Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music

12. Repetition

12 repetition In C “In C” is a phrase used by jazz musicians to indicate improvising in the key of C. When you go to an engagement and want to warm up, the leader might simply say to the other players, “In C,” and they know what he means. Jamming (improvising) is a good way to get to know new players. In C (1964) by Terry Riley, is for any number of players of treble instruments, that is, instruments in the range from middle C and above. The score consists of fifty-three melodic cells, many of which you might find in a Baroque or Classical work. Each one has a double bar before and after it, indicating that it can be repeated as many times as the player wishes. Each player must play all fifty-three cells in order. You can’t go back to a previous one. Throughout the performance a pianist plays the top two Cs of the piano as a rapid eighth-note pulse, which sets the tempo of the performance. The pulse remains constant; it doesn’t slow down or speed up. Each player synchronizes his playing with the pulse. There are all sorts of internal decisions you have to make about moving forward. You have to have a sense of ensemble. Terry was an accomplished improviser so this was a natural thing for him to do. A typical performance takes about forty-five minutes. You probably know that the key of C major has no accidentals , no flats or sharps. If you started on the note C on the piano and stuck to the white keys, you would most likely be playing in the key of C. If you introduce a black note, a flat or a sharp, you will most likely be playing in another key. Adding a sharp or flat 110 : m u s i c 1 0 9 to the key signature brings you to a key a fifth above or below the previous key. G major, one sharp, is a fifth above C; F major, with one flat, is a fifth below. The closest key relationships are those one or two accidentals apart. In Western classical music, composers would usually move (modulate) to a closely related key. Later in the nineteenth century, for reasons of drama, modulations to more distant keys became more common. You can get a good picture of these relationships by drawing a circle of fifths: moving clockwise, adding sharps, you arrive at the key of B-sharp major, which is actually C major; moving counterclockwise, adding flats, you arrive at D-double flat, actually C major. Let’s look at Terry’s cells in chronological order. The first cell actually starts on the note E, preceded by a grace note C. Starting on E, the third degree of the C major scale, gives the beginning of the work a feeling of lightness. You’re not hammering away at the tonic. The piece may be in C but you can’t be sure yet. It’s only at cell number six that C appears as a long tone. The first accidental we encounter, at cell number fourteen, is an F-sharp leading up to G. This gives a feeling of movement towards G-major. But since some of the other players may still be playing the previous two or three cells, depending upon how far apart they are, the movement is somewhat blurred. Let’s superimpose the two previous cells being played by slower players. We find a cluster of the following pitches: F-natural, F-sharp, G, B, and C. It creates a lovely mixture of the tonic (C) with the dominant (G) and the sub-dominant (F). B and F-sharp are both leading tones (to C and G), further reinforcing their presence. This cluster is almost Stravinskyan in its polytonal sound. The piece ends when everyone has played the last cell. They may stop at any time. The pulse simply stops any time after that. The addition of the pulse was most likely Steve Reich’s idea. There is controversy about this. He played in the first performance of In C. To position the pulse in the highest octave of the r e p e t i t i o n : 111 piano was a stroke of genius. It would have been more conventional to place it in a lower bass octave...