreme (1964), rather than the cold impersonality of

serialism or the irreverence embraced by Cage and his followers.15 Luckily Reich’s

14Keith Potter, Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 154. 15Reich tells Geoff Smith and Nicola Walker: “At the time I was studying with Berio I used to

spend my evenings going to the jazz workshop and hearing John Coltrane play. … Coltrane’s model seemed very persuasive, and was nearly diametrically opposed.” With respect to Cage, Reich remarks: “A

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experimentation with tape technology and his discovery of phasing provided an

alternative musical direction. Collages of recorded speech and sounds, such as The

Plastic Haircut (1963) and Livelihood (1964), gave way to tape constructions in which

Reich created melodic and rhythmic content from slowly oscillating desynchronizations

of identical tape loops, a technique he calls “phasing.”16 His compositions It’s Gonna

Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966) prefigure The Desert Music’s moral overtones, as they

use samples of speech from a participant in the Civil Rights Movement (Come Out) and a

street preacher comparing the Flood to a nuclear holocaust (It’s Gonna Rain).17

Soon after Reich discovered the “perceptible process” of phasing in these early

tape pieces,18 he was able to envision how such a technique could be executed live using

multiples of the same acoustic instrument or with any combination of live performers and

prerecorded tapes. The results are some of Reich’s best-known compositions, including

Piano Phase/Marimba Phase (1967) and Violin Phase (1967). The composition of these

works coincides with the formation of Reich’s ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, a

group that has continued to play a primary role in the performance of Reich’s

compositions. Live performance of his works, even when aided by technology, is very

important to Reich. In fact, he initially feared the process of phasing to be merely an lot of people at Mills College in the 1960s were either interested in Boulez, Stockhausen and Berio, or very interested in John Cage. To tell you the truth, I was interested in neither.” Reich, American Originals, 214.

16Reich, “Early Works,” in Writings on Music: 1965-2000, 20. 17In fact, Reich has explicitly referred to the connection between these works and The Desert

Music: “the early tape pieces ‘It’s Gonna Rain’ and ‘Come Out’ were done knowing that I couldn’t set [William Carlos] Williams.” He continues: “And really, for a long period, up until 1984 or 85, when I actually began work on the ‘Desert Music’ [sic], I felt that that was the only way I could apply Williams’ thinking.” “Steve Reich in Conversation (Stuttgart, 26.2.1986),” interview by Henning Lohner, Interface: Journal of New Music Research 17 (1988): 115.

18Reich’s often-quoted essay “Music as a Gradual Process” (1968) serves as an early artistic statement detailing his interest in compositional techniques that create clearly audible musical transitions, what he calls “perceptible processes.” In Writings on Music, 34-6.

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electronic “gimmick” until he discovered it was possible to apply the technique to

acoustic instruments.19 Reich continued to compose works based on the process of

phasing in the 1960s and early 1970s for a variety of instruments, including the

saxophone (Reed Phase [1966]) and electric organ (Four Organs [1971]).

Reich describes the method of performing his early works as “a very interesting

way of performing because it wasn’t improvising and yet it wasn’t really reading

either.”20 This statement also could be applied to the musical traditions Reich has studied

and admired that employ a ritualistic, communal performance practice that is quite

different from the Western model. Reich studied West African drumming in Ghana in

1970 and explored Balinese gamelan ensemble performance in 1973 and 1974 at the

University of Washington at Seattle and the Center for World Music in Berkley,

respectively. Reich biographer K. Robert Schwarz describes the connections Reich

confirmed between his personal musical style and West African drumming during his

study in Ghana:

What Reich discovered was that the structure of West African music was not that different from his own. His music, too, was polyrhythmic, for the phasing process results in the layering of rhythmic patterns with different downbeats. His music, too, focused on rhythm rather than on melody or harmony. His music, too, used unrelenting repetition as a structural device. His music, too, favoured a percussive severity of timbre. And his music, too, was a ritualistic activity that subjugated personal expression to communal process.21

In West African drumming the line between group musical activity and performance is

blurred. The musical performance typically extends beyond the musicians in the

19Reich, “Steve Reich,” interview by William Duckworth, in Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers (New York: Schirmer Books, 1995), 298.

20Ibid. 21Schwarz, Minimalists, 72.

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ensemble, as listeners often participate through movement or spontaneous vocal and

rhythmic accompaniment. Audience participation, however, is unusual in performances

of Western art music, and thus the requirement of audience participation in the communal

musical process in Reich’s works is met through careful listening and interpretation, as is

true with most Western art music. Reich’s style has extended beyond the explicit

connections described above since 1970 (melody and harmony have become increasingly

important), but the rhythmic core of his music, evoking a visceral communication

between performer and audience, remains.

This connection partly explains how The Desert Music, as well as Reich’s other

compositions, involves the listener and why the listener’s perspective is important to

discussion of Reich’s works. As stated above, listening is the audience’s method of

participation in the musical performance in the Western model. Reich’s musical style can

be described as primarily listener oriented because he composes in a way that encourages

listeners to follow a developing musical process (discussed below), while being aware of

a steady rhythmic foundation. Through the compositional techniques that have defined

his style as “minimalist”22 (a single tempo, repetition of limited musical material, slow or

static harmonic movement, and consistency of timbre), Reich creates an underlying

musical fabric listeners may use as a contrasting reference point for new musical events.

22The English composer and critic Michael Nyman coined the term “minimalism” in 1971 to

describe the musical style of Reich, as well as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass, in his book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. While Reich understands the term as a means of categorization, he does not accept it as a description of his work, especially for his works post-1973. He explains, “My job is composing the next piece and not putting myself in some kind of theoretical box.” Reich, Talking Music, 293.

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Making the development and premise of his compositions “perceptible” has been

Reich’s intention since he began working with the single sound fragment of It’s Gonna

Rain. In 1968 Reich wrote in an artistic statement entitled “Music as a Gradual Process,”

which was first presented in conjunction with an exhibition at the Whitney Museum:

I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music. To facilitate closely detailed listening a musical process should happen extremely gradually.23

Here Reich identifies close listening as the primary goal of his work as a composer and

therefore the most important occupation his audience can engage in while attending a

performance of his compositions. He also rejects “the use of hidden structural devices in

music,” i.e., inaudible compositional tools such as twelve-tone rows.24 Distinguishing his

work from serial and chance methods of composition, Reich shifts his artistic focus from

the past tense of composition to the present tense of musical performance.

The austerity of Reich’s minimal style does not necessarily indicate that his

compositions are one-dimensional. On the contrary, there is still the possibility of a

personalized listening experience. In “Music as a Gradual Process” Reich explains:

Even when all the cards are on the table and everyone hears what is gradually happening in a musical process, there are still enough mysteries to satisfy us all. These mysteries are the impersonal, unintended, psychoacoustic by-products of the intended process. These might include submelodies heard within repeated melodic patterns, stereophonic effects due to listener location, slight irregularities in performance, difference tones, and so on.25

23Reich, Writings on Music, 34. 24Ibid., 35. 25Ibid.

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Reich thus rejects the idea of a musical work as a static artifact that, once composed,

never deviates from a single authoritative form. Instead the musical work is a “process”

that can vary based on the conditions of the performance and the perspective of the

listener, much like a kinetic sculpture that changes with the conditions of its environment

and the position of the observer.

But while the listening experience may be personalized, Reich discourages

personal expression by performers in favor of a type of playing that mirrors the collective

experience of the non-Western performance traditions that interested him. This style

encourages performers to listen closely to the development of the piece instead of

focusing on interpretation. Thus Reich developed a method of composition that was

“completely worked out beforehand and yet which did not require … any … performer to

read the score while playing, thus allowing one to become totally involved with listening

while one played.”26 Reich refers to this experience in “Music as a Gradual Process” as

“a particular liberating and impersonal kind of ritual … [that] makes possible the shift of

attention away from he and she and you and me outward toward it.”27 This Zen-like

concentration while listening not only allows performer and audience to be acutely aware

of the musical moment, it frees the listener to contemplate the social concerns Reich

would later incorporate into his compositions.

Reich considers the pieces he composed prior to his trip to Ghana to be “études in

the best sense of the word” as each is a “mechanical, single-minded investigation of one

26Quoted in Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2d ed. (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1999), 153. 27Reich, Writings on Music, 36.

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technique.”28 He returned from Ghana in 1970 with the confidence to expand upon these

foundations and compose works of greater complexity that are still informed by the

process of phasing. Drumming (1971), the first example of these works, is a sectional

piece for a wide variety of percussion instruments that explores rhythmic patterns similar

to those resulting from the phasing process. Without the structure of phasing, Reich had

to rely on his own musical judgment to make compositional decisions. With the help of

his ensemble, in the 1970s (from Drumming to Music for 18 Musicians) Reich listened to

his works as he composed them in order to determine the orchestration and to consider

the “conceptual questions” presented by each piece.29 Listening and intuition are an

important part of his compositional process. Reich has said: “I don’t have any theory that

will override my ear in a particular case. The final arbiter to me is what sounds right;

what makes good musical sense in my ear and in the ears of others.”30 As Reich explored

this new way of composing, he expanded the length, instrumentation, and timbral variety

of each successive composition.

Listening to Drumming during rehearsals suggested an addition in orchestration to

Reich that would allow him to incorporate an instrument that captivated him in It’s

Gonna Rain and Come Out. He added the human voice to Drumming; Music for Mallet

Instruments, Voices, and Organ (1973); Music for 18 Musicians; and Music for a Large

Ensemble (1978). Each includes parts for female voices doubling instrumental lines

using wordless syllables, or “vocalise.” Reich notes that in these works “the singers

28Reich, Talking Music, 303. 29Ibid., 306. 30Reich, “Steve Reich,” interview by Cole Gagne and Tracy Caras (April 13, 1980), in

Soundpieces: Interviews with American Composers, with an introduction and essays by Nicolas Slonimsky and Gilbert Chase (Metuchen, N.J. and London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1982), 307.

23

become another ‘instrumental’ sound in the ensemble,” thus achieving the unity of timbre

that he desired in a traditional text setting.31 Indeed, the presence of vocal lines in these

pieces foreshadows Reich’s first text-setting, Tehillim (1981), a setting of four Psalms in

Hebrew composed after Reich’s intensive study of Hebrew cantillation in the late 1970s.

As discussed below, Reich’s interest in text-settings predates his early tape pieces, but he

found that his early attempts sacrificed too much of the natural rhythms of speech. Only

after solidifying his own musical style, incorporating elements of all the musical

traditions he explored along the way, did Reich discover the compositional tools needed

to realize the unity of music and text he had initially envisioned.

Since the 1980s, and the composition of Tehillim and The Desert Music, speech

and text have figured prominently into Reich’s compositions. Different Trains (1988)

uses tape recordings of Reich’s childhood governess, a retired Pullman porter, and three

Holocaust survivors to connect Reich’s personal experience of traveling by train between

his divorced parents in New York and Los Angeles during World War II to the

experience of Jews in Europe traveling by train to Nazi concentration camps. The

musical material for the string quartet that accompanies the tape recorded speech is

derived from what Reich calls the speech melody of the spoken dialogue, that is, the

natural melodic content suggested by spoken phrases. Reich also used this compositional

technique in The Cave (1993). Combining live music; settings of biblical texts; and

video interviews of Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans; The Cave is a unique musical

31Reich, “Music and Language,” based on an interview by Barbara Basting, in Writings on Music,

198. This style of singing is also found in The Desert Music, and, in fact, the tension between wordless syllables and the complete words of the text underscores the theme of the difficulties of communication in that work.

24

theater experience that explores the roots of religious conflict in the Middle East.

Different Trains and The Cave both realize the documentary and musical implications of

recorded speech first suggested by It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out. 32

These two important works not only reflect Reich’s early desire to incorporate

text and speech into his compositions, they also foreshadow the socially conscious

subject matter of Reich’s compositions with text. Three Tales (2001), like Different

Trains and The Cave, comments on an ethical situation and focuses on creating

awareness rather than delivering a message. Reich imparts this position in his carefully

worded description of this three-part music and video documentary performance piece

(another collaboration with Beryl Korot). Instead of warning the audience about the

potentially disastrous consequences of technology, Reich writes that the work “reflects on

the growth and implications of technology during the twentieth century,” posing

questions rather than providing answers.33 The three sections, or “tales,” Hindenberg,

Bikini, and Dolly, chronologically discuss the development of war technology, atomic

testing, and animal cloning using documentary interviews and sung texts derived from

historical documents. Reich also writes that the arch structure of the middle section

creates “a kind of cyclical meditation on the documentary events,” thus further framing

32Other recent compositions with text or tape include Proverb (1995), Know what is above you (1999), Three Tales (2001), You Are (Variations) (2004), and Daniel Variations (2006). Proverb is a setting of a single sentence by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (“How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!”) for three sopranos and two tenors, accompanied by two vibraphones and two electric organs. Wittgenstein was the subject of Reich’s senior thesis at Cornell. Reich was interested in Wittgenstein’s “idea that philosophical problems could be understood by looking at how we normally use language.” Reich, “Proverb (1995),” in Writings on Music, 193. It seems Reich’s affinity with Wittgenstein has continued throughout his career as he has attempted to address philosophical questions while simultaneously exploring the musical implications of unconscious speech melody. The texts of Know what is above you and You Are (Variations) consist of similarly philosophical aphorisms in Hebrew and English. Three Tales and Daniel Variations are discussed below.

33Reich, “Three Tales (1998-2002),” in Writings on Music, 204.

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his artistic position.34 More recently, Daniel Variations (2006) memorializes Daniel

Pearl, an American journalist murdered by Islamic militants in Pakistan, using texts from

Pearl’s own writings as well as quotations from the Book of Daniel.

Thus The Desert Music is an early example of a type of composition that has

occupied Reich in more recent decades as it incorporates both text and socially conscious

subject matter. While the impetus for composition was a commission for an evening-

length choral work from the West German Radio, Cologne, the subject and text were of

Reich’s own choosing. Reich first set out to compose a work that addressed the subject

of atomic warfare from a documentary perspective. He considered using a recording of

President Truman’s speech after the dropping of the atomic bomb in WWII or a recording

of Adolf Hitler. But after reading “The Orchestra” by William Carlos Williams, Reich

realized he could address this subject more obliquely by setting excerpts of this and two

other poems by Williams.35 The poetic selections he chose were those that moved him

personally.36 Reich had for a long time been interested in Dr. Williams (1883-1963), a

poet who abandoned traditional poetic meters in order to more accurately represent the

rhythms of natural American speech:37

My interest in using spoken language as a basis for music began as the indirect result of reading the poetry of William Carlos Williams in the 1950s. I tried to set his poetry to music and found I only “froze” its flexible American speech-derived

34Ibid. 35Reich, American Composers, 47-8. 36Reich tells Edward Strickland that “the criterion … for selecting the fragments was ‘Can I say

this wholeheartedly? Whenever I feel myself drifting off, I’m just going to drop it.’ ” Ibid., 48. 37Reich reveals the origins of his interest in Williams in his notes on The Desert Music: “I have

loved Dr. Williams’s poetry since I was 16 years old, and I picked up a copy of his long poem, Paterson, just because I was fascinated by the symmetry of his name.” Reich, “The Desert Music – Notes by the Composer,” in Writings on Music, 124. The arch form of The Desert Music is another example of Reich’s interest in symmetry.

26

rhythms. Later, in the early 1960s, it occurred to me that using actual tape recordings of Americans speaking might serve as a basis for a musical piece that would utilize the same sources as Williams’s poetry.38

These pieces based on tape recordings led to Reich’s interest in phasing and thus all of

the instrumental compositions of his career prior to The Desert Music. The Desert Music

is therefore an important milestone in Reich’s career, as he was finally able to compose a

work he visualized as a very young composer, one that was motivated by a personal

emotional reaction to art.

The solution to what Reich viewed as rigidly unnatural text setting was constant

meter change.39 This technique allowed him to shift between rhythmic groupings of twos

and threes as dictated by the text.40 In many ways, the music of The Desert Music grew

out of the text. Reich selected and arranged the poetic excerpts before he composed any

music, and that arrangement determined the overall musical form of the work: ABCBA,

with the third “C” movement also divided into three distinct sections, the first and third

sharing the same text. Similarly, the two “B” movements share the same text; only the

bookend “A” movements deviate from this trend. The “A” and “B” movements are also

unified through tempo, musical material, and a common harmonic cycle, as are the first

and third sections of movement “C.” One musical element common to all movements is

a percussive pulse. While the pulse may serve different musical and metaphorical

38Reich, “Music and Language,” Writings on Music, 198. 39Ibid. 40While Reich first used constant meter change to set the Hebrew of the psalms in Tehillim, he

borrowed the idea of metrical ambiguity from African music for earlier compositions. Reich first saw transcriptions of African music in 12/8 in the early 1960s in A.M. Jones’ book Studies in African Music. Reich, Talking Music, 294. This meter, which he used in both Drumming and Music for 18 Musicians, can be divided into groups of 3 or 4, allowing for the juxtaposition of rhythmic patterns of either grouping. The Desert Music, while a new compositional direction for Reich, uses many of the compositional trademarks found in these earlier compositions.

27

functions in each of the movements, the pulse is a distinct compositional trademark

connecting this work to many of Reich’s earlier compositions.

The poetic lines in all of the movements except the outer two are taken from “The

Orchestra,” a poem in which music, as both a destructive and unifying force, is the

central metaphor. Appropriately, The Desert Music was originally scored for a full

orchestra, including two pianos and seven types of percussion instruments comprising 89

members in all. A chorus of 27, with three voices on each part, completes the

ensemble.41 The scope of these performing forces prompted critic Mark Dery to remark

at the time of the premiere: “The Desert Music should put coffin nails in any further

quibblings about whether or not Reich’s work has escaped the ‘minimal’ pigeonhole.”42

But to be solely a minimalist was never Reich’s intention, as the so-called “minimalist”

approach resulted from Reich following his own intuition as a composer. He tells

Henning Lohner: “I write for myself, hoping that if it interests me it will interest you.”43

As this study aims to illustrate, The Desert Music is both a personal work and one

that achieves a sense of universality. Reich uses his own artistic influences and musical

style to address a common social problem, bringing in the outside world through the text.

Reich does not neglect his personal compositional goals, and he still invites varied

individual responses to the work by rejecting a definitive narrative. It is appropriate then

that The Desert Music should be the subject of a study about integrating the personal

listening experience into a critical discussion of meaning. In The Desert Music Reich

41Reich arranged a more modest chamber version for 10 voices and 20 instruments in 1986. 42Reich, “As if I Were Writing Directly Before God,” 53. 43Reich, “Steve Reich in Conversation with Henning Lohner,” 119.

28

employs an ensemble of unprecedented diversity to integrate his own personal

compositional goals with an invitation to experience community. By choosing to open

the work with the words “Begin, my friend,” Reich initiates a conversation between the

listener and himself.

29

Chapter Two “Well, shall we / think or listen?”

Selected Literature Review

There is a marked absence of published critical studies on The Desert Music given

the work’s length and complexity and Reich’s current popularity.44 Excluding more

general descriptions of the work in books on the composer, those reviewed here (three

excerpts from two books and a dissertation, one “detailed analysis” in a dissertation, and

one article from a journal devoted to interdisciplinary studies) are the most

comprehensive extant studies. The lack of critical discussion of the work may of course

be attributable to its relatively recent composition and also, due to the large ensemble

required for performance, to its relatively infrequent performance.45 Yet it may also be

possible that the work’s popularity has been affected by the lack of critical attention. The

studies discussed here reveal how varying approaches to The Desert Music result in

different assessments of what is important about the piece and also how much of the

work has yet to be adequately explored in music criticism.

Two short articles published over ten years ago briefly consider the relationship

between the text and Reich’s musical setting. Composer and critic Joseph Coroniti

devotes a chapter to The Desert Music in his 1992 book Poetry as Text in Twentieth-

Century Vocal Music: From Stravinsky to Reich. The chapter, entitled “Scoring the

‘Absolute Rhythm’ of William Carlos Williams: Steve Reich’s The Desert Music,” aims

442006, the year of Reich’s 70th birthday, saw tribute concerts in several countries and coverage of

these events in major media outlets, including the New Yorker and National Public Radio. 45Reich’s professional website (www.stevereich.com) lists five performances of versions of The

Desert Music in 2006-7. By comparison, there are 34 listed previous and upcoming performances of Music for 18 Musicians during these two years and 67 performances of all or Parts One or Two of Drumming.

30

to support Coroniti’s assertion that the composer “realizes in his score the primacy of

what Ezra Pound calls the poem’s ‘absolute rhythm’ ” in his settings of poetic excerpts

by Williams.46 Absolute rhythm, a rather abstract poetic theory also recognized by T.S.

Elliot, is related to the musical rhythm of a line or passage of poetry. This characteristic

can be differentiated from poetic meter in that it contributes another dimension of

meaning to the words of the poem, communicated through the musical rhythm of the

words as they are spoken, beyond their linguistic meaning. According to the T.S. Elliot

quotation provided by Coroniti, absolute rhythm can be perceived by the poet prior to the

composition of the poem and in this way will “bring to birth” the poetic image.47

Coroniti praises Reich’s attention to absolute rhythm because this poetic

characteristic “offers the composer a way of communicating poetic meaning without

resorting to excessive imitation” of “external, or illustrative,” poetic references, such as a

musical representation of gunfire in a setting of a poem about war.48 Instead Reich is free

to realize more subtle internal correspondences that serve the composer’s own expressive

goals. Coroniti argues, for example, that in Movements II and IV Reich uses the vocalise

syllable “De” to musically represent both the absolute rhythm and the image of the poetic

lines that precedes these vocalise passages: “The mind / is listening.” Reich “skillfully

expresses an abstract poetic idea that is beyond conventional imitation”49 and thus is able

46Joseph Coroniti, “Scoring the ‘Absolute Rhythm’ of William Carlos Williams: Steve Reich’s

The Desert Music,” in Poetry as Text in Twentieth-Century Vocal Music: From Stravinsky to Reich. Studies in the History and Interpretation of Music, no. 35 (Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 19.

47Ibid. 48Ibid., 19-20. 49Ibid., 29.

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to “penetrate the ‘inmost heart’ of the poem.”50 Because, Coroniti argues, Reich is

motivated by his personal “conceptual” response to William’s poems, he creates “an

innovative and meaningful” composition instead of a musical setting that is “trying to

become the poem.”51 While Coroniti accomplishes his clearly stated goal of

demonstrating the subtlety and perceptiveness of Reich’s setting, he does not discuss

what The Desert Music means as a separate artistic work. But by recognizing that The

Desert Music communicates ideas beyond Reich’s minimalist compositional techniques

and acknowledging that “music with a text cannot be absolute,” he provides a foundation

upon which future critics may assess the work’s significance.52

Both Coroniti and Kathy Rugoff (in her 1992 article “Readings of William Carlos

Williams by Contemporary American Composers” published in the Yearbook of

Interdisciplinary Studies in the Fine Arts) consider the work of Lawrence Kramer in their

respective articles on The Desert Music. Kramer’s 1984 book Music and Poetry: The

Nineteenth Century and After examines the correspondences between music and poetry in

settings composed during this time period and observes, “this relationship, far from being

harmonious, is instead antagonistic.”53 While Coroniti offers The Desert Music as an

example of this type of deconstructive setting noted by Kramer, Rugoff instead argues

that in The Desert Music “the contrast between music and words and their particular

mingling in a musical setting creates a third text” in which the meaning of music and text

50Ibid., 27. 51Ibid., 20-1. 52Ibid., 25. 53Kathy Rugoff, “Readings of William Carlos Williams by Contemporary Composers,” Yearbook

of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Fine Arts 3 (1992): 36.

32

cannot be considered separately.54 This in particular is an important point for The Desert

Music, where the composer has chosen specific excerpts of poems and arranged them to

suit his own program, thus distancing the poetic excerpts from their associated meanings

in the original poems.

Unfortunately Rugoff’s subsequent analysis fails to present a cohesive reading of

this “third text.” As the analysis proceeds, Rugoff abandons the idea of a “third text” and

instead describes how Reich musically adapts the themes of Williams’ poetry. She

argues that The Desert Music “joins the impulses towards life and death”55 in the same

way that the metaphor of music in “The Orchestra” is “associated with the human drive

toward life and death.”56 In addition, her descriptions of musical events are brief and,

from the perspective of a music critic, somewhat vague.57 Despite a lack of precise

supporting evidence, Rugoff makes some pertinent observations that could guide further

studies of The Desert Music. She recognizes that The Desert Music “marks an important

step in the course of Reich’s career” as it “extends some of the melodic and rhythmic

motifs” of Tehillim and “anticipates the referentiality and the message” of Different

Trains.58 Rugoff also comments on the artistic relationship between Williams and Reich

54Ibid., 38. 55Ibid., 46. 56Ibid., 44. 57For example, Rugoff writes, “…light pizzicati sounds in the percussion section are voiced in

each movement and open and close the piece.” Ibid., 45. A music critic would not find this statement to be an appropriate characterization of the work’s ubiquitous percussive pulse because it does not extend beyond surface description and because the term “pizzicati” usually applies only to string instruments. While statements such as the one quoted above may be distracting for specific audiences, it should be noted that Rugoff’s conclusions about The Desert Music are quite perceptive. Furthermore, this issue is a reminder of the difficulty all writers encounter when attempting prose descriptions of music.

58Ibid., 43.

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observing, “it is the poet’s compassion that has engaged the musician.”59 Thus the “third

text” created in the intersection between music and text is a fruitful area for further

analysis.

Mark Stephen Bennett’s “detailed analysis” of The Desert Music, completed as a

D.M.A. document in 1993, presents an admirably thorough exploration of the harmonic

underpinnings of the work but devotes little space to the complicated relationship

between music and text. Instead Bennett seems content with perhaps the most basic

reading of the work as a message that “implies the ever-impending ‘desert’ of a nuclear

holocaust should man not heed the warnings of both the composer and the poet.”60

Bennett argues that this meaning is implied “both musically and textually,” yet his

analysis is consumed by the discovery of a mathematical formula in which the numbers

4-6-12 “and other factors of the number twelve, arranged in combinations of additive,

subtractive, and multiplicative sets, constitute a rational, pristine perfection at the

foundation of The Desert Music.”61 It is not clear how Bennett aims to reconcile the

disconnection between this foundation of perfection with what he recognizes to be the

work’s apocalyptic message.62

59Ibid. 60Mark Stephen Bennett, “A Brief History of Minimalism: Its Aesthetic Concepts and Origins and

a Detailed Analysis of Steve Reich's The Desert Music” (D.M.A. doc., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993), 45.

61Ibid., iv. 62It may be possible that Bennett does not see a need to consider the music and text on equal terms

because he does not entirely approve of Reich’s part-writing technique. For example, he believes that “structural considerations take precedence over textual” at certain points, “diminishing the value of the individual line and its meaning.” Ibid., 44. While Bennett concludes that this phenomenon is “indicative of the composer’s instrumental background … and likewise … of his occasionally awkward handling of voice and lyric” (Ibid.), Reich explains in his program note that The Desert Music intentionally “addresses that basic ambiguity between what the text says, and its pure sensuous sound.” Reich, Writings on Music, 124.

34

There is no doubt that the formula exists; Bennett provides impressively detailed

systematic evidence of its existence. However, it is possible that the formula is an

unintentional by-product of other intentional compositional decisions, such as the

metrical ambiguity of the 12/8 time signature (often notated as 6/4 or 3/2), which can be

divided into groups of three or four, or the alternating groups of two and three employed

by Reich in order to achieve a more natural text-setting. Since Reich rejects “[t]he use of

hidden structural devices in music” and values the contribution of his intuition to the

compositional process, it seems appropriate to question whether the mathematical

formula is the most significant aspect of the work.63 Indeed Bennett recognizes that “The

Desert Music is worthy of critical examination and this analysis can only begin to reveal

the full depth of a truly remarkable accomplishment.”64 This thesis is inspired by his

thorough approach to the work and aims to produce a similarly methodical consideration

of both music and text, albeit from a less scientific perspective.

The contradiction in Bennett’s analysis (mentioned above) is an example of what

may happen when the critic excludes from analysis his intuitive emotional response to the

music. Robert Wallace Fink recognizes that this problem plagues musical analysis in his

1994 dissertation entitled “ ‘Arrows of Desire’: Long-Range Linear Structure and the

Transformation of Musical Energy.” Referring to the reductive “transcendental

organicism” of theorist Heinrich Schenker, Fink advocates a focus on listener response:

63Reich, “Music as a Gradual Process,” Writings on Music, 34. In the preface to the 1974 edition

of his Writings on Music, Reich writes, “The truth is, musical intuition is at the rock bottom level of everything I’ve ever done,” (Ibid., x.) a statement that he reaffirms in the preface to the 2000 edition. Ibid., vii.

64Bennett, “A Brief History of Minimalism,” 139.

35

It may make intuitive sense to claim that music’s putative organic perfection can exist objectively, without reference to any actual listener (the Urlinie is there, heard or not). But it feels to me certain that what music does —the energy it controls — has to be tied up with its effect on the listening subject. Before we can analyze how musical mechanisms work, we must take a clear-eyed look at how music works on us.65

Like this thesis, Fink proposes a new approach to analysis in an attempt to qualitatively

describe the visceral effect of musical compositions. His method tracks the development,

transformation, and final release of musical energy. Those readers familiar with The

Desert Music may immediately recognize why Fink chose to include the work in his

study, as the constant motion that pervades each movement seems at its heart to be a

musical representation of physical energy.

What Fink’s analysis reveals about The Desert Music is that two compositional

“building blocks” (what he calls terraced ostinatos and blocks and levers) are actively

involved in both pushing forward and delaying “a large-scale linear ascent” that can be

traced through non-functional harmonic motion of the soprano line.66 This linear motion

pervades both short-term “blocks” of musical material and as well as the entire work.67

Through this analysis, Fink indeed is able to describe “how music works on us” by

confirming a clearly audible phenomenon in concrete theoretical analysis.68 Still Fink’s

65Robert Wallace Fink, “ ‘Arrows of Desire’: Long-Range Linear Structure and the

Transformation of Musical Energy” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1994), 17. 66Ibid., 271-2. 67Fink remarks: “the linear/harmonic mechanism seems to be constructed on … [a] global scale.”

Ibid., 276. 68I often noted in my listening analysis moments in which the “build” to a musical climax was

abruptly abandoned so that the process could begin again (for example see the entry in the “Effect” column at 3:15 in Table 3.1). Fink explains how this perception is achieved musically by tracing the notes of the soprano line throughout Movement III. Ibid., 272.

36

excellent work has only begun to explain how The Desert Music affects the listener.

What remains to be considered is both the music and the message.

Observations made by musicologist Denise Von Glahn confirm my evaluation

that The Desert Music has been underserved by purely theoretical methods of analysis:

Assessments of Reich’s music that focus exclusively upon its systemization, method, precision, and formal balance tell only part of the story. Perhaps more affecting and enduring is the deeply human quality that inspires and permeates many of Reich’s works. If his music endures, this is why.69

In The Desert Music, Von Glahn locates this humanity in Reich’s engagement with the

text. When setting the poetic excerpts, Reich “infused his music with William’s [sic]

moral urgency.”70 However, Von Glahn recognizes that the work’s relationship to

Williams’ concerns about atomic warfare is more nuanced than a warning to humanity.

She notes that “nowhere in ‘The Orchestra’ does Williams directly mention the bomb,”

and accordingly Reich’s setting musically highlights “the ambiguity of what is stated and

what is implied.”71 Von Glahn uncovers these elements of the work because of her

approach. The “place” in the work, the desert metaphor, provides an explanation for the

apparent contradiction between the music and the text left unexplained by Bennett’s

analysis:

Perhaps the greatest ambiguity of the piece goes beyond chameleon-like meters and harmonies … and relates to Reich’s larger experience at White Sands Desert.

69Denise Von Glahn, The Sounds of Place: Music and the American Cultural Landscape

(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003), 252. Von Glahn’s work explores musical representations of places on the premise that “places can inspire art, and that musical response can, at some level, evoke those places.” Ibid., 2. She examines The Desert Music, along with three of Reich’s other compositions, in a chapter entitled “A Sounding Place: America Redefined.”

70Ibid., 257. 71Ibid., 258-9. Musical examples of this ambiguity include flexible meters and the indefinite

nature of the work’s “cadential activity.”

37

Like the pure and beautiful landscape that hid nuclear missile silos, Reich’s rich, luminous, shimmering sound mass appears to be at odds with the ominous text.72

In the end, Von Glahn believes Reich also includes a message of hope. While the arch

form suggests the questions addressed in The Desert Music “won’t go away,” the work’s

“final transcendent sounds” indicate “that light can overtake darkness.”73

My listening analysis that follows, conducted before I read Von Glahn’s work on

The Desert Music, highlights many of the aspects that appear in Von Glahn’s discussion

of the work. Specifically my analysis also discusses how ambiguity pervades both music

and text.74 While Von Glahn examines how The Desert Music recalls a sense of “place,”

my study aims to present an assessment of The Desert Music’s meaning based on the

systematic documentation of my listening experience. The fact that Von Glahn and I

have similar ideas is not in my mind problematic; instead it demonstrates the viability of

the subjective listening analysis as a tool for music criticism. As the discussion of

musical communication that follows will demonstrate, all assessments of meaning are

subjective, but two different listeners may hear a work similarly because of common

cultural experiences.75 My approach to The Desert Music allows me to consider the work

differently than any of the studies reviewed here because I have systematically

documented my experience of both music and text.

72Ibid., 260-1. According to Von Glahn, Reich “lived for a time” in the vicinity of the White

Sands Desert missile testing facility. Ibid., 12. 73Ibid., 262-3. 74See “Locating the Desert” in Chapter 3 of this work. 75For example, Von Glahn also notes how The Desert Music references time in Movement III very

similarly to my own analysis. I write on page 54 of this document “the alternating fifths in the xylophone that open Movements IIIA and C reminded me of a ticking clock,” while Von Glahn remarks “a xylophone struck with hard rubber mallets ‘ticks’ time on a metaphorical Doomsday clock.” The Sounds of Place, 262.

38

Chapter Three “The / theme is difficult / but no more difficult / than the facts to be / resolved.”

I. Musical Meaning: Definition and Theory My claim is that the significance of The Desert Music is better understood from a

listening-based analysis, as opposed to a theoretical, score-based analysis. As evidence, I

offer my personal analysis of the work in listening tables (see the Appendix),

accompanied by a prose summary of patterns that I observed from these tables (in section

three of this chapter). However, it is necessary to preface the listening analysis with a

brief discussion of a theory of musical meaning (relevant to this work) in order to explain

how perceptions of musical meaning can vary based on the perspective of the approach.

My work shares with new ethnography studies a focused self-consciousness, with the

hope that such a self-study might help reveal aspects of commonly experienced nonverbal

processes. This study is aimed towards addressing one of the troubling results of

traditional musicological discourse, in which Western art music is “defined by the

passive and increasingly private consumption of commodified products rather than

through the active, social processes of participatory performance.”76 I aim to invite

critical discussion of The Desert Music’s meaning by presenting my observations in this

work.

Firstly, my study proceeds from the perspective that meaning is not an inherent

property of any piece of music, nor any physical object, concept, emotion, event, or

situation. Rather, meaning is a concept assigned to such entities based on contextual

76Nicholas Cook, “Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance,” Music Theory

Online 7, no. 2 (April 2001): par 6.

39

relationships to other physical or intangible objects and ideas, as determined individually

or collectively by the observer or observers. Ethnomusicologist Travis Jackson, in an

article on determining meaning in rock music, defines meaning as “something that

humans individually and collectively create as they navigate the shifting terrain in which

sounds, symbols and concepts are embedded.”77 Additionally Jackson argues that

meanings are not automatic assessments but rather that meanings “emerge from processes

of interpretation, from the often unconscious ways in which we relate individual terms or

elements to larger patterns and structures.”78 To follow the line of reasoning proposed by

Jackson, musicologists, by writing about music and publishing their critiques, are thus

involved in collectively determining the meaning of a musical work, even if they do not

explicitly acknowledge this fact. These meanings are related to, by comparison or

contrast, existing musical works or established concepts (musical or otherwise). Theorist

Leonard B. Meyer, quoting Morris R. Cohen, explains in his seminal book Emotion and

Meaning in Music that “anything acquires meaning if it is connected with, or indicates, or

refers to, something beyond itself, so that its full nature points to and is revealed in that

connection.”79 The acknowledgement of these external references, whether or not they

are specifically intended by the composer, is thus entirely dependent on the listener’s

perception of these relationships (a point that will be discussed later).

The definition of musical meaning as a contextual assessment of relationships to

external references suggests that ideas and concepts are communicated through the

77Travis Jackson, “Spooning Good Singing Gum: Meaning, Association, and Interpretation in Rock Music,” Current Musicology 69 (2000): 9.

78Ibid., 10. 79Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1956), 34.

40

sounds of a musical work, prompting further consideration of how music communicates

concepts. While a full review of the literature regarding musical communication is

beyond the scope of this thesis, discussion of a few points related to this topic will help

contextualize the listening analysis that follows. I find most useful the views of Meyer.

His understanding of musical meaning is derived from the psychological theory of

emotions, namely that “emotion or affect is aroused when a tendency to respond is

arrested or inhibited.”80 Meyer contends that the main method of human communication

is dependent upon learned emotional behavior.81 In music, this learned behavior

corresponds to expectations formed from “the general system of beliefs relevant to the

style of the work.”82 These systems can be learned from prior musical experience or

suggested by the work itself. When expectations about the resolution of musical events

are unfulfilled, the listener’s response becomes self-conscious, and this awareness

prompts an emotional reaction.83 It is this cognitive process that creates what Meyer

terms “embodied musical meaning”:84

One musical event (be it a tone, a phrase, or a whole section) has meaning because it points to and makes us expect another musical event. … Embodied musical meaning is, in short, a product of expectation. If, on the basis of past experience, a present stimulus leads us to expect a more or less definite consequent musical event, then that stimulus has meaning.85

80Ibid., 14. 81Ibid., 17. 82Ibid., 29. 83Ibid., 24. 84Meyer also describes a category for metaphoric or symbolic references in music. These

“designative” meanings are perceived when “a stimulus … indicate[s] events or consequences which are different from itself in kind, as when a word designates or points to an object or action which is not itself a word.” Ibid., 35.

85Ibid.

41

Reactions to musical stimuli continue to take place in the mind of the listener as the piece

proceeds. As expected outcomes of musical events (“hypothetical” meanings) are

confirmed or denied (resulting in “evident” meanings), the listener must continually

reassess the relationships of these meanings on “several architectonic levels.”86 This

experience culminates in the “determinate” meaning of a musical work, which is the

understanding of the “work as a total experience … when all the meanings which the

stimulus has had in the particular experience are realized and their relationships to one

another comprehended as fully as possible.”87

Thus the individual listener and his or her private mental activities are the first

stages in the process of creating musical meaning, a process that later continues in the

realm of public critical discourse. Additionally, Meyer does not discriminate between

intellectual and affective responses to musical stimuli; both make valid contributions

towards determining the designative meanings of a musical work. He argues, “thinking

and feeling need not be viewed as polar opposites but as different manifestations of a

single psychological process.”88 Thus the determination of “whether a piece of music

gives rise to affective experience or to intellectual experience depends upon the

disposition and training of the listener.”89

Meyer’s theory of how music “means” lends support for the inclusion of

listening-based analyses in critical discussions of musical works. Meyer asserts that

while observed meanings are individualized, “the relationship itself is not to be located in

86Ibid., 37-8. 87Ibid. 88Ibid., 39. 89Ibid., 40.

42

the mind of the perceiver.”90 Rather, these seemingly subjective perceptions are derived

from “real connections existing objectively in culture.”91 Recognizing the common

origin of all determinations of musical meaning, whether stated by novice or highly-

educated listeners, compels one to consider how all opinions may offer valuable

contributions to critical discussions.

Since musical meanings can be objective, as Meyer argues, many theorists have

considered if music is in fact a language and whether music communicates specific ideas

in the same way. Jos Kessels allows that these attempts at semiotic analysis are not

entirely misguided:

Music has some properties that make it particularly akin to the forms of concept-processing in language: music, too, is bound to the limits of time-sequence, and music, too, consists of a limited set of easily manageable elements, perfectly suitable for the building of complex structures and, so, for the construction of meaning.92

In fact Kessels concludes that comparisons with language may indeed offer some insight

into the question of how music creates meaning. However, the problem with direct

comparisons to language is the difficulty of “fixing the precise reference to musical

terms,” as the same terms often belong to several musical vocabularies but may connote

different meanings within these different lexicons.93 In addition, there appears to be a

greater complexity to musical communication; in music’s “double syntax,” adjectives

90Ibid., 34. 91Ibid. 92Kessels, “Is Music a Language of Emotions?” Music Review 47 (1986-7): 206. 93Ibid., 214.

43

“may be ‘pronounced’ or expressed at the very same moment, together with the subject”

thus increasing the expressive structuring potential of music.94

For other theorists these qualities of ambiguity and complexity are not a

communicative disadvantage but, rather, are assets. Ian Cross accepts that musical

meaning is “inherently ambiguous” as it “gather[s] meaning from the contexts within

which it happens and in turn contribut[es] meaning to those contexts.”95 However, this

quality of “floating intentionality” serves a significant purpose in human communication:

Music's attributes of embodying, entraining, and transposably intentionalizing time in sound and action … enable it to be efficacious in contexts where language may be unproductive or impotent precisely because of its capacity to be interpreted unambiguously.96

Music, according to Cross, allows humans to express ideas and emotions in ways that

language cannot, possibly because of the “double syntax” described by Kessels. This

ambiguity also leads Cross to recognize the value of the individual in the social process

of musical performance; since “music allows each participant to interpret its significances

individually and independently without the integrity of the collective musical behaviour

being undermined,” it provides “a social and mental space for the unhindered exploration

of the capacity to mean.”97

Since The Desert Music has a text, some of the “inherent” ambiguity in the

communication of its meaning is relieved by the association of words with the music.

Yet from the discussion above it is apparent that musical events do have the potential to

94Ibid., 209. 95Ian Cross, “Musical Meaning, Ambiguity and Evolution,” in Musical Communication, ed.

Dorothy Miell, Raymond MacDonald, and David J. Hargreaves, forward by Evelyn Glennie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 30.

96Ibid., 30, 35. 97Ibid., 36, 41.

44

communicate fairly specific ideas through objective cultural connections. Therefore it is

possible to determine the external references suggested in The Desert Music simply by

listening.98 How these ideas are interpreted, however, is dependent upon several factors

unique to each individual listener.

Cross, Kessels, and Meyer all agree that in order for communication to take place

there must be some “body of knowledge” understood by both composer and listener.99

Often this knowledge comes from education in a particular musical tradition and

information about the composer or work that the listener has acquired prior to attending a

performance. For example, any amount of knowledge a listener might have about the

traditions of Western art music, Steve Reich’s compositional philosophy and other works,

or specific information about The Desert Music gathered from reviews or program notes

will influence the determinate meaning of The Desert Music established by that particular

listener. But even if two listeners have equal access to and understanding of this very

same knowledge, it does not necessarily mean that both listeners will arrive at the same

meaning, even if the two listeners were to consider one particular performance of a work.

Additionally, a listener’s musical tastes and emotional responses to the music may

influence their opinions. Thus if listeners are not fond of music that is not explicitly

tonal, they might not feel that The Desert Music effectively communicates anything at all.

And if listeners are particularly concerned about the threat of nuclear warfare, they might

98In this context, “external” applies to metaphoric references. 99Cross, “Music, Ambiguity and Evolution,” 31. For Meyer, communication “arises out of the

universe of discourse which in aesthetics is called style.” Emotion and Meaning in Music, 42. Kessels gives an example from the movie The Sting in which members of a gang use a specific gesture to indicate their involvement in a plot, a gesture that means something more benign to those outside of the gang. “Is Music a Language of Emotions?” 201.

45

feel that Reich and Williams’ interest in this subject is the most important aspect of The

Desert Music and may be quite moved by the suggestion of an air raid siren in Movement

III. Finally, the approach to analysis undoubtedly influences determinations of meaning.

As discussed in Chapter 1, use of the score in analysis can lead a critic to value musical

structure over symbolic references in critical discussions.

But while multiple meanings are possible, this does not mean that there are an

unlimited number of meanings that are equally plausible. Jackson writes, “particular

items do not so much determine the kinds of meanings that can be attached to them as

their qualities constrain the kinds of meanings we construct.”100 Thus as composers make

compositional decisions, they are not so much forming the meanings determined by the

listener as they are narrowing the field of possible meanings. These possibilities are then

debated in the domain of social discourse. It is by comparing personal observations with

the observations of others that individual opinions are legitimized. Jackson argues that

while individual determinations of meaning can vary widely, “those meanings seem

appropriate only to the degree that they are shared or thought to be compelling by

others.”101

So perhaps it is not necessary, nor may it be possible, to definitively determine the

meaning of a particular work. Following an observation Nicholas Cook has made about a

musical work and its performance, the process of discussing musical meaning may even

be more meaningful than the product, the collective accepted opinion.102 While each

100Jackson, “Spooning Good Singing Gum,” 10. 101Ibid. 102Cook, “Between Process and Product,” par. 27, 31.

46

listener’s opinions are the first step in this process, R. Keith Sawyer argues that the social

aspect of experiencing music is what makes music itself meaningful:

Music is fundamentally social and communicative — after all, all music has its origins in improvisational group performance. Even when we’re listening to music at home alone, it still taps into our social brain, evoking the social world that we all have within us, the internalized social world that defines us as human beings.103

Sawyer argues that analysis of musical communication should include a way to describe

these social references encoded in our brains:

Instead of structural approaches that focus on notes, syllables, and phrase structures, to explain musical communication we need a new approach based on the semiotic concept of indexicality. An index is a sign which requires an association between the sign and its object.104

Kessels reaches a similar conclusion from his comparison of music and language:

The full impact [of a musical work] can be explained only by showing how all the different individual terms and their continuously changing interplay build up to an intricate and detailed symbolic representation of one or more complex emotional states and their development.105

The listening analysis of The Desert Music that follows is an attempt to document this

“continuously changing interplay” of musical events, experienced by a single listener and

against which other experiences might be measured.

103R. Keith Sawyer, “Music and Conversation,” in Musical Communication, ed. Dorothy Miell,

Raymond MacDonald, and David J. Hargreaves, forward by Evelyn Glennie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 56.

104Ibid., 54. 105Kessels, “Is Music a Language of Emotions?” 216.

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II. The Listening Analysis

If the subjective listening experience is to enter the realm of objective critical

discourse in music, there must be some way to document the mental processes of the

listener in order to offer concrete evidence that will support a listener’s opinion of

musical meaning. The listening tables that follow detail the usually unconscious mental

processes that take place while listening to a piece of music chronologically. In this

manner the relationship between musical events and their significance may be

specifically identified for an individual listener, thereby explaining how a listener

systematically arrives at a given determinate meaning.106 Also illuminated is the process

that informs Meyer’s theory of musical meaning (the listener’s expectations, the

subsequent confirmation or denial of these expectations, and impact of this outcome on

the listener), as well as some demonstration of the indexicality described by Sawyer.107

Finally, the tables may be used in a further study to record and compare the observations

of several individual listeners, thus continuing the process of collective signification of

musical meaning.

As stated above, the listening analysis records observations made chronologically,

as it would if one were to attend a performance of The Desert Music, while listening to a

2002 recording of the chamber version performed by Alarm Will Sound and Ossia.108

106In the tables that follow the listener is, of course, the author of this thesis. 107While the tables are not specifically intended as examples of semiotic analysis, by identifying

the relationship between a “musical event” and its “effect” this method does to some degree interpret the symbolic references embedded in the music.

108Alarm Will Sound and Ossia, Steve Reich: Tehillim and The Desert Music, Cantaloupe B00006H6B5, 2002. I will acknowledge that such detailed documentation of my experience is somewhat artificial and does not represent the experience of the average listener. However, I chose to listen in this systematic fashion in order to align my process of analysis more closely with that of theoretical analysis.

48

Throughout the analysis, I consulted the score only for clarification of musical elements

such as instrumentation. The first column of each table records the time indications from

this recording of the text and musical events identified in the next two columns. These

musical events are those I determined to be significant while listening. Thus the entries

of the table will not always be recorded at regular intervals. The next column transcribes

the text associated with the musical material, primarily for the benefit of the reader.

While the words are not always audible in this performance (and perhaps rightfully so),

the text of The Desert Music probably would be available for the audience in program

notes, and therefore it seems suitable to include it here for clarification when needed. To

be fair, I have made an attempt to describe whether the text is clearly audible or not in

any given entry as this often has an impact on the meaning of a particular section or

movement. The final column describes both the musical and metaphoric significances of

all of the information in the previous three columns, again as I perceived them. While

these “effects” are my personal observations, they also reflect my knowledge of Western

art music, as well as Steve Reich and his oeuvre. Informed by this knowledge, the

subjective opinions offered in this listening analysis are therefore made relatively

objective through extensive and thoughtful consideration of this work.

It should be noted that the idea of the listening analysis was inspired by Reich’s

music in general, and The Desert Music in particular, as a method of analysis that perhaps

could describe Reich’s process-oriented compositional style more appropriately than

theoretical or structural analysis. Support for this type of analysis (applied both to

Reich’s works and those of other composers) is slowly appearing in critical and

49

theoretical discourse. David Schwarz, in an exploration of his theory of listening

subjectivity in music, concludes, “the new minimal style of recent postmodern music

invites an intimate exploration of psychic and musical structures.”109 Schwarz proposes

that musical “listening subjects” are created “when moments in performed music allow

access to psychological events that are presymbolic” and uses brief analyses of several

works of Reich, including Different Trains and Come Out, as illustrative examples.110 In

these analyses he uses time indications instead of measure numbers to reference musical

events, thus affirming my observation that time, as opposed to musical structure, is more

relevant to the listening experience of works by Reich. A similar theoretical position

underlies recent work by Finn Egeland Hansen. His 2006 book, Layers of Musical

Meaning, revisits the works of W.A. Mozart and J.S. Bach, among others, and presents

an extensive theory of how music means “in audiendo.”111 Hansen asserts “a course of

musical events can only be meaningfully analysed through the musical codes or

grammars … that govern the musical style in question,” further supporting the idea that

Reich’s unique compositions may require a unique method of analysis.112

Perhaps even more pertinent to this topic is a recent reception case study of The

Riot by British composer Jonathan Harvey.113 Composer and critic Adrian Beaumont

109David Schwarz, “Listening Subjects: Semiotics, Psychoanalysis, and the Music of John Adams

and Steve Reich,” Perspectives of New Music 31, no. 2 (1993): 47. 110Ibid., 24. 111Finn Egeland Hansen, Layers of Musical Meaning, Danish Humanist Texts and Studies vol. 33,

ed. Erlad Kolding Nielsen (Copenhagen: The Royal Library, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), 6. Unfortunately this work was not published in time to receive a more extensive review in this thesis, but its publication does indicate that musical meaning is currently an important topic in musicology.

112Ibid., xi. 113Adrian Beaumont, “Expectation and Interpretation in the Reception of New Music: A Case

Study,” in Composition – Performance – Reception, ed. Wyndham Thomas, Studies in the Creative Process in Music (Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998), 93-104.

50

arranged to record and discuss listener responses to this new work, which had never been

heard in concert before this study took place at the 1994 Colston Symposium of Bristol

University. His aim was to explore how personal musical experience influences

expectations for and interpretations of new works. The Riot was an apt choice because of

its unusual instrumentation (flute, bass clarinet, and piano) and unique musical structure,

therefore providing little frame of reference for most listeners. Listeners heard the piece

twice, before and after an intermission. Only two of the listeners were allowed to briefly

view the score. After the first performance, the audience was given the composer’s

program note. The participants later completed a questionnaire asking for their initial

expectations, their emotional impressions of the work after the first performance, whether

or not they felt the program note to be helpful during the second performance, and their

general reactions after the final performance.

Beaumont compared the responses of the two with-score listeners to those who

did not have access to the score. Those without the score generally liked the work and

responded to the mood of the work on the questionnaire, describing it as “exciting” and

“fun.”114 Fewer than half of these listeners felt that the program note was helpful, as it

either confused them or “pushed them into listening in a way they did not wish to.”115

The two listeners who either listened with the score or viewed it briefly before the

performance were preoccupied with discerning the work’s structure during the

performance. It is therefore evident that different aspects of the piece may be important

when listening, as opposed to when looking at the score. Beaumont realized that some

114Ibid., 100. 115Ibid., 101.

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notational devices used by Harvey are intended to guide the performers and thus may not

be detected by the audience. “To that extent,” Beaumont reasons, “… knowledge of the

printed score alone could be somewhat misleading.”116

Beaumont’s study is significant because of these observations about the role of

the printed score in musical interpretation but is even more notable because it aims to

discern how and in what way a piece of music affects listeners. In other words, studies

like Beaumont’s attempt to describe the social and communicative aspects of music from

the perspective of the composer’s intended audience, individual listeners attending a

performance. While analysis of harmony and structure can provide significant insight

into the language of tonal music, other methods, such as Beaumont’s, may prove more

effective for more recent music that does not rely so heavily on the traditional tenets of

Western art music. For a composer like Reich, who values music not only as a technical

craft but also as a socially communicative process, individual responses recorded while

listening can therefore offer valuable insight into musical meaning.

Finally, as is evident from the discussion of meaning above, recording one

person’s listening experience is only the first step in the process of analyzing meaning.

As observed by Jackson, many listeners should confirm an individual’s opinions before

these opinions can be considered generally applicable. The listening tables developed

here could be used in a further study of The Desert Music, or even perhaps other works

by Reich or similar composers, to record and compare the observations of several

individuals. Such a study might be of interest to composers and the discipline of

116Ibid., 99-100.

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comparative musicology, as well as the areas of communication studies and music

psychology.

53

III. Locating the Desert

The listening analysis documents my personal assessment of the significance of

musical and textual elements of The Desert Music for the moment in which they occur in

the work. What remains to be considered in this discussion of the work’s meaning is how

these localized elements and the relationships between them can be organized into a

comprehensive assessment of meaning, or what Meyer terms the “determinate” meaning.

Though it may not be possible to incorporate all of my observations into one or two

overarching conclusions about what ideas are communicated in the piece (especially if

one was to hear the piece only one time through), it is important to recognize that the

patterns that emerge are not purely coincidental. Thoughtful listening, at least with

compositions by Reich, may reveal themes that the composer intended for the listener to

hear.117

In my listening analysis, three concepts continually evoked by musical events and

textual elements of The Desert Music are time, ambiguity, and contrast. The

rhythmically and harmonically static ostinato (most often presented by pitched percussion

instruments such as the marimba, vibraphone, and glockenspiel) that opens the piece and

continues almost unrelentingly throughout the entire work functions as an aural

representation of the intangible dimension of time.118 Thus throughout the work I was

117Here and throughout this chapter, “theme” is defined in the literary sense, as in a subject or

topic. However, in accordance with other ambiguities throughout The Desert Music, it should be noted that the word “theme” in the text has a double meaning in Movement IIIB; in this context, the phrase “The / theme is difficult” refers both to the seriousness of the topic introduced in the text of Movements IIIA and C and to the difficulty of performing the complex canon that is the musical setting of this text.

118Time itself is not a concept that we can see or hear; we only notice its effects on things in our environment, including ourselves as we age, and as it is represented in human constructions, such as clocks.

54

reminded of time and, by association, its unabated forward movement in my daily life, a

thought I usually put aside when attending a musical performance. This pulse also has a

musical function as the foundation of each movement; even if the tempo of the movement

were not to be emphasized in such an overt manner, all of the performers in the orchestra

would need to be aware of it in order to play correctly with other members of the

ensemble. In a musical sense the pulse is simultaneously simplistic and complex; though

I may hear notes played on each beat, this beat is often the synthesis of several

syncopated patterns of alternating notes and rests played concurrently by two or more

instruments. As I listened, I noticed how my attention shifted back and forth between

one or another of these patterns and the resulting pulse.

Time is metaphorically addressed in The Desert Music in a similarly ambivalent

manner. Although the pulse is a direct representation of the forward motion of time,

repetition on many levels provided me with a sense that time in the context of this work

was often not moving forward. For example the reiteration of musical material that

occurs in the first few minutes of the piece (see 0:00 – 2:40 in Table 1) creates an

impression of suspended time because I am not able to form expectations about future

musical events; instead my attention is focused on the present musical moment in which

it appears that the current musical material could repeat indefinitely.119 The arch

(ABCBA) structure of the entire work further undermines an expectation of forward

progress and musical development that I bring to the listening experience from

The alternating fifths in the xylophone that open Movements IIIA and C remind me of a ticking clock; perhaps this is an observation that others would share as it is a common occurrence in Western culture.

119All tables appear in the Appendix, beginning on page 72.

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knowledge of Western art music. Instead of a long-range development and resolution of

harmonic or thematic tension, The Desert Music appears to end where it began – with the

pulse and the syllable “De.” The value of the time spent performing this work therefore

must not lie in the collective experience of a definitive resolution of musical conflict but

in the collective social experiences of listening and being present in the musical moment.

Repetition is a compositional device that also conveys to this listener the theme of

ambiguity that surfaces throughout the work. I perceive this ambiguity when my

attention shifts between the sum and individual parts of the musical fabric during

repetitive sections, as noted above in reference to the pulse. Instances of melodic

phasing, particularly in Movements IIIA and C, are excellent examples of this repetition-

based musical ambiguity (see for example entry 0:19 in Table 3.1). Successive violin

entrances that begin by echoing a section of the initial melodic cell, often displaced only

a fraction of a beat, obscure the listener’s aural perception of the original melodic line as

each part is added. As more phased repetitions are added, it becomes difficult for the

listener to perceive how many parts there actually are, much less their individual

melodies. Finally, while each of the individual parts is still present, together they evolve

into something else entirely, much like molecules of water retain their original form

whether they appear on the whole to be a solid, liquid, or gas. Yet it is often still possible

to follow an individual part among the fray, and as I question exactly what to be listening

for, I am made aware of the usually unconscious process of how “the mind is listening.”

Repetition of textual elements, to my ears, highlights a tension between language

and music. As the words of the canons in Movement IIIB are repeated incessantly, they

56

begin to lose their structure as recognizable words and thereby become divorced from

their associated definitions. The individual syllables that make up the words become the

focus of my attention, and these syllables are meaningful as musical sounds more than

they are as sounds that are associated with a specific concept. Similarly, the “De”

syllable first heard in the opening of the piece and in all subsequent movements becomes

attached to a specific meaning as it is referenced throughout other movements. From the

opening of the work, where the “De” syllable slowly morphs into the opening syllable of

the word “Begin,” the presence of “De” symbolizes the barrier between musical and

linguistic communication. As I listen to The Desert Music, I realize that this division is

not a clear boundary but, rather, is an obscure confluence where instruments often sound

like voices and voices often sound like instruments. The similarity of vocal and

instrumental timbres in several instances is so striking that it is impossible not to

associate one with the other. For example, in the opening moments of the final

movement (see 0:40 in Table 5), the short brass chorale is nearly identical in harmony

and timbre to that of the voices in the previous movement when heard pronouncing the

line “Say to them.” Thus, instruments are able to communicate specific ideas associated

with words and voices are capable of expressing the abstract ideas of musical language.

While there are many examples of harmonious blending of musical sounds, to my

ears, many moments in the work highlight differences in instrumentation or musical

material. Contrasting vocal and instrumental groups are often layered to create a dense

musical fabric. The final minute of Movement I (see 6:09 – 7:00 in Table 1) is a

representative sample: sustained brass and vocal “De” eighth-note ostinati create long

57

phrases on each chord of the harmonic cycle over the energetic phased string motif

(continuing from the previous section) and the ubiquitous percussion pulse. This intricate

infrastructure follows the emotional and musical climax of the movement that ends with

the word “world” (5:27 in Table 1), and thus, in my experience, this section suggests a

representation of the variegated voices of humanity in musical microcosm. The middle

movements that follow could be viewed as closer examinations of these simultaneously

contrasting musical thoughts: the second and fourth movements explore the tension

between the straight and syncopated rhythmic patterns that compose the foundational

pulse (making extensive use of the “De” syllable), while the slow sections of the third

movement (A and C) investigate the process of melodic phasing in the strings, as well as

the implications of the sustained brass phrases. The center of the work, Movement IIIB,

questions the meaning of harmonic organization and text through repetition. Also,

neighboring movements juxtapose fast and slow tempos. Because the work is played

attacca and transitions between movements are avoided, the listener is often subjected to

abrupt shifts in mood and tempo. These contrasts on a higher organizational level

suggest that the musical ideas introduced in the opening movement are occurring

simultaneously but are extracted for the benefit of the listener in the middle movements

in defiance of the dimension of time. The return of musical material from Movement I

that ends one movement and the gong strike that begins the next are aural indications of

magical shifts in musical space and time.

Here in the intersection of these themes (time, ambiguity, and contrast), I perceive

the location of the desert suggested by the title of the work. The desert landscape is a

58

space of ambiguity where there is a striking disconnect between appearance and reality.

The desert’s reputation of desolation is surprisingly erroneous as, in my experience, it is

actually home to a wide variety of well-adapted plants and animals, often living just

below the surface. This environment is associated with the absence of water, but yet

there are moments of torrential downpours resulting in violent floods. Although there are

many types of deserts, the image of a severe and unchanging landscape without

foreseeable boundaries is a common mental image. Though time may seem to stand still

in this physical and metaphorical landscape, in reality desert spaces are not exempt from

the effects of time — they are constantly evolving and developing. Similarly, musical

material often repeats in The Desert Music, both within movements and in corresponding

movements of the cycle (such as Movements II and IV), but my close listening reveals

that there are few moments that are exactly the same. These subtle changes may be

actual differences written in the score or may result when a listener focuses on another

layer or pattern within the musical texture. Thus in accordance with the desert metaphor,

The Desert Music combines the appearance of similarity with the reality of difference.

For one who knows the landscape, the desert metaphor conveys polar opposites:

beauty and desolation, fertility and emptiness, and life and death. This space symbolizes

both a lifeless wasteland and also the opportunity for rebirth from the depths of despair.

A person who finds herself alone in the desert is in a state of limbo — she may either

succumb to the harshness of the environment or survive by reinventing herself through

mental strength and resourcefulness. Musically The Desert Music presents the same

ambivalent space for this listener. Constant repetition, tonal and linguistic ambiguities,

59

and lack of musical development require me to set aside my expectations and truly be

“wide awake” as I listen for meaning.

The desert therefore functions as the setting of the work, in the literary sense.

Accordingly, as other topics are explored in this space, in my experience they both derive

meaning from the characteristics of the setting and contribute to the significance of this

metaphor. Communication is an important example of such a topic. The Desert Music

emphasizes the act of musical communication between the performers in the ensemble in

addition to the usual line of communication that occurs in the performance of a musical

work, from the performer to the listening audience. Lines of the text could be viewed as

moments of dialogue, in which the listener may presume that the speaker is addressing

one or more specific participants in a conversation. For example the first line of text

(other than the syllable “De”) in the opening movement, “Begin, my friend,” suggests

that the speaker is initiating a conversation.120 The text of the second movement uses the

personal pronoun “we” as it asks the important question “Well, shall we / think or

listen?” The opening line of the third movement is a command (“Say to them:”). Instead

of textual responses to these (and other) lines, what often occurs is purely musical

commentary. Indeed, each movement of The Desert Music features long instrumental

sections that function as musical meditations on the subject of the text presented in that

movement. For example, following the text about “fire” and “light” in the final

movement, an instrumental section illustrates the tension between rhythm and harmony

120As discussed above, the vocal “De” crosses the boundary between a sound and a word, i.e. from

the abstract expressiveness of music to the relative specificity of linguistic meaning, as “De” becomes “Begin.”

60

metaphorically suggested by the melody of the vocal line associated with this text (see

Table 5 – 6:03).

These instrumental sections, however, do not always follow presentations of text.

Since it is one of the parameters of this work that instruments are attempting to

communicate with the effectiveness of language, it seems appropriate that lines of text

could also be viewed as responses to the musical ideas presented in each movement.

Movements IIIA and C are conspicuous examples of the phenomenon. The tempo,

harmony, and melodic content presented instrumentally in the opening of these two

sections (from 0:00 to 5:31 in Movement IIIA and from 0:00 to 4:34 in Movement IIIC)

together serve as an appropriate prelude to the important text that follows. By the time I

was confronted with the text at the end of these sections, the music had established a

mood that highlighted the serious nature of the words and encouraged me to consider

them closely.

The theme of communication is underscored by moments in The Desert Music

when musical events depict the act of conversation. This metaphor is suggested by the

simultaneous expression of conflicting musical ideas layered to create an intricate

construction of voices (discussed above), as well as sections that feature a call-and-

response-like musical structure. In Movement II (beginning at 1:52), voices and strings

take turns presenting the syncopated melodic/rhythmic pattern for equal numbers of

measures before an abrupt musical return to the opening of the movement. As the two

groups alternately debate the merits of a straight pulse or syncopation, they also seem to

be engaged in a musical discussion of the question “Well, shall we / think or listen?” The

61

canons in Movement IIIB are even more prominent examples of the metaphor of

conversation suggested by the musical structure of call and response. As a compositional

device, the canons illustrate the repetitive “principle of music” while simultaneously

undermining the textual assertion of how musical meaning is created. Overemphasizing

repetition undercuts the communication of meaning by creating ambiguity of melodic

content and phrasing. Additionally, the canons transmit the complexity of musical

meaning to language as repetition transforms words into music.

Thus in my experience the ambiguity and complexity of the desert setting

complicates the relationship between music and text. In The Desert Music musical

settings of the text allow linguistic meaning to embody the qualities of ambiguity and

“double syntax” associated with musical meaning (discussed in section one of this

chapter). For example, the music often conveys the opposite meaning of the words. In

Movement V, the long notes of the vocal line emphasize each syllable of the word

“inseparable,” thereby stressing the separate syllables instead of the word as a whole (see

Table 5 from 3:50 – 3:57). This movement also features the only moments in the entire

work where the voices are separated from the instruments. Appropriately, as the canons

of Movement IIIB undermine meaning through repetition, the settings of text in other

moments of the movement undermine the expected meaning of individual words. Reich

lengthens the note values that accompany “as the pace mounts” with each repetition

(2:04), thus slowing down instead of increasing the pace of the declamation. At the end

of the movement (4:44 in Table 3.2), the phrase “the facts to be / resolved” ends with a

different harmony or voicing each time the phrase is repeated, leaving the harmonic

62

center of the movement quite unresolved. The capacity of the setting to suggest double

meanings is explored through the levels of meaning suggested by the work as a whole.

Lines such as “The / theme is difficult” and “The mind / is listening” may refer both to

the musical performance as well as the act and subject of the metaphorical conversation

that is occurring.

Thus I hear The Desert Music as an exploration of the spaces between sounds and

words, music and language, and thinking and listening. Reich challenges the audience’s

perception of the distinction between each pair of concepts and shows how this ambiguity

of meaning is a reality of musical and linguistic communication. Like the poem that

provides the text for all but two of the movements of the work (“The Orchestra”), The

Desert Music uses musical sounds and the interplay of instrumental groups as a metaphor

for human communication. Music becomes a language in this comparison, allowing the

audience to discover how the properties that complicate musical communication also

muddle communication between individuals and societies.

I believe that the theme of communication is emphasized in The Desert Music to

reveal another level of meaning communicated by the work. The topic of the

metaphorical conversation is quite clearly presented in Movements IIIA and C. A

straightforward chorale-like setting allows the words of this movement to become the

focus of my attention and conveys none of the ambiguities of meaning that characterize

the text settings of other movements. The text refers to a crisis of global proportions:

Say to them: Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can realize them, he must either change them or perish.

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Preceding the text in Movement IIIC is a musical event that focuses the meaning of these

words; the viola glissando (see 2:46 in Table 3.3) is an example of a sound with a distinct

cultural meaning. I imagine that most listeners would connect this sound with that of a

siren, either an air raid or disaster siren or one used by emergency vehicles. To my ears

the connotations of this sound are also unambiguous: the siren warns of impending

danger and, given the nature of the text, I associate the meaning of the siren with military

conflict.

To discern the connection between all of the elements discussed here (the desert

setting, the musical conversation, the humanitarian crisis), it is helpful to consider how

The Desert Music does not address this serious topic. Aside from the brief use of the

siren in one section of Movement III, Reich has not chosen to musically dramatize the

sounds of warfare; there are no musical depictions of exploding bombs. Instead The

Desert Music explores the social environment that both creates and recognizes this threat.

The work’s preoccupation with repetition, time, tonal ambiguity, and linguistic

uncertainty metaphorically reflects the reality of social responses to modern crises. Just

as the instruments and voices continually repeat the words and melodies of The Desert

Music, as if searching for the proper ending, incessant discussion of the facts is a reality

of crisis resolution in our world today. There are peace talks, congressional debates, talk

radio call-in shows, summits, political speeches, news analysts, bloggers, and discussions

in classrooms and taxicabs; all of these conversations hope to make sense of the situation,

yet because effective communication is difficult, the threat remains. Time moves

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forward but, like the work itself, there is the desire to return to the beginning, the origins

of the conflict, to see if therein lies the solution.

In this way, I experience The Desert Music as more of a meditation on the topic

than as a work of protest and social activism. Portions of the text consider how music

creates meaning (“It is a principle of music / to repeat the theme,” “it is the relation / of a

flute note to a drum”) just as the global conversations mentioned above are also attempts

to define meaning. These conversations occur because we want to uncover the reasons

why humanity has invented weapons, such as suicide bombs and atomic missiles, that

cause widespread death and suffering. I believe The Desert Music does not suggest a

solution to the crisis it explores, as it ends with a question (“who most shall advance the

light”) and fails to commit to a unifying tonal center. The process of musical

composition is emphasized over the outcome when, through phasing, I am made aware of

how a complicated musical pattern is created from a small melodic cell.

Yet it is the work’s defiance of resolution through ambiguity that also

communicates hope for humanity. In the desert the situation appears grim but there is

still the possibility of survival. The question “Well, shall we / think or listen?” seems to

be the crux of Reich’s artistic message. As I argue in this thesis, The Desert Music

suggests there is much to be learned simply by listening and considering what one hears.

Reich’s program note and an interview with the composer published as liner notes

for the 1984 Nonesuch recording of The Desert Music confirm that the listening analysis

offered here has uncovered many of the composer’s artistic concerns with respect to this

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work. Reich tells Jonathan Cott that the repetition in The Desert Music encourages close

listening:

If you want to write music that is repetitive in any literal sense, you have to work to keep a lightness and constant ambiguity … . In this way, one’s listening mind can shift back and forth within the musical fabric, because the fabric encourages that. But if you don’t build in that flexibility of perspective, then you wind up with something extremely flat-footed and boring.121

This rhythmic ambiguity allowed Reich to “present a slow movement and a fast

movement simultaneously,” an idea that was clearly audible to me during the listening

analysis.122 In his composer’s note Reich reveals more specific details about how the

harmony of the work also abides by this quality of ambiguity that permeates the rhythmic

character:

The harmonic cycle of the outer movements cadences, although with some ambiguity, on a D dorian minor.

This ambiguity resides in the fact that a prominent A altered dominant chord follows the D but an F altered dominant precedes it. … The piece ends with the women’s voices, violins, and mallet instruments pulsing the notes (reading up) G, C, F, A, which are the common tones to the A altered dominant, the D dorian minor, and the possible F major. The piece therefore ends with a certain harmonic ambiguity, partially, but not fully, resolved.123

This evidence confirms my perception of the unresolved nature of the work’s ending.

Although it was not possible to discern these specific details, other musical elements that

were clearly audible suggested an unresolved ending. In particular, the final phrase of the

music was not clearly defined as instruments and voices slowly dropped out until the

sound quietly vanished.

121Reich, Writings on Music, 130. 122Ibid. 123Ibid., 121.

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The tension between language and music discussed extensively above was also

one of Reich’s main concerns. Reich notes how he aimed to achieve a “mix of vocal-

instrumental sound” and that the “pulse that begins, ends, and recurs throughout The

Desert Music is significant musically and as a kind of wordless response to and

commentary on the text itself.”124 Ambiguity also pervades this subject as Reich asks the

listener to consider the “basic ambiguity between what the text says and its pure sensuous

sound.”125 Reich also intended for the music alone to communicate specific ideas in

addition to the text as “at certain points in The Desert Music, there’s no more to be said

— there are only things that can be said musically.”126

Like most composers, Reich does not tell his audience how to listen to this work.

He does reveal that there is no direct portrayal of a desert; instead the idea of the desert is

more of an atmospheric attribute of the listening experience. Reich informs Jonathan Cott

that he did have specific deserts in mind while composing the piece, particularly White

Sands and Alamagordo in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was tested, but that these

images “seem to be ingrained in people’s thinking generally when the idea of the desert

comes to mind.”127 In his program note Reich comments on how the words used in

Movements IIIA and C of The Desert Music were written by Dr. Williams during a time

when the poet was “acutely aware of the bomb.”128 But the sense that The Desert Music

is only about nuclear warfare does not come across in the interview or program note. In

fact Reich’s interview ends with this poignant quotation:

124Ibid., 124. 125Ibid. 126Ibid., 128. 127Ibid. 128Ibid., 124.

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I once had a vision where light became a metaphor for harmony, for tonality, a continuity of vibration from the lowest to the highest sounds we can hear. ………………………………………………………………………………

You see, I understand that human conventions are, in a sense, the light… . And the human construct that we call our music is merely a convention — something that we’ve all evolved together, and that rests on no final or ultimate laws.129

Reich reminds us that music is a flexible, expressive language; it has the ability to

communicate specific ideas through cultural conventions, yet it allows listeners to

interpret its sounds in a variety of meaningful ways.

129Ibid., 131.

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Conclusion “who most shall advance the light – call it what you may!”

Through my personal listening analysis of The Desert Music, I have attempted to

show that the subjective listening experience is a viable tool for musical analysis. If, as

John Blacking contends, music is “a metaphorical expression of feeling” instead of “an

immediately understood language which can be expected to produce specific responses,”

a listener’s intuitive sense of his or her emotional response can lead to an understanding

of the ideas communicated by a musical work.130 All music critics use listening as a tool

for analysis, but very few acknowledge the contributions of this tool to determinations of

meaning. This bias may exist because intuitive responses cannot be proved or disproved

as readily as evidence gleaned from notes in the score. Listening experiences are

subjective, but theoretical analysis also incorporates an element of subjectivity. I believe

that the systematic documentation of my listening experience lends a degree of

objectivity to my determination of the meaning of The Desert Music.

Listening to music results in powerful affective experiences that are the main

component of determining one’s like or dislike of a particular piece of music. It is

because of these experiences that one is compelled to examine a work more closely, to

apply theoretical analysis, and to research a composer’s compositional philosophy. My

interest in The Desert Music began in this way. I was immediately attracted to the work’s

remarkable blending of diverse timbres. The style seemed to be a very modern approach

130John Blacking, Music, Culture, and Experience: Selected Papers of John Blacking, edited and

with an introduction by Reginald Byron, forward by Bruno Nettl (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 35.

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to orchestration. The resulting sound was, to me, exhilarating. After reading the text, I

was struck by the work’s philosophical ruminations on a contemporary crisis.131 I

searched for music criticism of The Desert Music but found little discussion of the work

and found general criticism of Reich to be preoccupied with his compositional

techniques. It seemed to me that if no other music critics shared my enthusiasm for The

Desert Music perhaps an alternate perspective might be required to adequately discuss its

music and its message.

Perhaps the disconnection I perceived between music and criticism is not limited

to Reich and The Desert Music. I have recently become aware of the affinity of my work

with feminist musicological criticism. At the end of my study, I was fortunate to

encounter the work of Susan McClary. The description of her entry into feminist theory

resonated with my own experience:

I began my career with a desire to understand music. … Yet what I desired to understand about music has always been different from what I have been able to find out in the authorized accounts transmitted in classrooms, textbooks, or musicological research. I was drawn to music because it is the most compelling cultural form I know. I wanted evidence that the overwhelming responses I experience with music are not just in my own head, but rather are shared.132

I still desire to know if my understanding of The Desert Music, in whole or in part, is

shared by others. The theories of musical meaning considered here reveal that my

131This progression from music to text is precisely how Reich hoped listeners would experience

the work. He tells Jonathan Cott: “All pieces with texts – operas, cantatas, whatever – have, in my opinion, to work first simply as pieces of music that one listens to with eyes closed, without understanding a word. … He or she merely has to listen and hopefully, if moved, will follow the text as well.” Writings on Music, 129.

132Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, with a new introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 4.

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assessment of The Desert Music’s meaning is only the beginning of the critical

conversation.

This work invites a new approach to musical analysis, as well as a reconsideration

of Reich’s categorization in the concert tradition of Western art music. This study has

developed a method for an ethnographic evaluation of listener response. So far, I have

only been able to present my own experience of the work, which I will acknowledge is

not a universal interpretation. But the tables developed for my analysis can be used to

evaluate shared listener experience of The Desert Music, other works by Reich, and

works by other composers. Understanding meaning to be a process of collective

discussion, a study that records several listener responses could generate data that could

then be evaluated to locate patterns.

Scholars acknowledge the process of collective determination of meaning in

popular music but have only recently recognized that this process may be applicable to

academic criticism of popular music.133 The application of methods of analysis

associated with popular music study to Reich’s music makes sense given the composer’s

artistic philosophies. While music historians view Reich as belonging to the concert

tradition of Western art music, in practice Reich defies such strict categorization. Reich

has never abandoned the artistic community, associated with venues such as the Park

Place Gallery in New York City, that initially embraced his works when mainstream

133See Travis Jackson’s study of the Cocteau Twins in “Spooning Good Singing Gum,” 23-33 and

Susan McClary and Robert Walser’s article “Start Making Sense! Musicology Wrestles with Rock,” in On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word, ed. Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 277-92.

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classical audiences considered them unpalatable.134 Echoes of Reich’s techniques can be

heard in works by musicians and composers that are not considered to be part of the

Western art music tradition, such as Brian Eno and Sufjan Stevens. A more populist

approach to Reich could inspire a wider enthusiasm for his works and might well inspire

a new approach to classical works in general, by sending a message to audiences that real

understanding of such compositions is not limited to music critics or listeners with formal

musical training. Even if Reich does not aim to change the world, he does evoke

response and initiate conversation. And perhaps his works that deal with topics such as

terrorism, environmental devastation, and racism have the power to remind audiences of

the devastating consequences of complacency and apathy towards such important issues.

134Critic Alex Ross notes, “in the face of early incomprehension, [Reich] took a do-it-yourself

approach to getting his work before the public.” In welcoming associations with artists outside Western art music, “Reich changed music, and he also changed how music relates to society.” “Fascinating Rhythm,” New Yorker, 13 November 2006, 99.

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APPENDIX: LISTENING TABLES135

Table 1: Movement I – Fast Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:00 Percussive/melodic pulse – 1st

phrase instruments, 2nd phrase with added chorus

“De” – echoes instrumental pulse

0:13 First change of harmony; each phrase is a slow moving envelope of sound - fading in and out using crescendos and decrescendos, like musical waves

0:33 Recognition of repetition with a new harmony for each phrase; musical material is constantly being revisited, each time with a slightly different approach

Time is suspended

0:45 Slow repetitions create a feeling of spaciousness

1:00 Progression has returned to initial harmony and is now beginning the cycle again; text is unclear as voices are so well blended with the instrumental pulse

Blurring of boundaries between text as words and text as sounds

135This listening analysis is based on the Alarm Will Sound and Ossia recording of The Desert Music. Steve Reich: Tehillim and The Desert Music,

Cantaloupe B00006H6B5, 2002.

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 1:15 Piano/percussion, voices, and

strings have become a pulse sound group; separate timbres are almost indistinguishable

As a listener, I am invited to enter a meditative state of mind, yet at the same time the repetition encourages me to listen closely for subtle musical changes

1:29 Sustained brass add another layer to the musical texture

Increases the urgency of the communication

2:00 Expectation of building to a climax – harmonic dissonance increases

Dissonance breaks the spell of the comforting and welcoming space created by the pulse sound group in the initial minutes of the movement and is ominous and unsettling

2:30 Strings, voices, and brass fade out; only the percussive pulse remains

Expectation of climax is unfulfilled – I wonder what will come next

2:40 Entrance of melodic cell played by the strings

Energetic contrast to the musical material of the pulse sound group

3:00 Melody divides into several identical parts organically - reminiscent of Reich’s instrumental phasing techniques

As with the opening pulse, a small element grows into something more complex than was initially expected

3:17 Vocal entrance – texture is building again

“Begin (repeated) “De” vocalise focuses into the word “Begin” – thus the whole movement so far has been like an invocation or appeal to start a communication

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 3:28

Entrance of low-string countermelody (3:38)

Begin, my friend (repeated)

4:05

Begin (repeated), my friend

4:16 Dramatic harmonic change – perhaps only because it is the first change since the initial string entrance (2:40)

Tonal ambiguity (as there is no clear tonic so far) is added to the formal and textual ambiguity of the movement

4:26 Voices present more text more quickly; sometimes words are clear, at other times I am listening to the suspensions and resolutions of the vocal line, yet still understanding that the text is a command

for you cannot, you may be sure, take your song

5:00 Text is clearly presented

take your song, which drives all things out of mind,

5:15

Harmony accompanying the word “mind” recalls the opening of the movement

with you to the other world.”

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 5:27 With the word “world,” vocal part

drops out and the instruments, especially violins, sustain the energy with the highly syncopated (dancing) melody

Dramatic harmonic change emphasizes the word “world” in what appears to be (and may later be confirmed as) the climax of the movement; highlighting this word establishes the global scope of the conversation that begins in this movement

5:49 Entrance of vibrant low-string countermelody and return of the sustained brass (5:57)

Brass is an ominous reminder of the difficult, serious situation

6:09 Pulse – which has faded far into the background of the musical texture – returns to prominence, as do the musical “waves” from the opening of the movement

“De” pulse Could the primal and unsophisticated “De” pulse be the “song / which drives all things out of mind?”

7:00 String motif persists until the end of the movement; “De” vocalise returns to more strongly recall the opening moments of the piece

“De” pulse

Musically and textually the movement finishes where it started, and I am left questioning what was accomplished, both musically and metaphorically, during the entire movement

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Table 2: Movement II - Moderate Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:00

Percussion instruments open the movement with a more relaxed pace; sticks keep time strictly and precisely

Time continues despite the comforting environment of the first movement

0:10 Pitched instruments expand upon the initial pulse harmonically and rhythmically through syncopation

Contrast in mood between the 1st and 2nd movements is immediately apparent; atmosphere of the 2nd movement is more grounded in reality, indicated musically through thinner, more defined textures and articulation

0:15 Pace of harmonic movement is also slower than the first movement

“Well, shall we think or listen? Is there a sound addressed not wholly to the ear? (repeat)

Questions in the text confirm the ambiguities of the opening movement; slower, clearer presentation of the first question highlights its importance

0:37 Arpeggiated dissonant chord in the strings, with sforzando articulation

We half close our eyes. We

Female voices respond to questions posed by male voices – timbral contrast functions as a call and response

0:45

do not hear it through our eyes.

Sudden harmonic shifts initiated by the strings illustrate how “we / do not / hear it through out eyes”

0:48 Simple, syncopated melody and rhythmic pattern presented by the flutes/piccolo and timpani foreshadow the next line of text

Could this flute/drum section be a military reference?

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:54

Flute doubles the vocal line – perhaps the first time instrumental/vocal doubling has happened in the piece

It is not a flute note either, it is the relation of a flute note to a drum.

Meaning is created not by the instruments individually but by the relationship between them

1:15

Return of flute/drum syncopated pattern

Stravinsky-esque shifts between musical material (with no transitions), responding to one another like two opposing sides of an argument

1:22 Vocal line, which has been rising melodically, reaches an apex, as if building to a climax

I am wide awake. The mind is listening.”

1:32

Recall of the opening movement in both harmony, instrumentation, and text (including the ominous sustained brass) – however, slower in order to adapt to the tempo of this movement

“De” pulse from Movement I Another abrupt shift, defying an expectation, either confuses or compels one to continue listening closely; it is as if the “De” vocalise and accompanying musical pulse are distracting the performers from continuing the musical thought and the words of the text in this movement

1:52

After almost fading away, voices continue with a syncopated melodic line based on the next chord in the harmonic cycle

“De” slightly slower and syncopated Syncopated “De” vocal line is more sophisticated than the “De” pulse, a more complex argument

2:02

Strings continue where the voices left off; voices fade to the background

“De” pulse, faintly Echo is another example of call and response using two opposing timbral groups in this movement

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 2:12

Voices return to prominence; melodic line is rising

“De” syncopated

2:22

Strings and sustained brass echo at a higher pitch

“De” pulse, faintly

2:31

Abrupt return to the opening of the movement

Another build to a musical climax is unfulfilled

2:45

Something has changed – there is a different chord in the marimbas and vibraphones than was played at the opening of the movement

Perhaps this recall of the opening of the movement is not simply a repeat – there has been some musical development

2:49

Slower presentation of the text “Well, shall we think (repeat) or listen?

Return to a very important question

3:15

Male and female voices often sing together this time

Is there a sound addressed not wholly to the ear? (repeat)

3:36

Arpeggiated chord in strings We half close our eyes. We do not hear it through our eyes.

Very subtle differences between the first and second presentations of this musical material encourage the listener to be engaged in the repetition

3:47

Flute/drum section returns It is rewarding as a listener to recognize what comes next, yet because I do not form expectations about musical events, it is more difficult to recognize my intellectual responses

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 3:57

Again, slower presentation of the text; timpani accompanies voices instead of flutes this time

It is not a flute note either, (repeat)

New harmonies for the repeated text function as a reconsideration of the meaning of these words

4:13

it is the relation of a flute note to a drum.

4:22

Flute/drum material returns, extended this time

4:38

I am wide awake. The mind is listening.”

“The mind is listening” seems to be the most important text of the movement – relatively high vocal pitch communicates a sense of urgency

4:48

Reference to the opening movement is not heard this time; instead the musical material that followed this reference appears

“De” syncopated Transition to the syncopated “De” section is more seamless than before – the argument makes more sense

4:58

Instruments echo the prior vocal material

“De” pulses Towards the end of the movement I find myself listening more than thinking as more familiar musical material reappears

5:08

Sustained brass, slowly crescendoing from the dense musical texture, becomes more audible in each section

“De” syncopated Dissonant (diminished harmonies including tritones) brass harmony is a noticeable contrast to strings and voices (open, major sounds)

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 5:18 “De” pulses, “De” syncopated (5:28)

Final echoes between these two musical groups confirm that this movement emphasizes contrasts

5:41 Recall of Movement I occurs at the end of this section, building to a harmony that does not resolve

“De” pulses

At the end of the movement, it is clear that none of the harmonic resolutions have conformed to the (tonal) expectations of my ears

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Table 3.1: Movement IIIA – Slow

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:00 Gong, along with piano and

pitched percussion, signals another abrupt shift in mood between movements; slow alternating fifths, played on downbeats by the xylophone, set the pace for this movement

Suggestion of time interceding on the musical moment is even stronger than in the opening of Movement II – xylophone almost certainly suggests the ticking of a clock

0:05 Piano strikes the opening chord again unexpectedly, while the vibes oppose the “ticking” xylophone with their mellow tone and syncopated pattern

Surprising piano chord breaks the spell of the xylophone pattern, recalling the strident, shrill ring of an alarm clock

0:19 Solo violin enters with a short repeated melodic cell

Consistent repetition at this relaxed pace creates a meditative atmosphere

0:29

Second violin echoes a few select notes of the first violin part only about one beat behind the first violin – slowly echoing more and more notes of the initial melodic cell

Number of players and the melodic line has become ambiguous and appears to be constantly changing

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:48

Melodic material in the violins seems to evolve organically creating complex rhythmic patterns - an excellent example of phasing

Slow phasing technique counters traditional ideas of musical development; phrase appears to have no goal, and my ears only detect changes after they have happened

1:11 Higher countermelody enters in another violin part

Entrance of the countermelody is immediately apparent against the backdrop of the now-familiar phased pattern

1:22

Countermelody receives the same phasing treatment

Sense of spaciousness and suspended time that opened Movement I has returned

1:45

Voices in close harmony (mostly half steps) slowly crescendo to prominence and begin to decrescendo almost as soon as I become aware of them

“De” sustained “Waves” of sound, reminiscent of the Movement I, seem to have to no beginning or end, as if the musical thought has always existed

2:00

Brass echo the sustained “De” harmony of the voices

Voices seem to “hand off” this harmony to the brass instruments

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 2:17

Violins abruptly switch to a new melody, starting on a higher pitch; phasing beings almost immediately (2:23)

The violin melodies are related, despite the lack of transition between them, as if offering a slightly revised musical thought

2:47

Voices, louder this time, repeat the sustained harmony at a higher pitch

“De” sustained The unsophisticated “De” consistently intrudes on more complex musical arguments

3:00

Melody rises to a higher pitch as the brass enters

Expectation of building to a climax

3:15

Another abrupt change to a slightly recomposed melody as brass disappears; syncopated vibraphone continues underneath – when did the “ticking” disappear?

Expectation dissolves as this melody seems to lose energy, not build upon the previous intensity

3:33

Phasing increases the intensity as more notes fill the musical spaces (rests)

Metaphorically - are the violins constantly searching for a new way to express themselves?

3:47

Another repeat of the sustained vocal part; “De” syllable is never clearly pronounced

“De” sustained Repetition has become confusing and possibly aimless – what, if anything, could the movement be building towards?

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 4:00

Melody rises; brass echoes the voices

4:16

Again, the melody changes followed by phasing (4:35)

Another averted climax

4:49

Sustained vocal entrance “De” sustained

5:04

Melody rises, brass echoes the voices

5:17

Abrupt shift, this time to the opening of the movement, without the “ticking” xylophone

Expectations of resolution are once again thwarted, as if illustrating a deceptive cadence

5:26 Glockenspiel taps out the eighth notes of the measure

Reminder of time is less intense, an echo of the opening of the movement

5:31

Vocal entrance is reminiscent of previous phrases in this movement, with a more open harmony

“Say to them: Purpose of the previous musical repetition comes into focus

5:49

Chorale-like setting of the (clearly audible) text, accompanied softly by winds - only vibes and glock offer conflicting musical material

Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant The contemplative mood established in the opening of the movement prepares the listener to concentrate on these important words

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 6:01 to know how to realize his wishes. Now that he can

6:15

Word “change” is emphasized by a longer note value than other words and a suspension on the downbeat

realize them, he must either change them or perish.”

6:32

“or perish” “Say to

6:47

With the final declamation of the word “them,” the pulse quickens to recall the opening of the piece; brass harmony also recalls Movement I

them”

“song / which drives all things out of mind” persists

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Table 3.2: Movement IIIB – Moderate

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:00 Harmony and faster pace from the

end of the previous movement continues; mallet instruments provide supporting polyrhythms, while the text is presented quickly and prominently by female voices

“it is a principle of music to repeat the theme. Repeat and repeat again, as the pace mounts. The theme is difficult but no more difficult

Movements are clearly connected, yet the topics of their texts seem to have little to do with one another; perhaps the text of this movement serves as a commentary on the previous “message” - that is, “the facts to be resolved”

0:17 Harmonic suspensions on the word “resolved” illustrate the opposite meaning of the word

than the facts to be resolved.” “to be resolved”

The music is not a commentary on the text; rather, the text serves the meaning of the music

0:25 Female voices begin a canon on the first line of text using the first chord of the movement, each voice entering only a few beats behind the previous entrance; mallet instruments switch to a constant pulse instead of polyrhythms

Canon on “it is a principle of music to repeat the theme”

As the canon builds, words of the text lose their significance as ideas being illustrated by the text; instead the syllables of these words are significant as sounds

0:38

High strings accompany the voices, selecting one countermelody from the dense canon

Meaning of the words is even further obscured

0:48

Low strings play a descending diminished arpeggio at the end of each phrase

This arpeggio provides the only frame of reference for the passing of (musical) time

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 1:12 Canon continues on a new, higher

harmony

Intensity builds

1:31 Without any transition, canon switches to the second phrase of text, reverting to the opening chord

Canon on “Repeat and repeat again”

With even fewer words (and two that are the same), the canon creates an even more complicated and dense musical fabric

1:38

High string entrance; low string entrance (1:44)

Canons create a sense of suspended time in a different way that the previous movement – instead of a relaxed, contemplative atmosphere, there is the confusing and frightening sense of being lost in a maze

2:04

Words again come into focus as male voices join females voices on the next phrase of text; mallet polyrhythms come to the forefront of the musical texture

“as the pace mounts” (unison, repeated several times)

Contrary to the meaning of the words, the tempo does not increase, but the intensity of the music increases with the addition of male voices and the switch to polyrhythms in the mallet instruments

2:19

As the phrase is repeated, declamation of the words is stretched out, with two or more notes per syllable

As the vocal line “slows down” the declamation of the words, their meaning is undercut in a humorous fashion; the effect is reminiscent of slowing down the speed of a tape reel

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 2:46

The next text phrase is introduced by a solo soprano voice, followed by unison harmony on the word “difficult,” whereby a modulation also occurs

“The theme is difficult”

The sense that the music is building towards a climax is everpresent, but I know (because of what has occurred previously) not to hope for this expectation to be realized

2:52

Complicated canon begins (numerous entrances at irregular intervals) underscored by mallet pulse

Canon on “difficult” Here the meaning of the text and the music are more closely related, yet here the text seems to be a comment on the music, not the other way around

3:02

Violin echo of melodic cells created by the canon in a high register, as before

This canon on one word emphasizes a sense I have had previously: the voices have become almost mechanical – as if they are being manipulated by an outside force instead of choosing to sing such strange music on their own

3:11

Low string descending arpeggio begins

3:30

This section is even more strident and dense than those heard previously and continues for almost a full minute; this is quite uncomfortable for me as a listener – when will it end?

3:56

Solo again introduces final phrase of text – “resolved” harmonies are not resolved tonally

“but no more difficult than the facts to be (repeat) resolved.” (repeat)

Again the music subverts the meaning of the text

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 4:11

New harmony here – entrances are so close together

Canon on “facts to be resolved” As the entrances are closer together, each phrase sounds more like an echo of the previous entrance – the humanity of the voices is slightly restored

4:15

Violin countermelody followed by low string entrance (4:22)

4:35

Entrance of male voices, modulation to a new harmony

4:44

Each time the phrase ends the harmony is “resolved” in a new way

“resolved” (unison and repeated) With all of the tonal ambiguity throughout the movement, it seems that Reich cannot find a correct way to end harmonically

5:04

Movement ends with another homage to the opening of the piece: same harmony, mallet polyrhythms become a consistent pulse, sustained brass

The only logical resolution is to return to the beginning, the “song / which drives all things out of mind;” this time the return is, to me, a welcome change from the confusion of this part of the movement

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Table 3.3: Movement IIIC – Slow

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:00 Gong and chord played on the

downbeat by piano and mallet instruments signal an abrupt change of mood and tempo; the slow alternating fifths pattern played by the glockenspiel returns

Time is moving forward, just as it always has, despite the musical commentary that interceded

0:04 After a jarring chord on a downbeat in the piano, diminution of the glockenspiel fifths occurs, and mallet instruments enter with a slow syncopated pattern

It has become clear that the first part of the movement is repeating exactly, and thus that musical process (phasing), more than development (resolving a long range dissonance), is emphasized

0:15 Entrance of the same melodic cell heard in the section A of this movement

0:27

Phasing begin as other violins echo short segments of the melody

Juxtaposition of a feeling of stasis, provided by the mallet instruments, with slowly progressing time (phasing process)

0:48

Voices slowly swell to the forefront and then imperceptibly fade back into the musical texture

“De” sustained Ambiguity of the beginning and ending of the vocal phrase mirrors the ambiguity of the text here

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 1:04 Sustained brass faintly echo the

voices

1:20 Violins abruptly begin a new melody on a new chord, perhaps an inversion of the previous melody

Changes are so subtle I often do not recognize them until several measures after they have occurred

1:35

Phasing of this version of the melody becomes perceptible

1:45

Voices move up (half step in the top voice) halfway through the phrase

“De” sustained Small changes from the pattern established in section A ask the listener to question whether she is to “think or listen”

2:00

Sustained brass harmony resolves downward, opposite of the voices

Mirror image echo in the brass is a minute copy of the mirror image structure of this movement

2:17

A new melody begins, supported by a new harmony

2:37

This new melody evolves via the phasing process

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 2:46

Vocal entrance is overshadowed by the abrupt entrance of a siren-like sound

“De” sustained

Much of the musical material from sections A and C so far has prepared the listener for this important moment – shape and melodic content of the violin melody, the sustained brass, and vocal phrases all foreshadow this entrance

3:00

Sustained brass entrance underneath the siren

The idea communicated by all of these musical elements comes into focus: warning, danger

3:19

Suddenly the siren disappears the musical process continues as expected: new harmony, new melody in the violins that is phased (3:27)

3:47

Siren and voices begin again “De” sustained

4:03

Pitch of the siren rises with the brass entrance and continues to rise, building to a climax

Higher pitch signals an increasing emotional state of anxiety and tension

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 4:20

A decisive ending of the phrase in the violins is followed by a return to the opening of the movement

Finally a building of intensity that resolves in an emotionally satisfying way, a payoff for the listener – again a moment foreshadowed throughout sections A and C

4:29

As before, a bell-like mallet instrument establishes the pulse

Faint reminder of time

4:34

Slow, chorale-like declamation of this important part of the text

“Say to them: Clear presentation of the text emphasizes the importance of the words and their meaning

4:52

Harmonization of the melody has changed from section A; violin doubles the soprano melody

Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to realize his wishes.

Throughout section C, resistance of exact repetition reveals that subtle development is taking place both in the musical argument and in the story that is being told

5:15

New harmonization emphasizes the word “realize”

Now that he can realize them, he must either change them or perish.” (repeat)

Although the melody is less monotone here than in section A, the character of the melody suggests speech and direct communication; the last section of the movement (B) repeated the words of the text until their meaning almost disappeared, achieving the opposite effect

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Time Musical Elements Text Effect 5:42

“Say to

5:51

As the melody reaches its highest point, the pulse from Movement I returns again

them” The focus and concentration of this section cannot continue; the pulse always intercedes

95

Table 4: Movement IV – Moderate

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:00 Gong, piano, sticks, and mallet

instruments open the movement and establish an underlying rhythmic pulse characterized by a quick tempo and consistent syncopation

The austerity of the previous movement gives way, by means of pulse from Movement I, to an almost jovial rhythmic energy; this musical material from Movement II seems less serious when compared with sections A and C of Movement III

0:17 Text is emphasized through elongated declamation (more than one note per syllable) and a higher melodic line with more supporting harmonies

“Well, shall we think or listen?

Listening to this question after Movement III it becomes clear what one should either “think or listen” to: the problems of “man,” or humanity; thus it makes sense that our attention should be drawn to this question through differences in melody and harmony

0:34 Both male and female voices present the text this time, in rhythmic unison

Is there a sound addressed not wholly to the ear?

Voices have come together to consider a common problem

0:45

Violins repeat the same note on the downbeat, with vigorous articulation, thereby drawing attention to the text that follows

We half close our eyes. We do not hear it through our eyes.

Changes in the melodic line and vocal harmonization convey a heightened intensity

96

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:53

Drums in the flute-drum duet are accompanied by mallet instruments this time

There is even more energy in this musical material than in Movement II – as if the listener is being propelled towards some pivotal musical revelation

1:08 It is not a flute note either, (repeat)

1:23

it is the relation of a flute note to a drum.

This text invites the listener to consider the metaphoric implications of the musical material and also to look for meaning in the relationships between musical elements

1:31

Flute-drum material returns to complete another example of a mini arch

1:48

Reharmonizations in the vocal parts allow a higher soprano pitch

I am wide awake. The mind is listening.”

Contour of the vocal line seems to illustrate the meaning of “awake” (upward skip in the melody – akin to opening ones eyes) and “listening” (half steps suggest the vibration of sound waves) – the two most important words in these lines of text

97

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 2:00

Voices, strings, mallet instruments, and winds emphasize the syncopated pulse that opens the movement, while contrasting sustained brass highlight the harmonic movement from one chord to the next in the cycle

“De” syncopated Unexpected harmonic resolution in the brass helps propel the energy of the movement forward

2:10

Strings and brass take over the syncopated pulse, while voices fade to the background

“De” pulses Monotone melody conveys a sense of stasis despite the intense rhythmic energy

2:20

“De” syncopated Switching between two groups conveys the idea of call and response between two opposing sides in a conversation

2:30 “De” pulses

2:39

Chords of the harmonic cycle are paired together in antecedent and consequent phrases

“De” syncopated While the text has no linguistic meaning here, (it is only a single syllable), the “De” syllable still has a meaning when placed in context here – it helps to illustrate the opposition between thinking and listening

2:52 Movement ends with the (now expected) reference to the opening of Movement I

“De” pulses

Musical material does not repeat as it did in Movement II; I observe this but do not fully understand the significance

98

Table 5: Movement V – Fast

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 0:00 Movement begins with musical

material from the middle of Movement I: mallet pulse covering every division of the beat and a melodic cell in the violin

As the gong again signals the transition from one movement (or state of mind) to the next, there is the sense of a natural evolution from the pulse that ended the previous movement, as opposed to an abrupt shift

0:24 Phasing entrances in subsequent violin parts fill all of the rests between the notes of the initial melodic cell

At first the notes of each individual violin part (which are each like an annotation of some part of the original cell) are distinct – at some point it becomes difficult to discern the distinctions between them as each individual part is absorbed by the pulsing energy of the musical moment

0:40 Brass melody is reminiscent of that used to present the text “Say to them”

While this movement does not include the text “Begin,” there is the suggestion that a conversation is being initiated with this melody

1:05

Piccolo, bass, and tuba enter at the end of the phrase

Top and bottom harmonics create a sense of musical spaciousness

1:20

While the pulse remains constant, sustained brass and winds suggest forward movement, as each phrase has a definitive beginning and ending

99

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 1:37

Brass and wind phrases begin on the same harmony but resolve to a different chord at the end of each phrase

Repetition suggests the composer searching for the correct way complete the phrase

1:44

Imperceptible changes in the supporting pulse harmony create the illusion of suspended musical time; however, with the forward movement of the brass/wind phrases, there is also the expectation that the movement so far is building towards something

2:13

Musical accompaniment to the brass phrases (violin phasing and mallet pulse) are a musical illustration of an abstract concept: energy

2:34

Compositional technique used here is one that also characteristic of all other movements of the piece: layering of distinct musical groups that, through repetition, become a cohesive whole

2:55

First perceptible (to my ears) change in the supporting harmony

Again the listener is encouraged to listen for such subtle changes

3:19

Each note of the brass/wind phrase is emphasized with messa di voce-like articulation

Timbre, harmony, and articulation of the brass and wind parts suggests a blurring between vocal and instrumental sounds

100

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 3:30

Final note of the brass/wind phrase is held for more beats than in previous phrases delaying resolution of the harmony

Unexpected change in the pattern reminds me to listen closely

3:50

All instruments abruptly stop; long solo vocal notes emphasize each syllable of the word

“Inseparable The syllables of the word “inseparable” are, curiously, separated

3:57

Mallet pulse returns on the final syllable of “inseparable”; sustained brass/winds return on the word “fire”

from the fire

Undercutting the meaning of the word “inseparable,” the pulse is separated from the melody

4:09

After brass and winds drop out on the repeat of “inseparable,” violins return on the word “fire”

Inseparable (repeat) from the fire

4:24

Notable change in the harmony on the word “light” is supported by the climax of the vocal melody and the entrance of low brass/strings

its light (repeat) takes precedence over it.

If the pulse is the representation of the word “fire,” and “light” is connected with melody and harmony

4:42

At the end of the vocal phrase, the dynamic rises and violins hint at another melodic cell from the opening movement

Energy of the instrumental group increases

4:49

Low string entrance adds depth and energy to the violin melody

101

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 4:56

After moving to the next chord in the cycle, low string melody becomes more independent from the violin melody

Density of the musical texture, as well as the fast tempo and frequency of the notes, conveys a sense of excitement

5:18

Melody from Movement I finally materializes from the musical texture

5:34

Instrumental section swells into the vocal entrance, not abruptly, yet with no transition

who most shall advance the light – (repeat) Question asked here may be interpreted as “what instrument will resolve the harmony,” as well as in the philosophical and literary sense: “who shall solve the problems of humanity?”

6:03

who most shall advance the light – Harmonic change on the word “light” again suggests light as a metaphor for harmony

6:07

Instruments dramatically drop out for a vocal solo

call it (repeated) (Emotional) climax of the entire work – (musical climax may be the “difficult” canon in Movement IIIB)

6:27

All instruments return on the final declamation of this phrase as suddenly as they stopped

call it what you may!” Text, particularly the emphasis on the words “call it,” conveys the theme of communication and also suggests that multiple meanings of “light” are possible

102

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 6:35

Mallet pulse and slowly moving “waves” of sound from the opening of the piece return

“De” – echoes instrumental pulse (to the end) The work has come full circle and is ending as it began

6:46

Second phrase begins on a new chord

Sense of suspended time returns

6:55

High winds repeat the melody heard supporting the words “who most shall advance the light”

Blending of vocal and instrumental sounds suggests that music communicates ideas as if it were a language

7:04

The return of the “song which drives all things out of mind” suggests that communication takes place on many sonic levels

7:28

Sustained brass from the opening of the movement returns

The danger of the “wishes” of mankind persists

8:19

Musical texture thins as instrumental layers disappear – beginning with the sustained brass

Entire work is almost a mirror image - slowly building and slowly fading away

8:51

Cycle stops – same harmony to the end of the piece

As only the highest vocal and instrumental parts remain, thus conveying a sense of the music becoming higher and lighter and eventually floating away

103

Time Musical Elements Text Effect 9:30 Following the tonal and linguistic

ambiguities throughout the work, even the exact moment the work ends has some ambiguity

104

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