In C on Its Own Terms: A Statistical and Historical View

IN C ON ITS OWN TERMS: A STATISTICAL AND HISTORICAL VIEW S. ALEXANDER REED I. INTRODUCTION AND STRUCTURAL CONCERNS UCH OF THE JOY in hearing and performing Terry Riley’s In C stems from the work’s indeterminacy. Because its performance can come out in a myriad of ways, the surprises of orchestration, duration, and intensity can become as focal for all involved as the notes themselves. By the same token, the difficulty in analyzing In C is largely a byproduct of this very indeterminacy; the analytic claims one may confidently make about the music as experienced based on a reading of the score appear initially limited. It may therefore be reasonable to approach the work as a sonic artifact, analyzing specific performances. Indeed, this approach has been fruitful to some, such as Cecilia Sun, who studies the work’s performances in Asia and its incorporation of M 48 Perspectives of New Music Asian music and aesthetics in performances elsewhere.1 Such study of performance also notably guides Robert Carl, who in his 2009 book devoted to the work provides what he calls an “exogenous” account of various recordings of Riley’s opus in addition to a consideration of the score’s 53 famous modules.2 The analysis of In C I present here nevertheless centers on the score first as currently published, and then in light of several changes it has undergone over time. This is because Riley has made changes to certain aspects of the score and paratext that invite us to interrogate deeply the connection between what is on the page of In C and how it determines what is played. I reconstruct a performative structure heavily based on Riley’s own “performing directions,” and in some cases on other preferences he has expressed about how to play the piece. An illuminating new look at this work is possible because of the analytically unplumbed specificity of these directions, the most current of which appear in the 2005 score. In viewing the piece thus, we might conceivably approach a precision of harmonic analysis not afforded by the transcription or spectrography of a single performance, and a sense of large-scale structure that is deeply hidden on the level of the 53 modules alone. One previous analytic endeavor, Richard Field Vosper’s 1980 master’s thesis at San Jose State University, intimates that an approach similar to this might be possible, but ultimately pursues the empirical results of computer-simulated performances of the piece instead.3 In the most recent score of In C, Riley makes a few specifications that can contribute a great deal to what Carl calls an “endogenous” reading of the work—one that derives distinct data concerning proportion and structure from the printed page. The first of Riley’s instructions reads, “since performances normally average between 45 minutes and an hour and a half, it can be assumed that one would repeat each pattern from somewhere between 45 seconds and a minute and a half or longer.” Riley in this passage reveals that the performed duration of a given pattern ought to be more or less equal to any other pattern’s duration. If the piece were to bear another proportion—for example, in keeping with the relative durations of the patterns as notated—then a different instruction would communicate this, such as “repeat each pattern between 15 and 30 times or more.”4 It is precisely on account of this first specification of Riley’s that he is able to put forward a second: “As the performance progresses, performers should stay within 2 or 3 patterns of each other. It is important not to race too far ahead or to lag too far behind.” Indeed, if the patterns as performed were of as notably different durations as In C On Its Own Terms 49 their proportions on the page suggest, then it would be nearly impossible for performers to adhere to this specification. The nature of In C makes the cohesion of any performance difficult. The work’s indeterminacy, in which performers may start and stop playing whenever they wish, means that players are unlikely to perform in unison even when they are on...