In C

I want to go off on a bit of a musical diversion today.  Last time, I was talking about Polish composer Henryk Górecki and his 20th century reinterpretation of plain chant in his Miserere.  I know a number of you really enjoyed that piece, and I have two more pieces in a similar vein to share with you.  But I've found a phenomenal recording of a phenomenal piece that I've been listening to over and over this last week, and I really want to share it.

The piece is In C, written by American composer Terry Riley in 1963.

In C marks a kind of reaction against the atonal and twelve-tonal music that dominated much of the first half of the 20th century.  Composers such as Schönberg, Webern, Berg, Boulez, and Stravinsky produced works that were highly dissonant, with non-intuitive use of harmony, meter, and structure within the piece.  This is what makes 20th century music so difficult to listen to for a lot of people - it doesn't seem to conform to any of the rules we expect from a piece of music, so we're left thinking, what the heck is this?  

Enter the Minimalists.  This is a group that includes John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, La Monte Young, and Terry Riley.  If they had written a manifesto, I think it would have sounded something like this:

"You know, you guys have stretched and bent and broken all the rules to make music.  It's great that you felt the freedom to do that, more power to you.  But you don't need to go so far out into left field to make good music.  A lot of those rules are there for a really good reason.  We don't need to use weird dissonant harmonies to make music with; the traditional stuff works just fine.  And music should have a pulse to it.  It doesn't take a lot to make really good music - we'll do it with just a few notes.  Or just a few instruments.  Or with ordinary sounds.  You've made things way too difficult.  Let's simplify."

The rules for In C are very simple:

1. The piece consists of 53 short snippets of music that are repeated.
2. Any number of instruments can play.  Any kind of instrument can play.
3. Start with theme #1.  Play it for a while, then move to the next theme when you feel like it.
4. Don't get too far ahead of or too far behind the rest of the group.  There shouldn't be more than 3 or 4 themes going at a time.
5. Keep in strict time with each other.  To help you out, you'll have a timekeeper who will be playing the beat in C for the whole piece.  (Pity that guy, because it's a very boring part.)
6. The piece is finished when it's done.

The score for in C looks like this: 

Terry Riley - In C - Score

Follow along as you listen to the piece.

The first 5 minutes or so on the recording aren't the piece itself, just the folks in the ensemble getting tuned and warmed up.  Skip ahead if you like to 5:20, which is where the actual piece begins.  The audience applauds a short bit later - hey, we're really getting started here!

From the outset, it's clear that In C is a very appropriate title for this piece.  This piece is not just in C, it's obnoxiously in C.  The whole first section of the piece is nothing but an exploration of the C major triad: C-E-G.  C major is not normally a key you'd think of as being fun and exciting.  Case in point:

It's a rather boring key.  It's all white keys, no black keys, no sharps or flats.  It's a key that's safe and non-offensive, a key that makes a statement by not making any kind of statement.  A very interesting choice of key for Terry Riley to have chosen to make a statement with!

At 8:30 we start to see some dissonance, as theme #8 begins.  The C major theme is over and now we're starting to see some tension building up as we move into whatever is going to come next.  And then at 14:00, we start to go into some very strange territory indeed as theme #14 starts.  

The last note of theme #14 is an F#.  Not only is F# not part of the key of C, it's harmonically as far removed from C as you can get.  The interval between C and F# is called a tritone, and it's called that because the distance between C and F# is three whole steps, or six half steps.  (Count them: C-C#-D-D#-E-F-F#.  Six half steps.)  The piece sounds very strange and dissonant through here.  The clash between C and F# builds up tension needs to be resolved somehow.

At 18:00, it doesn't sound promising at all.  Theme #19, a G, is played against theme #21, an F#.  These two notes don't go together at all, and the result sounds like somebody beating the crap out of a set of bagpipes.  But at 19:30 - listen!  There it is in the background, so quiet, you can barely hear it.  The next theme!

Now it becomes clear what that F# was doing this whole time.  Themes 22 through 26 present a scale in E minor: E - F# - G - A - B.  We've moved away from the original key of C into what's called a closely related key.  The keys of C major and E minor differ by only one note: where the key of C major has the note of F in its scale, E minor has that pesky F# that's been causing all these nasty dissonanaces all this time.  So now we sit back, relax, and enjoy this new key for a while.

Look at how similar themes 22-26 are.  When they're played in sync with each other, there's this really cool echo effect that develops, almost as if you had a tape looped back to be out of sync with itself.  The use of taped sequences was something that Terry Riley, John Adams, and Steve Reich actually do use in other compositions.

By 28:00, the E minor sequence is over and we're back in C again.  Ready to move on to the next thing, whatever it is.  And then at 31:20, there it is - listen to that cello, playing theme #35!  Finally, after all these short repetitive motifs, we get the chance for each instrument to come out and sing.  At 39:00, theme #42 appears - another singing motif.

From there, the piece starts to wind down.  When themes 43-46 play together, around 44:00, the whole piece shimmers and sounds like a happy dance.  There's one last singing theme, theme 48, which plays from 48:15 to 52:40 in the various parts, and then the piece reaches its conclusion.  The ending of the piece mirrors the beginning, but is based around a different set of three notes.  Whereas the beginning of the piece was based on the notes of C-E-G - a C major chord, the end of the piece is based on the triad of F-G-B♭. As the final G-B♭pair dies down, the timekeeper playing C keeps on going, until he finally stops and the piece is over.

What's the significance of this piece?  Sure, it had a heavy influence on the later work of Steve Reich, John Adams, and Philip Glass, who would go on to become the most noted composers of the latter half of the 20th century.  But the heavy use of repetition within a composition, where subtle changes between repetitions cause one section to slide smoothly into the next without the listener really being aware of it - combined with Riley's technique of taking taped samples, manipulating them, and inserting them into his compositions - these two techniques founded a brand new musical genre.

It's a genre you hear every time you out to the club.  Trance.  Ambient.  House.  Techno.  Brian Eno.  Autechre.  The Chemical Brothers.  Thievery Corporation.  Skrillex.  DJ Tiesto.  Le Castle Vania.

They all owe their origins to one clever little piece.  Written… in C.