Terry Riley's In C (Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure)

Terry Riley's In C

STUDIES IN MUSICAL GENESIS, STRUCTURE, AND INTERPRETATION

Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations William Kinderman Beethoven’s ‘‘Appassionata’’ Sonata Martha Frohlich Richard Strauss’s Elektra Bryan Gilliam Wagner’s Das Rheingold Warren Darcy Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E, Op. 109 Nicholas Marston Mahler’s Fourth Symphony James L. Zychowicz Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony Alain Frogley Debussy’s Ibe´ria Matthew Brown

Robert Carl

Terry Riley's In C

3 2009

3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright q 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carl, Robert, 1954– Terry Riley’s In C / Robert Carl. p. cm. — (Studies in musical genesis, structure, and interpretation) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-532528-7 1. Riley, Terry, 1935– In C. 2. Minimal music—History and criticism. I. Title. ML410.R499C37 2009 784.18’94—dc22 2008043919 Publication of this book was supported by the Dragan Plamenac Publication Endowment Fund of the American Musicological Society

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Series Editor's Foreword

The Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure series was inaugurated in 1985 with Philip Gossett’s study of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. Under Lewis Lockwood’s editorship, volumes dedicated to works by German masters followed: Beethoven, Schumann, Weber, and Wagner. Over the last quartercentury, while maintaining its focus on single works by eminent composers, the series has gradually moved forward to embrace the twentieth century and the broader geography of musical Europe. Once based primarily upon rigorous sketch studies as a key to understanding the evolution of musical structure, the series has now extended its methodological scope into the realm of interpretation: how works were first performed and received, how editions become more or less authoritative, even how legal technicalities of copyright have been addressed. Hence, the series’ current name, Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure and Interpretation, reflects the original intention of tracing works from conception to birth but then does also admit consideration of post-natal circumstance. Robert Carl’s study of Terry Riley’s In C pushes the conception of musical genesis forward in several ways: in time (to the 1960s), in place (to California), in methodology (to include oral evidence of a still-living composer and performers), in perspective (of a composer rather than musicologist or performer, as previously in the series). More radically, Carl’s volume is about an improvisatory work which fits on one sheet of paper. Yet, despite its scant notation, In C has over the years gained recognition as the founding text of what we now recognize as musical minimalism. Sketch study is little help in understanding In C ’s genesis, whether as score, first performance, or first recording. More to the point is an understanding of Riley’s aesthetic stance in the 1960s and a technical reconstruction of how, when and where the work came into existence. San Francisco of the midsixties was, it seems, a rather hazy kind of place. A charm of Carl’s account is how differently people remember the same events, even events that were so much about communal listening and musical interaction. Unlike most works in the Genesis series, Terry Riley’s In C lacks a definitive form. And it would be a sad day if it ever gained one. Rather, through improvised performance, it undergoes constant renewal. Carl correctly claims it as ‘‘the first truly ‘globalist’ composition,’’ able to be performed in multiple ways by any manner of musical resources. His appendix

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describes fourteen such renewals over the last four decades, ranging from the Shanghai Film Orchestra to the Piano Circus, and with durations from around twenty minutes to over an hour. In C is a ‘‘masterwork,’’ then, not for what it is but for what it causes to happen. As Kyle Gann explains late in the volume, In C reminds us that ‘‘a score is just a recipe at best.’’ Terry Riley has merely loosened the performing controls more than in more highly notated music. In C plays in a space, ‘‘between the foreseen and the serendipitous’’ (Carl), of growing importance in music since the 1960s and now crucial to the very nature of twenty-first-century music. After reading this book I am sure you will appreciate better not only the genesis of a major work of American musical minimalism but also why it now holds a crucial place in the legacy of twentieth-century music. Malcolm Gillies City University London

Preface

This is a book about a piece of music and, by extension, the man who created it. And so I, the scribe, am by definition the least important individual involved . . . certainly not the subject. But in these few pages I will make my one and only personal appearance, because I believe that knowing a few things about me, about the process by which this book has emerged, and my experience of that process, may be useful for you, the reader. Since I am a composer, my musical discipline colors the way I look at the world, and how I have approached this project. To me, In C is a shining landmark within a remarkable period of American music, a linchpin on which so much turned. And to capture both its essence and its importance, a range of approaches is necessary. At times I have looked at it very much as would a composer: as a series of advances and retreats, a sequence of strategic decisions, exercises in both technical experiment and aesthetic taste. At another juncture, I have taken a theorist’s stance, viewing the work as a synthetic whole, freed from any surrounding context, so as to reveal its innate structure. I also have taken on the role of musicologist, attempting to reconstruct the milieu in which the work appeared, evoking its historical, cultural, social context. And I play aesthetician, discussing the work’s significance, impact, and implications, both as a commentator, and in dialogue with others. In short, I feel my experience as an artist entitles me to take an approach that is eclectic in its means, but I hope integrated in its result. If I succeed in doing this, the result will mirror what I feel is the analogous character of In C itself. I am about twenty years younger than the protagonists of this story. I first became aware of In C in the early 1970s, while an undergraduate. I came to music relatively late, and all through college I greedily absorbed as much music as I could, trying to assimilate both the Western tradition and all the challenges to it that were then percolating. In a sense everything was ‘‘new music’’ for me. When I first heard In C, around 1974, I was confused by it. On the one hand it seemed an almost homogenous sound-mass to me, as so many aspects were stripped down to the simplest elements, so different from the modernism that attracted me at the time. But simultaneously it seemed chaotic, raucous, a jamboree that denied the discipline which I felt I needed to embrace. I didn’t dislike it, but I couldn’t understand it either. At that point, it wasn’t as influential for me as for many of my generation.

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Instead, my road to Damascus was long and winding. Because the music that had always stirred me the most was that of the American ‘‘ultramodernists’’—in particular Ives and Ruggles, as well as others such as Cowell, Vare`se, Antheil, and Seeger—I slowly began to understand how the inventions of Riley and other minimalists fit within this great ‘‘maverick’’ tradition. But even more concretely, there were two experiences that changed my view of In C, leading me to feel the necessity of this book. The first came through reviewing CDs. Over a decade or so I heard, pondered, and commented upon one recording after another of In C. I came to understand both what a truly flexible work it was, and also how ironclad was its essence, projected in both its generality and its particulars, despite the most varied instrumentation, duration, and performers’ choices. The original recording, despite its enormous importance and many virtues, did not necessarily make a definitive case for the piece. Rather, multiple encounters made me aware of the revolution its multiplicity represented. The second experience came through teaching. Anyone who deals with the young (who always stay the same age in your classes and lesson, and grow ever younger than you) benefits from their discussions of tastes and trends. Everyone is an individual, but over time several recurrent elements have emerged that start to define the practice of young composers in the new century. Four aspects stand out. First, these young composers are quite natural and fearless in their acceptance and appropriation of Western musical practices that are outside the Eurocentric concert traditions. Jazz, rock, musical theater, and a host of ever splintering cultish genres mix it up with elements more familiar to my generation. This trend was brewing when I was their age, but it now has no exotic or confrontational appeal, it just is. Second, from very early on, they have a broad, if not deep, knowledge of world musics, to which they’ve had access from very early on in their lives. Some of it comes from non-Western classical traditions, but also from hybridization occurring in popular musics around the globe. Most young composers do not aspire to ethnomusicological expertise. Rather, they hear something that intrigues them, pursue it as long as it’s useful for their work, and then either deepen their relation or discard it. Third is the influence of technology, which is so enormous a topic I hesitate to venture anything further on the topic. Suffice it to say that from the early days of tape splicing and looping, to the current state of highly individuated, software-based control over almost every parameter of sound and structure, the interaction with new music technology has reshaped the way young composers think about music in its very essence. And fourth, perhaps most notable in its break with earlier ‘‘classical’’ practice, improvisation now is viewed as a natural part of the compositional spectrum. No

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longer is it the province only of jazz, but rather, a gift of spontaneous creation to all musical idioms. I consistently see some of my students’ most fertile, exciting, and adventurous exploration emerging from their confrontation with degrees of openness in their music. They are eager to loosen structure while not abandoning it, and they see precedents in ancestors as varied as Cage, Monk, Zappa, Stockhausen, and Riley. This re-acceptance of the ‘‘moment’’ in composition, the dynamic tension between the foreseen and the serendipitous, seems to me an ever-growing aspect of a new, twentyfirst-century practice. And of course, for each of these four, In C is seminal. It is one of the first major pieces to embrace a sound that was percolating in San Francisco’s rock music scene (as well as free jazz), even if it does not ape it. It also triggers associations to a variety of non-Western musics, again even if it doesn’t easily fall into a clear analog of any. While at first it did not utilize many electronic elements (other than keyboards such as the Hammond electric piano and Chamberlin organ), it was the clear and immediate result of Riley’s extensive engagement with what was then called ‘‘tape music.’’ And above all, its structure, a near-perfect balance of the fixed and open, is one of the first and most enduring examples of a new, ‘‘abstract’’ form of structured improvisation. So over time I came to see what all the shouting was about, and over many encounters came to love In C. I now happily anticipate the emergence of particular modules, often with the same eagerness I would feel for a climactic moment in Beethoven or a particularly lyrical theme’s emergence in Brahms. Paradoxically, it feels more radical conceptually with the passage of time, yet it also sounds more and more natural, like any great work of music. And so I felt the time was right to explore In C as a repertoire item, something both fresh and enduring. And it has led me on a chase. And that chase now deserves a few words. This is a piece for which the majority of participants in its creation are still alive—and lively. A key part of my research has been tracking down and interviewing a group of septuagenarians who are remarkable in their love of life, sharpness of intellect, and continuing engagement with their culture. At the same time, the book’s great reliance on oral history necessarily raises questions. Any individual’s memory can be fallible, and events that occurred several decades back can be easily confused and faded. Why trust them at all? This is where the ‘‘detective work’’ comes into play. I have tried to guide my research by a few simple rules: First, don’t try to define everything. There are certain aspects of the events described that will never be known in perfect detail. In such cases, I admit the problem, propose alternatives, and often suggest the most likely

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explanation, based on evidence. A suggestion to the reader: do read the endnotes. There are several sub-histories there. Second, look for confirmation. If more than one eyewitness remembers the same thing, it’s a good chance there is some truth therein. Or, if a participant has a memory that is based on another confirming piece of evidence (such as Pauline Oliveros’s memory of two pianos at the San Francisco Tape Music Center’s 1964 ‘‘Tudorfest,’’ which could have remained in place for the later concert premiere of In C), again there is reason to believe in its factuality. Third, search for the feel of the event, of the time. One can go only so far with concrete facts. In C’s premiere did not have the documentation of photos, film, or even a professional recording (and what was made was terribly flawed and now is lost, as far as anyone can tell). What it did have, however, was a group of brilliant people performing and in attendance, who intuited that something important had occurred and who marked it in their mental calendars. A large number went on to major careers in American music and saw the event as a landmark in their own personal growth. There was a critic of depth and sensitivity present who wrote a landmark review. In short, all these elements remain available to anyone willing to ask the question, ‘‘What happened?’’ and more important, ‘‘What was it like?’’ and ‘‘What did it mean to you?’’ Finally, use all the available tools of other approaches—primary historical sources, analysis, and aesthetics, to bring out the richest possible interpretation of the piece. Finally, a word about Riley himself. This work is not a comprehensive biography but rather presents those aspects of the composer’s experience that have a direct relation to the work at hand. Certainly, if something is more ‘‘controversial’’ but meets this standard, it is fair game—in Riley’s case, perhaps the most notable such issue is his drug use in the 1960s. Also what I could call the basic temperament of the composer is of profound importance to the nature of his work. I personally cannot claim to know Riley well, but over the past couple of years he has shown great generosity and humor in our encounters. Those who have known Riley for much longer speak, almost with wonder, of his open, joyful nature. Here is a small sampling of comments coming from interviews I have conducted: I was really impressed by Terry. I saw him as this incredibly enthusiastic, bubbly guy, and a real inspiration to me at the time. (Jon Gibson) I remember meeting him on top of this hill. I was walking, and we had this great conversation, and he was just a happy guy, he was just bubbling, he was always smiling. And if he had a worry, it never showed. An optimist. . . . So I thought, this

Preface : xi guy does everything he wants, and it makes him feel good, and he doesn’t criticize himself. (Mel Weitsman) He was such a wonderful human being, so ready to go and alive and interested. . . . He was playing French piano music at the time. He was fascinated with all sorts of things. I showed him chord progressions for jazz and pop, and he took off with that. He played a lot of jazz in Paris. (Pauline Oliveros) Also Terry had the kind of personality . . . people could see Terry as a kind of star. There’s something about Terry, his personality . . . he had that charisma, he walked into the room, and everybody felt good. (David Behrman)

I believe this sense of personal assurance, of balance, is a critical aspect of Riley’s personality which allowed him to effect the extraordinary synthesis of such diverse—indeed, seemingly incompatible—elements that went into the crucible of In C. Riley seems to have been blessed with an exceptional mix of both humility and self-assurance that has allowed him to absorb influences—indeed to submit to them—without fear of being overwhelmed. Tied to this quality is a natural patience. While without doubt creatively driven and not without ambition, he has consistently allowed himself whatever time he feels is necessary to process and gestate ideas, to develop his practice. Thus, as will be seen in this book, sudden uprootings of himself and family to Europe and New York were at the moment seemingly willful, yet in retrospect can be seen as key points in his developmental trajectory (beyond the scope of this study, his ‘‘discipleship’’ with Pandit Pran Nath would lead to an intensive engagement with Indian raga singing and usher in an entirely new creative outpouring in the 1980s). Riley is a strong creative personality, and he has strong opinions about music, its relation to life and the spirit. But at the same time, these come from a sense of strong rootedness, from a basic identification with his art, and not from extraneous personal issues. The unique confluence of circumstance, influence, experience, education, and personality that is Riley’s own story creates the framework for the creation of In C, a piece whose astonishing ‘‘genre-busting’’ character remains a healthy challenge to all composers today and seems ever more prescient in its development of musical practice for the twenty-first century. *** Thanks are in order to the many people who have generously contributed to the process of this book’s writing. At the top are those who participated in the premieres of the work and were willing to speak of their experience. I can also say that I have been made far more optimistic about the future— both my own and in general—by contact with such an energetic and frisky group of septuagenarians. For the San Francisco premiere, this includes Jon Gibson, James Lowe, Bill McGinnis, Warner Jepson, Tony Martin, Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Stan Shaff, Morton Subotnick, Mel Weitsman,

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and Phil Winsor. For the Buffalo/New York City recorded premiere, my thanks to David Behrman, Stuart Dempster, Jon Hassell, Katrina Krimsky, Rene´e Levine-Packer, David Rosenboom, and Jan Williams. Robert Black, David Bernstein, Kyle Gann, and Ingram Marshall were generous in sharing their thoughts on the importance and legacy of the piece. And Anna Halprin and Loren Rush provided important insights into Riley’s early work in San Francisco before the premiere. In particular I am grateful to McGinnis and Sender for locating the original score of In C; Martin for the premiere program; Jepson for photos of Riley in the early 1960s; and Weitsman for discovering the score of Autumn Leaves, which was assumed lost. And I wish to recognize in particular Stuart Dempster, whose presciently thorough archiving of his own career has provided essential documents and information that probably could not have come from any other source, especially as it relates the recording and Riley’s time in Buffalo. (Finally, while every effort has been made to contact all potential copyright owners of quotations and text excerpts, any inadvertent oversight will be rectified in subsequent editions of this volume.) In San Francisco, two people were of critical importance to my research. Tom Welsh and David Bernstein have both been involved in the production of a volume (released by University of California Press) chronicling the history of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Welsh has been a prime researcher and interviewer for the project, as well as (until recently) Terry Riley’s manager. He pointed me to the sources of many important facts and took me on a tour of the site of the premiere, 321 Divisadero, something that gave an unparalleled sense of place to my writing. Bernstein, as editor of the project, has been unfailingly helpful, sharing recordings and scores of Riley’s early work from the Mills College archives, as well as his manuscript-inprogress of the Tape Center’s history. I can only salute such generous scholarship, a model of collaboration between those united to advance understanding of music of common interest. On my home turf, I acknowledge Jennifer Olson of the Hartt School Library, who has been helpful in tracking down (often at a moment’s notice) items and information which made this work richer in its detail. Matthew Sargent was a critical assistant in creating the performance edition of Autumn Leaves, which led to its ‘‘re-premiere’’ in October 2007. He is also responsible for realizing figure 5.4 in chapter 5 (based on my handmade analytic charts), which tracks the modules’ course in the premiere recording. And students of my composition seminar were vigilant editors of my analysis, finding some errors I would pale to encounter if they ever had made it into print. The entire staff at the New York office of Oxford University Press, under Suzanne Ryan’s direction, has been enormously helpful. Malcolm Gillies, this series’ editor, deserves greatest thanks—not just for his excellent

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work in refining and guiding this work, but for his championing of it from the very beginning, through the approval process and beyond. Because of its reliance on oral history as a key element, this study is not without some academic controversy. Gillies’s trust in this approach, and his belief that a piece so recent and so ‘‘between the cracks’’ stylistically could be a candidate for Genesis and Structure of the Repertoire, was a visionary commitment, of which I am the beneficiary. I doubt this book could ever have been written or published without his support. My partner, Karen McCoy, herself an inspiration to me with her own art, was a fellow for fall 2006 at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California. In large part thanks to her residency then and there, I was able to pursue my interviews in the Bay Area in the most efficient and economic way imaginable. And her interest and enthusiasm for the project has kept me invigorated and dedicated to carrying the process through to fruition. Finally, above all there is Terry Riley. From the outset he was open and supportive of the project, and he has given generously of his time, in interview, subsequent questions, and digging through his archives to find certain key works that have remained buried for decades. I have already mentioned his impact upon those who meet and come to know him; I too feel honored to have encountered his great spirit and vision, and I have grown as a result. If this book can increase ever so slightly the appreciation and understanding of In C and Riley’s overall output (which of course already has its own life and speaks eloquently for itself ), then I can hope to have done service to a good cause.

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Contents

Series Editor’s Foreword

v

Chapter One. Introduction

3

Chapter Two. Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C

13

Chapter Three. The Premiere

39

Chapter Four. Analysis

57

Chapter Five. The Columbia Recording: A ‘‘Second Premiere’’

71

Chapter Six. Legacy

97

Appendix. Recordings of In C, 1970–2007, with Analysis Notes

111 125

Selected Bibliography

137

Index

139

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Terry Riley's In C

Figure 1.1. Score of In C (copyright Terry Riley, 1964).

Chapter One

Introduction So here it is. Only one page of score. No specified instrumentation, no parts. Fiftythree motives, mostly minuscule. No counterpoint. No evident form. Spare instructions, with many aspects left deliberately vague. No tempo mark. And a title that’s laconic in the extreme: In C. This would not seem a likely candidate for a study in a series that seeks to record the process of creation and premiere of the great masterworks in the Western canon. Indeed, when confronted with Terry Riley’s 1964 work, it’s not unreasonable to ask, ‘‘Is this a joke?’’ The work seems to stand the whole idea of musical ‘‘progress’’ on its head. At precisely the same moment of its composition, Elliott Carter was working on his Concerto for Piano, a work Stravinsky was to hail as a masterpiece.1 Luciano Berio had almost completed Laborinthus II and would soon start the Sinfonia. Karlheinz Stockhausen had just finished Momente. All these works fairly scream their authority, their mastery of overwhelming complexity, mirroring a complex age. They bespeak the composer as an expert in sound, a highly trained professional who is able to harness chaos and force it into a rigorous architecture. Surely, these are the true masterpieces. Riley’s little scrap of score can’t pretend to compete with these modernist monuments, can it? Yet In C continues to receive numerous performances every year, by professionals, students, and amateurs. It has had repeated recordings since its 1968 LP premiere, and most are still in print. It welcomes performers from a vast range of practices and traditions, from classical to rock to jazz to non-Western. Recordings range from the Chinese Film Orchestra of Shanghai—on traditional Chinese instruments—to the Hungarian ‘‘European Music Project’’ group, joined by two electronica DJs manipulating The Pulse.2 It rouses audiences to states of ecstasy and near hysteria, all the while projecting an inner serenity that suggests Cage’s definition of music’s purpose—‘‘to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.’’3 In short, it’s not going away.

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But then, neither is disco. Popularity and longevity bespeak something that satisfies the human spirit, but they do not guarantee the greatest depth or the quality that we associate with concert music. The modernist works mentioned above are towering accomplishments, unprecedented feats of human imagination and intellect. In C certainly challenges these standards; it is like the scruffy longhair shuffling his feet at the doors of the exclusive club, politely asking admittance, but not changing his appearance to suit the dress code. Can we really make an argument that it deserves a place in the canon, both on historical/cultural grounds and on the basis of the music itself? This study will maintain that it does. It will examine In C in the context of the work’s era; its grounding aesthetic practices and assumptions; its process of composition, presentation, recording, and dissemination. It will explore how the emerging performance practice of the piece has influenced our very ideas of what constitutes art music in the twenty-first century, and it will examine its significance through discussion with performers, composers, theorists, and critics. Thus, this book has a double purpose. Not only must it tell the story of the genesis of a landmark work in the repertoire, it must also show why that work should be included in the repertoire. While I can only hope this justification will become evident as we explore in depth the history, theory, and aesthetics of In C, it is worthwhile to outline a series of major issues the reader can keep in mind as she or he reaches an ultimate judgment. Above all, In C is the founding work of the musical movement called minimalism. It is hard to realize today how marginal and belittled were the efforts of pioneering American composers in this camp. In the early 1960s La Monte Young and Terry Riley had thrown in their lot with this aesthetic (even though it didn’t even have its name yet; music would have to catch up with painting, which had already discovered and applied the term). Both were recent graduates of the American academic system, but hardly the sort of product that won establishment accolades. Young was the older and more theoretically inclined of the two, and his practice included both highly conceptual works in the orbit of Fluxus art, and extremely slow-changing drone pieces (the latter taking their point of departure from serialism but creating a time span that was glacial in comparison to the nervously morphing shapes of most post-Webernian work of the period). Riley, despite studies including a master’s degree from University of California at Berkeley, remained more of a jazzer in his outlook, playing saxophone and keyboards, and improvising as part of his practical, professional life. As a background to Riley’s radical achievement, it’s important to realize that ‘‘new music’’ at that time was assumed to share at least some of these four characteristics.

Introduction : 5 1. It involved research. This could have to do with new sounds and extended instrumental techniques, as in the work of Penderecki and Crumb. Or it could mean new ways of organizing pitch and rhythm, represented most strikingly by ‘‘total’’ (or ‘‘integral’’) serialism. While Boulez, Stockhausen, and Nono had all created landmark works in this medium, Europeans seemed to have felt that serialism as a specific technique had exhausted itself quickly. Americans, on the other hand, thanks in part to the support for advanced new music in the university, retained more faith in the system, as embodied above all in the work, career, and intellectual influence of Milton Babbitt. 2. It meant formalism. Even if one did not subscribe to serialism (as in the examples of Xenakis and Berio in Europe, and Carter in the United States), modernist composers still tended to accept that a successful piece was underpinned by premises ‘‘outside of time,’’ which predated the actual writing of a piece. The term ‘‘precompositional procedures’’ had great currency, and it meant more than just sketching. It suggested that a firm set of rules, algorithms, were developed in advance of inscribing the real-time flow of a piece. Like a blueprint, these rules would ensure consistency of materials in all parameters (pitch, harmony, rhythm, dynamics, color, form). This totalism was of course a legacy of serialism, but it could apply to materials that were in no way dodecaphonic (for example, Xenakis’s realizations of stochastic processes based on probability, or Carter’s uses of interval sets to ensure harmonic coherence4). In the end, a work was judged successful if its a priori, predetermined elements were clearly and ingeniously conceived and if their application to the moment-by-moment events of a work was consistent. It also meant that once realized in notated form, these elements were fixed. 3. It meant experiment. This may seem redundant at first, because all the music mentioned to this point posited a scientific stance toward its material, and of course the experimental method is at the heart of all science. But the great ‘‘alternative’’ music of the period, that of John Cage and his followers, took the concept of experimentation in a different direction. ‘‘Experimental’’ composers suggested that the very idea of the experiment, if it opened up new sounds and modes of perception, was valuable in itself.5 It needed no other justification. It was up to the audience to adjust its expectations, to appreciate the sheer novelty and uniqueness of the musical event, even if (and perhaps because) it stretched the very definition of what music could be. Thus a silent piece such as 4’33’’ could be music, because even if its physical enactment remained the same from performance to performance (sitting before the piano, opening and closing the lid between movements), the ambient sounds during its performance would always be fresh, unexpected, and aestheticized by the seismic shift of listening attitude on the part of the public. 4. It accepted information density. Almost all music of this period—whether serial, formalist, or experimental—accepted that a greater degree of complexity

6 : terry riley’s in c existed in art than ever before. In terms of pitch, this meant either atonality, or at least a recycling of the total chromatic so rapid as to weaken or obliterate harmonic centers. (And if centers did occur, they usually were overlaid with so much chromatic material that their resemblance to tonal practice was vestigial.) Rhythm also had become stretched to where periodicity—the sense of a recurrent pulse or metric pattern—was almost nonexistent. The great composers of the ‘‘heroic’’ modernist generation—Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ives, Barto´k—had all extended rhythmic practice to make it more fluid, multilayered, and unpredictable. But they also reaffirmed the importance of rhythm in the process. Within the postwar modernist hegemony, rhythm often became nothing more than the control of duration, and the flow of time became a matter of perceiving proportions between events that floated in a pulseless zone. Other parameters, such as color and dynamics, became ever more varied and kaleidoscopic, again suggesting an accelerating overturn.

Many of these ‘‘modernist’’ stances in fact continue in minimalist practice, especially the early works of the movement. There is not a hermetic seal between the musical movements of this period, no matter how different they may appear, and a tangential purpose of this study is to reveal connections that might not seem obvious at first.6 Nevertheless, In C could not have been more different, more ‘‘transgressive’’ of the standards of artistic validity that modernism had erected. It was pulsed and repetitive with a vengeance. It was modal, often working with pitch sets much smaller than even the diatonic scale. Its instrumentation, even its number of players, was open. It didn’t make a fetish of the score; its very simplicity and economy seemed to mock the complexity of its contemporaries. While it involved open form and a degree of randomness in its improvisatory ethos, it simultaneously rejected Cageian indeterminacy; it was closer to jazz and rock in its sound and in its presentation of a cosmic ‘‘jam.’’ And perhaps most threatening to a sense of professionalism in the classical avant-garde, it welcomed performers of varying levels; one did not need to be a virtuoso to participate in a successful performance. It was simply, truly of its time. Thus In C stands as the Sacre of musical minimalism. The following key points are elements of its importance and originality.

West Coast Roots In C represents a major shift, perhaps the definitive shift, of dominant musical culture away from the East Coast and its Europhilic aesthetic to the West Coast, and in particular to California. Of course, America’s ‘‘Left Coast’’ had already provided several ‘‘maverick’’ composers who helped

Introduction : 7

define the idea of a national progressive music. Henry Cowell was a prodigious product of Bay Area bohemianism, a sort of musical ‘‘wild child’’ whose development would have been far different elsewhere.7 John Cage and Lou Harrison parlayed their relative isolation in California and Washington State into an asset, inventing a whole new vocabulary of writing for percussion (including the prepared piano). Harry Partch rediscovered alternate tunings with his espousal of just intonation. But these composers from just before and after World War II (except Partch, who remained defiantly outside the mainstream and was accordingly marginalized) eventually made the move to New York, where they were able to solidify and forward their career (none more so than Cage). In a sense, while they created a far greater awareness of an alternative West Coast aesthetic, their career course also seemed to reinforce how essential the Northeastern imprimatur remained for ultimate success. Riley, though he too spent time in New York, especially after the premiere of In C, ultimately returned to northern California, where he has remained true to an aesthetic that is far looser and more inclusive than that of East Coast modernism. In a sense, he is the first major composer to remain Californian and have a substantial international career (the next in this line, quite different and more traditional but also impossible to conceive of without Riley’s innovations, is John Adams).

Democracy and Community In C proposes a delicate balance between the individual and the group, which is deeply rooted in American traditions and unprecedented in its format. It demands of its players a high degree of individual responsibility. No matter how many performers participate, they must listen carefully to one another for the performance to have any chance of success. Each musician must decide how many times to repeat, when to move to the next module, when to stop and when to return, what dynamic and registration are most fitting to the material played at every moment, when to join in unison with larger groups and when to stand outside the group. The music is the result of a group decision, but each entity retains its separate character and autonomy, a great tribute to American ideals of individualism and democracy. Indeed, one can even look at the piece as an exercise in anarchy, though of the most benign and constructive form. But In C is also very much a product of community. That act of listening implies that all the players devote themselves to the greater good of the piece, that they not only listen to their interaction with immediate neighbors but also hear the influence of their actions on the total work. One must

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listen out to the edges of the piece as one plays and adjust decision-making to the amorphous but real will of the collective. In this sense, one could say that In C is a musical ecology, where a network of relations brings forth a continually evolving aesthetic product that has its own genetic blueprint but can never be predicted exactly. This intersection of political and biological metaphor isn’t arbitrary: in America, the relationship between the natural and the manmade world has always been an immediate, palpable issue.

Non-Western Foundation In C represents the first major work to accept into its very fabric nonWestern musical traditions. I realize this claim may raise objections. What about Colin McPhee’s Tabu-Tabuhan, which evoked the sound of Balinese gamelan in 1936? Or Milhaud’s La Cre´ation du Monde, one of a series of jazzinspired works in the 1920s? Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde was influenced by Chinese music, but transcends chinoiserie. In 1964 Berio wrote his Folk Songs, which celebrated vernacular musical traditions worldwide, and in 1969 Stockhausen created Hymnen, using national anthems as the basis of an immense electroacoustic mural. How then is In C different? The answer rests in the words ‘‘very fabric.’’ In C’s ‘‘genetic code,’’ its entire formal/developmental discourse, is responsive to traditions outside the Western classical canon. As in jazz, improvisation is an essential element. Players repeat a figure ad lib until they decide to continue, but they must listen to one another to decide when their change will have the greatest impact. Thus, though the notes and rhythms are all predetermined, the piece creates its own oral tradition. Like rock, it emphasizes a pulsating ‘‘groove’’ that propels the music forward. Though the music may relax at points, the pulse never disappears. Like Asian musics, it emphasizes mode, rather than chords, to generate harmony. In addition, though it mutates through different modal sets in a way that is dizzyingly varied from performance to performance, it also suggests (in its title, as well as its structure) a fundamental harmonic stasis similar to that of Indian music, which has been enormously influential to Riley. In short, the piece has synthesized and abstracted a host of influences, and yet the resulting music seems to have developed quasi-independently of any of them. When one listens to In C, it’s almost as though the rest of music doesn’t exist, that this is a certain essential music-making that’s at the root of the art. As a consequence, In C is eminently suitable for instrumentations that run the gamut of world-music possibilities. The extraordinary recording by the Shanghai Film Orchestra with traditional Chinese instruments is the most radical application of this principle, but a mixed instrumentation, such as

Introduction : 9

that of Bang On a Can8 (featuring Chinese pipa and mandolin with amplified Western instruments) is just as compelling, albeit a bit subtler. But beyond the actual instruments used, it is also adaptable to a wide range of traditions. The only thing about In C that is truly ‘‘Eurocentric’’ is the fact that it uses Western notation. But that notation is simply the most efficient tool for communication, a shorthand that now has wide acceptance (like Arabic numerals). It is not an attempt to impose a particular attitude toward the role of notation. Thus In C is a work that is truly ‘‘trans-stylistic,’’ and as a result, possibly the first truly ‘‘globalist’’ composition, performable by any ensemble within any musical tradition that is willing to follow the instructions. In a period when the debate over ‘‘globalization’’ is more vociferous than ever, it presents a remarkably benign example, suggesting that a framework loose enough to accommodate cultural difference can exist, bringing forth new art that is neither pandering nor diluted in comparison to source-traditions.

A New Kind of Improvisation This openness suggests a final way in which the work is attuned to the demands of the twenty-first century: In C is a piece of software. I define ‘‘software’’ as a series of rules and predefined relationships that execute a task; the user can then customize input and tweak aspects of the rules and relations to produce a product that is regarded as personal. For example, the word processor that I am using to write this paragraph already defines many of the parameters governing my final written product (orthography, formatting, editing; even spelling and grammar are now under its watchful eye), but the ultimate meaning of my words is still under my control. In a similar way In C will generate a performance that is always recognizable as In C. Yet each performance will be different on a host of levels— instrumentation, duration, density, even (as we will see in analyses of different performances) harmonic content. One can again object that this process is really no different from the improvisation that occurs in classic jazz—there is a set of changes that is immutable, over which linear improvisation places a layer of personalized interpretation.9 While this is quite true, In C is yet again something new and different, because every single note and rhythm of the work is already determined in the score. The choices that performers make shape these materials via repetition, entry/exit, and dynamics (so as to background/foreground ideas). Otherwise, they do not involve the personal ‘‘invention’’ we usually associate with improvisatory traditions. In this way, In C strangely enough, is highly ‘‘classical’’ in the Western sense, that is, it is drawn from a score that determines the pitches and rhythms of the piece. But of course it is resolutely non-Western in a host of other aspects. This

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paradox is basic to its originality and success. The extraordinary balance between the constrained and free, the ordered and open, the personal and communal, help to make it original, enduring, and an emerging beacon for a global musical practice. * * * Our journey toward a comprehensive understanding of In C begins with the historical backdrop for the creation and premiere of the work. Chapter 2 concentrates on the Bay Area music scene of the early 1960s and is based on conversations with Riley and those who knew and collaborated with him in that period. In addition, it closely examines several works which lead up to In C, and which develop and solidify the techniques essential to In C’s practice (including the String Trio and Quartet, collaborative works with La Monte Young, the film soundtrack Mescalin Mix, and the multimedia tape piece Music for the Gift). Chapter 3 reconstructs the premiere of the piece, based above all on interviews with participants. The sources for reconstruction of the performance have been sketchy and scattered. A host of questions need to be answered, and we are in the enviable position of recording firsthand accounts from those who were present at the event. Questions include: How was the piece written? What were the stages of its conception and realization before it went into rehearsal? Did the piece develop/change during the rehearsal process? What were the contributions of other musicians to the final product? What were the physical circumstances of the premiere? What was its exact instrumentation? How long did it last? What were the acoustics of the hall? What was the effect, if any, on the performance of the other Riley works on the program, in terms of the context they created for In C ’s reception?

Chapter 4 undertakes the first substantive analysis of In C. The piece has been consistently described in terms of its basic premises and elements, but never examined as a piece unfolding in time. In addition, a number of casual descriptions have summed it up as a series of general modal areas that morph from one to another, but offer no explanation of how they do so. The analysis looks at how the careful progression of motives from one to another affects both the texture and the general harmonic profile of the work. In this case the work is considered ‘‘exogenously,’’ outside of time, as a network of relations between motivic materials that define larger-scale connections. From this perspective, some sense of overall progression is derived.

Introduction : 11

Chapter 5 explores a circumstance that is idiomatic to In C, both as a work with its own special qualities and as a seminal work of the late twentieth century. The piece experienced a ‘‘second premiere’’ in 1968 with its release by Columbia Records in a landmark LP. The chapter investigates the process of recording and the implications of the record for the position the piece assumed in public consciousness of the Minimalist movement. Among critical questions to consider are: Was there any influence on In C of Riley’s works composed during the interim period, such as A Rainbow in Curved Air and Poppy Nogood’s Phantom Band, fruits of his loft concerts in New York? How had the work changed since its initial San Francisco performance in Riley’s mind and ear? What were the exact circumstances of the recording session? What decisions unique to its circumstances were made to define the work’s character?

Chapter 5 also examines the work from a different analytic viewpoint. The decisions of timing, pacing, and interaction made by real musicians will inevitably bring to the foreground different aspects of the music. By focusing on a particular set of motives, players can create a climax, push forward movement, or hold movement in a static pattern. Further, depending on which motives are held or released at what point, the modal content of the piece at a given moment may be quite different from one performance to another, suggesting variable harmonic profiles. Thus, an ‘‘endogenous’’ analysis (within time) of the piece will explore the first recorded performance to determine when motives enter, when they exit, and what rhythmic and harmonic content of the work results. Finally, chapter 6 considers the legacy of In C. Part of this is the evolving idea of the piece, traced through observations by the performers who premiered the work in both the concert and recorded versions (a group that contains some of the most important voices in American music). In addition, a variety of prominent contemporary musicians—composers, performers, critics, and musicologists—discuss the impact of In C on their own development as practicing professionals and on their view of music generally. These ‘‘post–In C’’ musicians stand as evidence of the enduring and evolving impact of the piece. The ‘‘endogenous’’ analysis of the premiere recording will be extended to a series of recorded performances (in the appendix). Tabulating and examining these results will lead to a developmental map of the work, which then can be compared with other performances to suggest the work’s range of possible realizations. One of the essential aspects of In C is that it can never exist in a ‘‘definitive’’ version. These analyses can only suggest the richness of

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the piece but can never describe it authoritatively. In C deserves the increased understanding that theoretical study can impart, but our analysis will also reveal the limits of what such an approach can yield. In C possesses certain qualities that will always defy attempts to pin it down. * * * By the end I hope each reader will have experienced an ‘‘enlightenment’’ in regard to In C, similar to what those who undertake a performance of the piece itself experience. This book is our own ‘‘map’’ to follow through the forking paths of In C’s music and history. Riley speaks of a long process of mastering the basics of a tradition so that one can ‘‘speak’’ within it naturally and fluently.10 Perhaps by our own immersion within the history, analysis, aesthetics, and performance practice of In C, we as an audience can come to a similarly rich, deep, and flexible understanding.

Chapter Two

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C The composition of any piece is a specific act, bounded by the time of its initiation and the time of its completion. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. A work is the product of a person as well as of the history of that person—including his or her cultural context. With that in mind, we look at the course Terry Riley took to reach that moment in 1964 when, at the age of 29, he seemed to pull In C out of the air. The story shows a series of wonderfully incongruous, indeed truly American, experiences and influences that helped form the human being who would be the ‘‘channel’’ for the piece.

Earliest Influences Riley was born on June 24, 1935, in Colfax, California, in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Colfax had a large railroad yard and, since Riley’s father, Charles, was a foreman for a local section of track, he grew up next to the railroad.1 His background was Irish on his father’s side, Italian on his mother’s (Wilma Amelia Ridolfi), and he grew up hearing his maternal grandmother singing opera arias and listening to popular music on the radio. It was apparent from early on that music had a profound impact on the child. Riley himself remembers: Around this period was the first time I started seeing in this kind of cosmic way. Not that the experience hadn’t been there; I remember listening to the radio as a little kid, listening to a popular song that I’ll never forget, because it made me cry. It was called ‘‘South of the Border, Down Mexico Way.’’ When I heard it for the first time, it struck me in such a way. I think I was one or two years old, my mother said I just started crying when I heard it on the radio. I know music has this capacity to touch you very deeply and make you feel emotions . . . some people

14 : terry riley’s in c would say it comes from a past life, I’m not sure if I can say that with any degree of confidence, but I do know it awakens in us the musical experience that is very akin to the types of religious insights. . . . It goes back to this sort of experience I’ve had all my life, and that’s why I’m a musician. I had to be a musician.2

Riley started violin lessons at five, and by the time he was six the family had moved to nearby Redding. By age nine he had moved to piano as his primary instrument (as well as the mellophone in the school band).3 He found a sympathetic teacher and mentor in his piano teacher Duane Hampton, and was introduced through him to the music of Stravinsky and the French neoclassicists such as Milhaud and Poulenc. At the same time he was playing in local dance bands, learning their literature by ear. He had also heard of bebop and began searching out contemporary jazz recordings whenever he could.4 His first compositional efforts reflected the music he was learning at the keyboard: ‘‘While I was still in Redding I had written a piece for two pianos. Also my high school music teacher wrote a musical for us to perform, and I ended up writing one of the tunes—a kind of romantic ballad as a show tune: that was actually one of my first pieces. I think I’d written small pieces based on the music that I was really in love with at the time, and that was neoclassical music like Faure´, Poulenc, and Satie, so the first music I wrote was really neoclassic.’’5 Riley’s experience not only is typical of most American youngsters of his generation, but remains so to this day. Opportunities for serious musical study outside of major metropolitan areas are scarce and haphazard, since a standardized music education system is lacking at the elementary and secondary levels. And even in supposedly more prestigious and sophisticated educational settings, there is no guarantee that music will be an integral part of the curriculum. It usually comes down to luck, and as in Riley’s case, the presence of a mentor. And this underscores one of Riley’s important personal strengths from the outset. Not only was he a ‘‘natural’’ musician, but he was also one with humility. He sought out teachers and gave himself up to their instruction. He has consistently been willing to submit himself to the discipline of another artist whom he felt had something essential to teach. When one gets to know Riley, one is struck early on by how little ‘‘ego’’ he seems to have. He is by no means a cipher, because he has strong opinions and often breathtaking talents, but he also projects a fundamental modesty that has probably helped to keep him centered on the music itself, immeasurably aiding his development. Riley began his undergraduate studies at a junior college in Redding, then in 1955 transferred to San Francisco State University, where he worked primarily with Wendell Otey. Three important events occurred during

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 15

this time. First, Riley decided that his dreams of a concert pianist’s career were unrealistic (‘‘I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t compete on the level that some of my fellow students were doing at San Francisco State’’6), and he began to shift his attention primarily to composition. The second was his meeting sympathetic peers, two of whom, Loren Rush and Pauline Oliveros, would become collaborators and lifelong friends. The third was the encounter with Robert Erickson, another important mentor. Riley began studies with him at SFSU (where Erickson was sabbatical replacement), and after graduating in 1957 he continued private lessons with him for a year at the San Francisco Conservatory, before starting to audit courses in fall 1958 at the University of California at Berkeley.7

Robert Erickson and Spectra Erickson (1917–1997) would become one of the most influential composers within the West Coast avant-garde, though his influence never became nationwide as it probably should have. He was a rigorous intellectual and deeply versed in serial theory and technique, but his aesthetic curiosity kept him from accepting it as an ultimate solution to the era’s musical challenges. He would ultimately explore electronic and Asian music, music theater and performance art, improvisation and degrees of open form. His openness to other aesthetics, desire to impart them, and willingness to listen to his students made him one of a series of teachers who would nourish Riley’s distinctive creative course. Riley has described him as ‘‘a beacon of sanity in the midst of the Berkeley scene which I didn’t like at all.’’8 Erickson’s influence is evident in one early work of Riley’s, Spectra for a sextet of flute, clarinet, bassoon, violin, viola, and cello, dated in the score December 28, 1959. (There was one earlier piece from his undergraduate days, Trio for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano, which seems to have been a senior project, and serial at least in surface sound if not technique. That work is lost, however.) Spectra was written as a response to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 1956 Zeitmasse for woodwind quintet, a work that had excited Riley. The piece is about 12 minutes long, and the score (in the composer’s informal yet clear hand) uses the ‘‘cut-out’’ convention of the era in which the staves of instruments not playing are not shown. The sound of Spectra is highly chromatic, and there is almost no tonal centering. Instead the music relies on recurrent motives whose interval content is consistently dissonant. Riley has said that while the music reflects Stockhausen’s influence, it was composed intuitively and does not use specific serial techniques.9 There are two aspects of the sextet, however, that point toward what would become ever more important in Riley’s practice. The first is periodic

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sustained tones, either isolated, with time standing still, or used as pedals against more active gestures. The Stockhausen, in contrast, rarely relaxes its tense energy. The second aspect relates more directly to the sound-world of the Stockhausen—extensive rhythmic freedom. (Riley has spoken approvingly of the fluidity of Schoenberg’s rhythmic language, and thus the music of his successors was also of interest to him.)10 This freedom occurs in frequent shifts of tempi by the whole ensemble (the piece, while a chamber work, requires a conductor, according to its introductory notes). At times, while the tempo remains constant for all instruments, some have different time signatures, so that different phrasings occur simultaneously, and as a result different tempi are perceived. Furthermore, Riley, directly imitating Zeitmasse, sometimes has individual instruments proceed in different, simultaneous tempi. Some of the literature on this work suggests that this is its predominant texture, but in fact the device occurs only twice, most notably near the end, where three simultaneous tempi occur (q ¼ 40, q ¼ 66, e: ¼ 140); Riley is careful to calculate as exactly as possible the relative durations of the individual lines, as reflected in the vertical alignment, and in addition he usually builds in silences, which would allow a player to jump back easily into a common tempo. Spectra is not a major work of Riley’s, but this rather detailed description is meant to show two things. First, Riley was open to the currents of modernist practice from early in his career, and he identified with the experimental avant-garde, both American and European. Second, from his earliest efforts, he was searching for a way to create rhythmic fluidity and independence among players. Spectra represents a first attempt, using traditional Western notation, albeit in the highly complex form of postwar modernism that Riley would not pursue in greater depth. Riley began auditing graduate courses at UC Berkeley in 1958 while working at United Airlines to support his new family. His first child, Colleen, was born in September 1958, and after his wife Anne resumed teaching, he formally matriculated in spring 1959. From this point through 1961 his life became a rich blend of activities and influences, packed into a very short period. These diverse experiences are presented here sequentially, but in fact they were all interwoven in this short time-period, mutually stimulating Riley’s rapid artistic growth. As Riley relinquished his dreams of a classical pianist’s career, he retained his early love of jazz, as well as his interest in improvisation. Beginning with their encounter in Erickson’s composition seminar,11 he joined his fellow students Pauline Oliveros and Loren Rush to form an improvisation trio, playing piano with the former on French horn and the latter on koto and percussion. Riley remembers that they may have begun ‘‘playing together at parties,’’ but they also recorded sessions at the KPFA (Pacifica Radio)

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 17

studios, where Rush had access. In the surviving tapes12—five sessions totaling about 45 minutes—one hears a free atonal, expressionist language, highly gestural, the players reacting to one another with a primary focus on color, silence, and contrast as structural determinants. The primary product of the trio, however, was the soundtrack for Polyester Moon, a film by the sculptor Claire Falkenstein. Riley remembers the events leading to the project: The project that we did together that survived that was a film score for Claire Falkenstein, who was teaching at the Art Institute in San Francisco. I had met Claire through a mutual friend, Helen Burke, who was taking one of Claire’s classes. So I showed her some of my work, and she said, ‘‘Oh I have this film, Polyester Moon; would you make me a score for it?’’ So I asked Pauline and Loren if they’d like to do it as an improvised piece. So we went over to KPFA, because Loren was working there; he was helping Alan Rich, who was the music director in those days, and so we recorded in the KPFA studios. So again it was not talked about or planned.13

Oliveros remembers the process similarly: So we sat down and started improvising in five-minute tracks. That was really for the purpose of that film. Afterwards we listened back, and we were startled at the organization, and how it sounded, and so we decided this was something we should do more often. So we started meeting more regularly to do this, and we discovered that if we talked about it beforehand too much, we wouldn’t like what we did, but if we just went at it and played, and then talked about it, it was fine. That was the method. Play, record, listen back, and then discuss it. [The sort of insights we had were] about the mixing of timbres; you would learn how to adjust your dynamic. It was not so much about what you played but how you played it.14

The session occurred in summer 1958, even though the date on the film is 1957 (the film was already complete visually, as Riley’s comments above suggest, and the musicians were brought in for postproduction). According to Oliveros, they decided to improvise because Riley didn’t have time to compose a traditional score, a matching of necessity with the path they’d already undertaken. The music is probably more important for what it represents than what it actually is. Falkenstein’s sculpture (a multicolored globe, apparently the ‘‘moon’’ of the title, made of what resembles fleshlike polymers, and slit in various places) is viewed as a montage from a variety of angles, both close-up and mid-range. Near the end, at 3’40’’ it begins to rotate quickly as the music picks up tempo. The instrumentation sounds different from the way the musicians have described it—while Oliveros’s horn is clearly present, Riley’s piano sounds mostly like a harpsichord (though he says this effect may be an artifact of the sound transfer to

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film). And Rush’s contribution is clearly percussion—low drums, pieces of wood, and a cymbal (perhaps created partly by percussive knocks on the koto). For most of the piece the horn tends to be the lead, sustaining line, while the keyboard and percussion add ornamental flurries. Oliveros has observed that this may have been the first time ‘‘classical’’ musicians undertook free improvisation publicly, and if so it is a prophetic work. All three players remember meeting periodically for a while afterwards, but they had no further projects, and other activities took over their attention.

La Monte Young One of the most important people in Riley’s creative life, La Monte Young, had come to UC Berkeley in 1958 to pursue a master’s degree, and as Riley relates it: I sort of got into his gravitational field. He’d already been working with long tones and he’d been a jazz musician. La Monte and I became kind of inseparable; I just remember we were never apart. He’d come over to my house and we’d be always listening to records or transcribing stuff or talking about different things. He was into Coltrane, early Coltrane, before anybody knew John Coltrane. He had already had experience listening to Asian music earlier than I had, and he introduced me to gagaku and even Indian music. This really became a focus for me and influenced a lot the way I was composing.15

Young stood out as an original within the more conservative academic norms of Berkeley. As Riley relates: I was really impressed with La Monte in every way—his lifestyle, the kind of music he was writing. Everything he did was different. He was extremely eccentric. He was avant-garde in his dress: he didn’t wear any socks, he had this little goatee and a beret, and he had long hair—and this was the late fifties, before the Beatles. . . . So when I saw La Monte I thought, ‘‘Oh yeah, this is a brother.’’ And he had very evolved thoughts about music, and I thought it was better than what I was getting from the teachers I came to study with.16

His first encounter with Young at Berkeley was informative: ‘‘He pulled out this piece he was writing called Study 1, for David Del Tredici, that David was going to play because it was quite virtuosic, it was a twelve-tone piece, but it had these long, sustained qualities. It would have these long bursts of virtuosic piano music, but then it would sustain a fifth. I thought, ‘Wow there’s a fifth in that. That’s an interesting combination.’’’17 Even though Young was a few months younger than Riley, he took on the role of mentor, to which Riley happily acceded. Riley had missed the

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 19

premiere of Young’s seminal 1958 Trio for Strings (a classic instance of a plan backfiring: Young’s professor, Seymour Shifrin, had organized it to prove to his stubborn student the error of his ways), but now Young played Riley a tape of the work. With its glacial pace and seemingly endless long tones (ironically unfolding a serial structure), it created a sense of time Riley had never before experienced: ‘‘The main feature of La Monte’s music in those days was the total disruption of time as I knew it. It was like being in a time capsule and floating out in space somewhere waiting for the next event to happen. And I enjoyed that kind of waiting.’’18 Equally important to the discovery of sustained sounds was Riley’s collaboration with Young to accompany Ann [later Anna] Halprin’s Dancers’ Workshop. Halprin was a major figure not only in the Bay Area, but within the history of modern dance. She sought ways to incorporate aspects of ‘‘ordinary’’ life, nature, and the unforeseen into her work. While no one seems sure exactly how they first connected, Halprin thinks that Young’s interest in Cage led him to introduce himself and propose that he make music for the company. As a result, Young and Riley came along to her outdoor dance-deck studio in Kentfield.19 As in the work of John Cage and Merce Cunningham, there was a deliberate avoidance of shared intention between the dance and music. Halprin noted: ‘‘We were all very interested at that time in seeing what happened when you put together unrelated, undetermined cause-and-effect elements to release new possibilities of relationships. And so they would just make sounds, they wouldn’t even be looking at us, while we were doing our own improvisations. They would be doing things like scraping the walls, or scraping a chair across the floor . . . very sound-oriented rather than anything that was remotely connected to music as we know it.’’20 Riley loved the freedom of the sessions, which incorporated sounds previously not considered ‘‘musical’’: [What] made it very attractive for me was the musicians were part of the performance, and I had never worked in theater. So I actually considered myself a theatrical element while I was making music, [it] was an exciting way to react. So we never planned anything, we just go over and have jam sessions . . . sometimes [we played] piano, but La Monte got into [the following] . . . [Halprin] had these great big glass windows at the end of her studio, and you know La Monte’s piece Two Sounds, that came out of some of the improv, he started scraping on the windows with tin cans and metal objects and made these screeching sounds, and I helped him with that. And originally that was used just for dance and then it became his piece. . . .We’d roll things across the floor, like bowling ball-like things that would crash into the wall, just throw things around the studio to make sound, it was exploring a lot the properties of sound, and what would work with what they were

20 : terry riley’s in c doing. They would often take a fragment of poetry or text, maybe Brautigan or one of the Beat poets or someone like that, and start using that as an improv method for them to consolidate with their movement. We would often use our voices too, or other sounds to try to create some kind of atmosphere for the piece. But it was always improvised, and only talked about afterwards, and mainly the talk afterwards was Anna, because she wanted to sum up what did and didn’t work.21

As one can see, the work process was very similar to that of the trio. At times the results could become almost uncontrolled, and as Halprin remembers, could create real audience anxiety: We were doing a performance at UCLA, and we had our own score for what we were doing, they were just making noise. My lighting designer was equally exploring, and he would just turn the lights off, and [the audience] would know that we were still moving, because they could hear the sound of our movements. And Terry and La Monte were out in the corridor of the theater, and they were just rolling down garbage pails, down the stairs to make noise. And it got so totally chaotic, and since it was in total darkness it became a little frightening and confrontive, and some people in the audience thought it was just great and others got freaked out. So they took everything to an extreme.22

For Riley, exciting as this was, there was also a sense that his art might cross a line and move into realms inimical to his own ideals and even ethics: The use of the piano was kind of brutal at times. I don’t think I would be able to do that to a piano today [Laughs] . . . I remember one time tossing an ashtray, a metal ashtray, halfway across the stage and landing on the strings—things that were quite harsh—but when you’re a student, sometimes you don’t think about the consequences. . . . So there could be an element of danger to the audience and [to] the performers. This was a field of art which frightened me when I saw where it could go, and where it was headed. I didn’t want this kind of violence in my own [work]. . . . [But] It was an important thing to do, to make art so scary that the audience would be very alert [Laughs]23

One of the few artifacts of this collaboration one can still hear is the 1960 Concert for Two Pianos and Five Tape Recorders. This work evolved from improvisations Riley and Young had done with Halprin, which Riley then organized into the tape part of the work: I used an old piano, just the insides of a piano, the sounding board and strings, standing up against a wall to make Concert for Two Pianos and Five Tape Recorders. I took a bunch of metal ball bearings and rolled them across the floor and crashed them into the sounding board, and yes it resonates. It would sound almost like a bowling alley, a combination bowling alley-piano, with keyboard sounds . . . we used a lot of things inside the pianos, like ashtrays, things that were just lying around. La

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 21 Monte would often be under the piano, or almost inside it, lying down, because he’s not so big.24

One hears the work now on a CD,25 a radio broadcast from the period; it is unintentionally hilarious since a very serious radio announcer in the introduction tries to explain to the audience what is about to happen. The sound world is very much as Riley describes. The texture seems dominated by the tape parts, which are a blend of metallic crashes and white-noise ‘‘wind.’’ There are some gestural keyboard explosions from the piano, but mostly one hears knocking and plucking, which blend easily into the electroacoustic background. Also in 1960 Riley returned to the independence of parts originally explored in Spectra, this time in a work for four players titled Envelope. This piece shows the influence of American experimentalism as well as his improvisations with Young and the trio. The piece, eight minutes long, consists of four parts (there was never a full score), which Riley describes as ‘‘a combination of written pitches and graphic symbols that could be freely interpreted.’’26 Indeed, the saxophone part is almost entirely graphic. The piano part is made up of seemingly impossible blizzards of notes spread out densely over the entire register, more similar to the middle works of Cage than is any other Riley score. Each system is designed to be of equal duration (20 seconds, or one minute, whichever the group chooses). Every four measures an arrow demarcates a section; each player can start at any section and then rotate through the part until the starting point is reached (similar to another Stockhausen work, Zyklus for percussionist). Like Polyester Moon, which it resembles in general sound and language, it was written for friends: Doug Williams on French horn, Robert Black on violin, Terry Jennings on alto saxophone, and Riley on piano. The effect is far more gestural than Spectra, with bent and smeared tones, multiphonics, instrumental noise, and sudden, explosive attacks—much in the spirit of the era’s free jazz and Cageian indeterminacy. By this point, the rhythmic freedom and the spirit of communal improvisation that Riley sought were being achieved more directly and effectively, though the music’s sonic surface had not yet broken free from post-serial tropes.27

Mescalin Mix In addition to Riley’s breakthrough in improvisation, his work with Halprin included electronic media for the first time. By contemporary standards the technology was extremely simple, but he immediately began to use it in a very personal way. Riley had a Wollensack tape recorder that, while mono,

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allowed multiple passes of material to be recorded on a single track, a technique called ‘‘sound on sound.’’ He combined this capacity with a simple looping technique. First he would record sounds of various durations, then cut the tape and splice it into a loop, which would then be run out into the yard through a window of his home on Potrero Hill, wind around a group of wine bottles in a small garden outside a small cottage there, and then back into the studio.28 The loops would then be run successively on a second recorder, which would be sent to his own to record sound-on-sound on successive passes. (Riley says he had only one tape recorder, so the second was borrowed.29) Because of the dense layering, the resultant mix added noise with each pass, so the sonic artifacts of the process became part of the piece. As a final step, he took his recording to the San Francisco Tape Music Center (at that time called Sonics and housed in the San Francisco Conservatory), where one of the directors, Ramon Sender, had a device called an Echoplex. It allowed a sound to be repeated on itself, creating an effect similar to digital delay.30 The earliest surviving work which illustrates this technique is M . . . Mix (now known by its full title, Mescalin Mix). It emerged from work on a piece for Halprin entitled Three-Legged Stool 31 and premiered in concert form at a Sonics concert on December 16, 1961. Slightly more than fourteen minutes in length, the music is a spacious landscape, consisting for the most part of spare repeated gestures.32 It starts with vocal sounds hovering between laughing and crying (caused by slowing the tape and thereby lowering the pitch), and slowly adds layers of similar material moving at dramatically different speeds and relative pitch. The most notable musical gesture is a recurrent tinny piano line in F# Aeolian. Only in its last minute and a half does the music turn louder and more dramatic, though the mysterious backdrop is still present. The atmosphere is definitely druggy and spooky, to contemporary ears resembling the soundscapes of David Lynch films. Of course the mention of mescalin brings up the topic of drugs. Riley is quite forthright about his drug use at that time, its effect on his artistic growth, and its targeted use. Because this was San Francisco ‘‘in the 60s’’ it’s easy to think of this being the time of hippiedom and psychedelia as preserved in popular imagination. But in fact, this period—from the late 1950s up to In C ’s premiere, predates the ‘‘Summer of Love’’ (1967) and many other signature events of the counterculture movement. The men and women who made up the creative circles within which Riley moved were of a generation ‘‘between’’: on the one side were the Beats, on the other the hippies. They were a transitional group that inherited anti-establishment values of the immediate postwar generation, developing and enhancing them, in tandem with rapid changes in the society and technology. In a symbiotic relationship, they were some of the first to be effected by

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 23

innovations percolating through the culture, and simultaneously they refined and disseminated these changes, leaving their own mark upon them. Young was the first to introduce Riley to marijuana and then to peyote (the carrier plant of mescalin).33 Riley immediately realized its potential to change his perception of life and time, and how it would impact his creative work: I was never concerned with minimalism [per se], but I was very concerned with psychedelia and the psychedelic movement of the sixties as an opening toward consciousness. For my generation that was a first look toward the East, that is, peyote, mescaline [sic], and the psychedelic drugs that were opening up people’s consciousness. So I think what I was experiencing in music at that time was another world. Besides just the ordinary music that was going on, music was also able to transport us suddenly out of one reality into another. Transport us so that we would almost be having visions as we were playing. . . . I believe music, shamanism, and magic are all connected, and when it’s used that way it creates the most beautiful use of music.34

The idea of the shaman, a designated ‘‘channel’’ for music from a spiritual realm, was reinforced for Riley when, while on peyote, he heard John Coltrane play live: Everything is heightened, you see layers of reality behind what he was doing. Even now when I hear it, I hear it kind of that way. There’s the one apparent thing with the music he’s doing, but then with a drug like peyote that incorporates a lot of the other parts of the universe into what’s happening, you see him as a reflection of himself back in time. But the main thing that happened was that the jazz club disappeared, and Coltrane was the high priest, and he was laying down the truth through music, and it was indisputably true, because it was tempered through his soul.35

Traditional concepts of musical time collapsed for Riley under drug influence. Indeed, both Potter and Schwarz in their studies of minimalism make the point that the combination of tape looping technique and drugs opened Riley to a concept of timelessness based on repetition rather than just sustained tones, allowing him to follow his own path, related to Young’s in goal but different in means. But while drug use is considered by many to be an index of the selfindulgent extremes of the counterculture, it is paradoxically also an indicator of Riley’s rigorous focus and self-discipline. He never seems to have suffered an addiction and was always aware of his purpose in using controlled substances: I think the function of drugs is to remove certain filters that we have in our brains to make our lives more ordinary. These filter out the extra perceptions of angels

24 : terry riley’s in c and all the other things that would make our lives a little bit wild. If we could see everything around us that really exists, we might not be able to take it. That’s why people crack up when they take LSD. The person that takes drugs shouldn’t be dependent on it [sic] but should take it once and see there’s another reality, and work toward that. . . . Once you’ve done that, once that reality is in your mind, then I think the drug has served its purpose. . . . There’s a balance between all your psychic needs, your spiritual needs, and this corporal body that has to be maintained while you’re alive. And even though you’ve got this spiritual body inside you, you’ve got to take care of the physical one too.36

The powerful influence of Coltrane (not just on Riley but on a wide range of musicians and artists of the period) returns us to the subject of jazz in Riley’s work. Throughout this period Riley had been simultaneously developing his skills in ragtime and jazz. The former got intensive on-the-job training: Well my first job was at the old Spaghetti Factory, which was also a big warehouse they had converted into a place where they had food, spaghetti essentially, and it was a typical San Francisco place with the kind of pseudo-Victorian atmosphere, all sorts of weird stuff hanging on the walls, and they had two rooms, one called the Blue Middle Room and the other called the Flamenco Room, with a thin wall in between. I would play . . . in the Blue Middle Room. I didn’t know anything, I just came to work with a fake book, and the flamenco was going on in the other room, so the thing you heard was a combination of flamenco and ragtime. That was my first professional gig playing piano. That was essentially a great learning experience.

Later he ‘‘graduated’’ to the Gold Street Saloon, where he found yet another important mentor: A friend of my neighbor on Potrero Hill was playing there [Gold Street], and some pianist quit and said, ‘‘There’s a job there, can you play ragtime piano?’’ He knew I was a musician, but he didn’t know what I was doing. I said, ‘‘I think I can give it a shot.’’ Now I didn’t really know anything about ragtime piano, and I went down and met Wally Rose, who is one of the great ragtime pianists in the Bay Area. I played for Wally, and he said, ‘‘I think we can make it work; come over to my house for a few lessons.’’ Because it was mainly a sing-along bar, you had to have the style down but you didn’t have to be a great ragtime pianist. I started studying with Wally while I was on the job, and I played there the whole time I was at UC Berkeley, working nights.37

Riley had the advantage of learning the jazz tradition first from its roots in ragtime, then through bebop (via his previous interests and collaboration with Young, who was himself a superb saxophonist), up to its most

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 25

advanced manifestation at the time, modal jazz. Coltrane, taking his lead from Miles Davis, was the great pioneer and inspiration to Riley and his friends. The style moved away from the harmonic basis of traditional ‘‘changes’’ which had underpinned even the most frenetic bebop solos, and began to explore vaster harmonic planes, defined by modes, both of the Western church and of the Middle East. The result could be enormous rhythmic energy, but also increasing harmonic stasis.38 This opening into a different improvisatory time-sense linked directly to Riley’s analogous discoveries in tape music. His own improvisatory skills were constantly improving, and this burgeoning technique, combined with the conceptual insights from these varied sources, were all contributing to his own increasingly original, creative profile. Along with all these diverse experiences, Riley was simultaneously completing a master’s degree at UC Berkeley. Yet he was not just marking time, even if he felt ambivalent about the state of contemporary ‘‘classical’’ music. As was seen earlier, he was fascinated by Stockhausen, Schoenberg, and Barto´k and was willing to extract from this music what he felt would enlarge his palette. Two major pieces survive as testimony to this engagement with the modernist classical tradition, a string quartet and string trio.

String Quartet and String Trio In a 1987 interview Riley described his 1960 String Quartet as ‘‘the most directly influenced [by La Monte Young’s String Trio]. It’s funny, it’s in C too, but it’s all long tones, Some of the motives which later turn up in In C are in that quartet.’’39 From this description, anyone coming upon the quartet would be disoriented. It is not a proto-In C, made up of modal fragments looping glacially. Rather, it is in many ways very much of its time, exhibiting more characteristics of the academic avant-garde than one would expect. Riley himself seems to have reconsidered his view of the work over time, because ten years later he described it far more accurately: ‘‘I was living on Potrero Hill at the time, and the fog horns coming up from San Francisco Bay were one of my main loves—musical atmospheres. . . . The foghorns were really an amazing music for me. I’d some times lie awake just listening to the different permutations of those pitches. And that was a big influence on my writing a string quartet, too. . . . [It] actually is fairly chromatic, but it uses a lot of modal centers which make it feel like it has tonal centers. It uses a lot of fourths and fifths and sustained intervals which sound very consonant.’’40 The string quartet, like modernist practice of the time, lacks a pulse. The piece, approximately twelve and a half minutes long, consists of overlapping

26 : terry riley’s in c

sustained tones, often moving from single- to double-stops on a single instrument. The harmonic language begins as fairly dissonant: the first six pitch classes presented are C#, F#, D, F, G, and B. But it is not serial. The C# and F# are repeated within the opening twelve measures, and the complete chromatic appears only with the entry of E at m. 21. Riley also tends to construct harmonies that add dissonant tones to any precedent harmony: for example in m. 43, a pedal A has Eb and Bb added above it, then the tones of E and B are added a beat later (pitch set 01267).41 But one should not exaggerate the modernist bent of the work, because it moves relatively quickly to a repetitive practice, albeit one strung out over long spans and resistant to strict ostinati patterns. An example occurs in mm. 47–52. (See fig. 2.1.) Here a hexachordal set of (arranged bass to treble) Ab, C#, Eb, D, E, and G is arranged into frozen registers, the pitches then being traded from one instrument to another to create a kaleidoscopic effect, with different pitches passed to the different string timbres.42 The texture grows more spare over its course and then begins to evaporate at m. 53, when the C# is transposed down an octave from its original register. The ‘‘frozen’’ register effect owes much to Anton Webern, but the effect of a delicate, irregular clockwork above all suggests a kinship to Morton Feldman. Clearly, Riley, was already casting his lot with a wing of the movement more interested in stasis and a type of beauty that, while hardly traditional, tended to eschew expressionist tropes. But there’s yet another aspect of this music which points toward a far more radical break. It’s almost as if in the process of the quartet’s composition Riley is coming to understand his own tastes and practice, and is incorporating them into the fabric of the piece. The work does not just create pitch-set mobiles a` la Feldman, it also projects harmonic progression. The world of small chromatic sets in the opening of the work becomes increasingly supplanted by ever more consonant configurations. The next major landmark is a unison pitch class B at m. 60, which leads through a series of morphing repetitive harmonies to a chord at m. 82 made up of a series of stacked fifths, with an added A to create an F major triad within (fig. 2.2). The effect is to open up a world of sound that’s almost Coplandesque, and certainly very American. Afterwards, though the previous harmonic vocabulary is revisited, it becomes more and more difficult to hear it as harmonically unmoored. Instead, it seems increasingly the projection of modal templates.43 The insertion at m. 100 and periodic recurrences of a C harmonic pedal in the cello lead to a radiant C major triad, in closed position and harmonics, at m. 118; this seems to be the structural goal of the work, its remaining twenty-one measures serving as coda. In that sense, Riley’s remark about the quartet being ‘‘in C’’ has some truth, albeit a stretched one.

Figure 2.1. Riley, String Quartet, mm. 47–52 (transcribed from composer’s autograph score by author; copyright Terry Riley).

28 : terry riley’s in c

Figure 2.2. Riley, String Quartet, mm. 60–81 (reduction). The high point of Riley’s ‘‘classical’’ composition pre–In C, however, comes one year later with his String Trio, which he submitted as a thesis to fulfill his M.M. degree requirements. This piece, dated May 2, 1961, and about fifteen minutes long, represents a confluence of interests and influences, achieved at the highest level Riley would attain within the fully notated Western tradition (surpassed only decades later by the series of masterful pieces he wrote for the Kronos String Quartet). He relates: ‘‘The piece that really starts to point in the direction of In C is the String Trio, which has a lot of repetition, It feels like it starts in atonality. It starts with a pulse of A and C# repeated very fast for several bars, with other more distantly related keys dancing around. It has the beginnings of little repetitive cells, which is the first use of that in my music. . . . The opening is like a pulse. It’s a major third.’’44 As Riley suggests, the piece differs from the quartet in several ways. First, it is far more consonant in its materials; one can even make a case for a degree of traditional tonality, as the opening A/C# in the viola functions as a kind of axis around which the piece rotates throughout. (See fig. 2.3.) This opening gesture occurs at three salient moments: at the beginning, then an unmistakable recapitulation at m. 147 (about a third of the way through the piece), and finally at the very end of the work. At times this dyad is joined by E above to make an A major triad, at others by F# below to make F# minor. But above all the harmonic language tends to be constructed of layers of thirds, with added dissonant tones. The result of this technique is (1) the sound is often consonant in its effect yet still not traditionally ‘‘tonal,’’ and (2) sustaining certain harmonic units via common tones, adding and subtracting as desired, creates a fluid harmonic progression, with a different sort of ‘‘functionality.’’ To take one example, figure 2.4, from mm. 142–243, shows a schematic reduction of a passage that begins at the recapitulation and leads to the slowest, most open section of the work. The analysis highlights harmonic groups that are sustained for more than one measure and aurally define a region. One can see the series of links between groups of pitches, along with the use of common tones and registral

Figure 2.3. Riley, String Trio, mm. 1–8 (transcribed from composer’s autograph score by author).

Figure 2.4. Riley, Trio, mm. 145–243 (reduction).

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 31

transfers, that link the music from one gesture to another, even when there are sharp contrasts of texture or motive. These small harmonic kernels, linked in sustained pulsing patterns, are a clear harbinger of the motivic modules of In C. The other great innovation of the piece is its increasing rhythmicization. Admittedly, the music is not consistently motoric; it still reflects the time’s modernist tastes for perpetual contrast. It does ‘‘stop’’ periodically for sustained tones, and indeed mm. 244–305 function as a de facto ‘‘slow movement.’’ Furthermore there are repeated interruptions of highly chromatic, rapid explosions of notes, structured similarly to the broader gestures but compressed in duration (though they seem to be driven more by intervals than by pitch-sets), which feel like Riley’s proof that he could master the soundworld expected by his teachers.45 But the music is far more pulsating and ‘‘dancing’’ than any previous work of his. Indeed, the consonant kernels seasoned with dissonance; the abrupt ‘‘splices’’ of material, the rhythmic repetition of small pitchsets, usually in frozen registers—all these combine to create an analogous soundworld to the post-Agon Stravinsky. Whatever the connection to any classical antecedents, it is revealing that this piece was composed concurrently with and after his encounter with tape music, and the looping techniques of Four-Legged Stool and Mescalin Mix.

The Paris Years In February 1962 Riley took his family to Europe, to experience life as an American musician abroad. His ragtime piano skills came in handy: he spent most of his time in Paris and played at Fred Payne’s Artists Bar in Pigalle.46 He immediately became involved with the expatriate Beat culture there: ‘‘[I] was hanging out with a lot of beat poets, who were living in Paris. I lived in Paris much of the time, and during this time I was meeting people like Brian Gyson and William Burroughs, who was living at the Beat Hotel in Paris. I had a band that I was playing in that was a bunch of American expatriates . . . and I was learning to play jazz piano.’’47 But he traveled extensively; through American agents he was able to arrange bookings at American military bases [for the Strategic Air Command], playing at officers’ clubs. At one point he was the pianist for a traveling circus, accompanying fire-eaters and acrobats.48 Aside from the novelty of living in a different culture, his most important new experience was an exposure to non-Western music, in particular Arabic. Riley’s only prior contact with what was then called ‘‘ethno-music’’ was attending a concert by Ravi Shankar in Berkeley:

32 : terry riley’s in c I think I heard him before I wrote In C. I think it was before I went to Europe. I remember going to a concert at UC Berkeley to hear Allah Raka [the tabla player for Ravi Shankar and the father of Zakir Hussein], and I remember that was a real powerful experience. . . . I met them later after I’d moved to New York . . . but I didn’t know them and didn’t know anything about Indian music. I’d just gone to this concert someone had recommended to me. But I remember the thing that I carried away from there was, ‘‘Boy these guys are enjoying what they’re doing so much. This is the way to play music.’’ I had only experienced this in jazz before, I hadn’t realized there were other musics out there where people really enjoyed . . . they weren’t so much thinking, ‘‘I have to play this right,’’ but they were just playing . . . the wonderful sensual qualities of sound, and just interacting with each other.49

This sense of freedom, ritual, and release was again encountered when Riley moved to the south of Spain for a couple of months in 1962. He was able to hear music over the radio coming from Morocco, only about 20 miles away: I was very unfamiliar with Middle Eastern music, and I wasn’t studying it, mainly just smoking a lot of kief and just listening. When I first went to Europe in 1962, we ended up living in Algecieras, which is just across the Straits of Gibraltar from Sita, . . . so I used to listen to the radio a lot at night. . . . It was probably a mixture of all kinds of Middle Eastern music. I wasn’t taking the approach of studying this, of saying what is this about. I was just getting stoned, listening to the atmosphere, drinking in that. It was something I’d never heard.50

Riley didn’t perform this music, but he did travel to Morocco a couple of times and observed it in situ. Among the most important sounds were the call to prayer of the muzzein, and the instrumental playing using the maquamat scales that had also influenced Coltrane. For some young musicians, this would have been merely a pleasant exotic experience, but for Riley—in part because of the close linkage between his ear, mind, hands, and overall temperament—it left a far deeper and more enduring mark. Riley’s final notated work for real-time performance before In C shows evidence of this influence. He worked on Keyboard Study No. 1 intermittently through this period, and it was premiered at the same concert (November 4, 1964) as In C. Keyboard Study No. 1 at that point was titled Coule, from the French verb for ‘‘to flow’’ (as a noun it means both a musical slur and a dip in the water, and it was also a pun on its English homonym). Perhaps no piece pre-1964 comes closest to the concept and practice of In C. There are salient similarities in modality, rhythm, and modularity. Keyboard Study No. 1 consists of 16 melodic units, all notated in the same register. The first ten are shown in figure 2.5.

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 33

Figure 2.5. Riley, Keyboard Study No. 1, figures 1–10 (transcription from composer’s autograph score by author; copyright Terry Riley).

The work is a radical restriction of harmonic content, even more so than In C. It uses a mode based on Eb, but it is never explicit which sort, since the second and third degrees are never presented. The practice of the piece is to take a ‘‘continuum figure’’ (#1, 7, and 11) and then combine it ad lib with different successive modules (henceforth called ‘‘units’’). The initial procedure is to take continuum #1 and use units #2–6, then #7 with #8–10, and so on. The modal set starts with Eb-Bb-D in the first group of units, then

34 : terry riley’s in c

adds Ab and C in the second, and finally changes the D to Db in the third, with the final full modal statement being Eb-Ab-Bb-C-Db-Eb, which could be Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, or Aeolian. (In fact what we have is a pentatonic set, though not the usual ‘‘black-note’’ version.) The rhythmic practice consists of three key elements. The first is an interlocking of the continuum figures with associated units for each. The ‘‘continuums’’ are always structured to fall on the sixteenth note offbeat, the others on the beat. The effect is a kind of acoustic ‘‘digital delay,’’ an obvious by-product of Riley’s work with electronic echo and looping. The second element is a sort of phasing between the continuum figures and the successive units. In the first group, the continuum figure and units #2–5 are exactly the same lengths (three groups of three eighth-notes each). But unit #6 is made up of two eighth-note groups, thus creating a 3:2 relation. In the next group, continuum figure #7 consists of three groups of four eighth-notes each, but unit #8 is made up of four groups of three eighthnotes. (Figures #9–10 return to the same grouping as #7.) The same occurs in the final group, but even more complex. Continuum figure #11 is made of three groups of four eighth-notes, followed by one of three eighth-notes. The following units have the rhythmic grouping of eighth notes: 12: 3–3–3–3–3 13: 4–4–3–4 14: 4–4–3–4 (but on the offbeat) 15: 3–3–3–3–3 (returning to on the beat for the remainder of the piece) 16: 2–4–3–4–2

Third, a loose form of rotation occurs in the pitch-order of the units within each module. Taking the simplest example, unit #2’s first three-note group begins on Eb, the first pitch of continuum figure #1. The second threenote group begins on Bb, and the third on Eb, the second and third pitches of the continuum figure. Unit #3 begins on Bb, #4 introduces D, and then #5 starts on D. So there is rotation occurring through a series of units, both in reference to the continuum figures’ pitch collection, and also to the pitches within any given unit. In general, the units following each continuum figure start with each of its different pitches until the full set has been covered. Riley combines the relative rigor of these techniques on the ‘‘microlevel’’ of the piece with a grand structural ‘‘loosening’’ that would prefigure the open-form architecture of In C. For each of the continuums and its successive modules, the performer may choose to combine any of the latter with the former. Further, one may decide not to use all the modules. Then, as a final expansive formal gesture, Riley gives verbal directions which can result in the performer’s combining at some point in the work every continuum figure with every other possible set of modules (so, for

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 35

example, continuum #1 will combine with modules #12–16, continuum #7 with modules #2–6, etc.). Like In C, the Keyboard Study No. 1 has each of its pitches and rhythms notated. It has a general process of growth and elaboration, starting from very similar materials, that are enriched harmonically and rhythmically over its course. It has a similar sound of phasing, looping, repetitively buzzing modal figures. In the continuum figures, there is a rhythmic and harmonic ground that anticipates the Pulse of In C. But even more radically than its successor, the piece explodes its own structure with the ability to move back and forth in time, creating combinations of units from every portion of the work. It creates the idea of a piece as a network of events rather than as a mere succession.51

Music for the Gift One work remained, however, to complete the gestation of ideas and techniques that made In C possible. Indeed, Riley himself has repeatedly referred to it as the one most necessary for its conception. The piece is Music for the Gift, realized entirely on tape but using acoustic sources. It developed from a theatrical project organized by Ken Dewey, a brilliant Bay Area director who had already created a piece for actors and dancers (using some of Ann Halprin’s regulars) called ‘‘The Gift.’’ He brought the project to Paris in 1963 for a performance at the Theater of Nations and asked Riley to provide music. Here another important intersection occurred, as the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker appeared in Paris at the same time, just out of prison in Lucca, Italy, for drug possession. Dewey wished to use Baker and his group as performers, but also wanted a fixed score with their music as a sort of dream backdrop. Riley picks up the story: One day I walked into the pool room on rue Pigalle where we would hang out waiting for the booking agents to come and give us our next assignment. Chet was there playing pool. I was very excited because he was a hero of mine. It was about a day later that Ken Dewey turned up in Paris and I told him I’d seen Chet Baker. He saw Chet and talked him into getting involved. . . . Ken rented an old chateau in the Valdomois, south of Paris. All the actors and everybody lived in it while the show was being put together. There was a big barn connected to the chateau. We rehearsed in the barn. . . . I’d come to the chateau at night and bring back the tapes I’d been working on. We’d listen to them, and the actors would try to get a sense of how to relate to the music. Occasionally Chet and the band would come out to the chateau and we’d have a full rehearsal with everybody. Ken would watch the whole

36 : terry riley’s in c thing and would try to get the actors to interact more with the musicians, and try to get the musicians to be more involved with the action.52

Riley decided to use his looping procedure as the basic compositional technique, returning to electronic media for the first time in a couple of years. He arranged to record Baker’s quartet (trumpet, trombone, bass, and drums) at the Sarah Bernhardt Theater: ‘‘I asked them to play something. I didn’t even say what to play. The first thing that Chet did play was a blues duet—bass and trumpet. We recorded that and then I might have suggested they play ‘‘So What’’ . . . I asked them to record it with the group and to improvise on it just as they did at Le Chat Qui Peˆche. Then I had them play it solo, with each one improvising on it, so that I had both the group and individual instruments.’’53 ‘‘So What’’ was from the landmark 1959 Miles Davis album Kind of Blue. The original consists of sixteen bars of D Dorian, followed by a bridge of eight bars of Eb Dorian, and then eight more of D Dorian. The music’s harmonic functionality is weakened not only by the modality, but by the half-step modulation. This harmonic structure turned out to be ideal for use with the electronic technique Riley now was to discover. Dewey had brought in a French technician from the National Radio (ORTF) to aid with the final mix, Riley describes what happened next: ‘‘I described the effect [of echoing similar to Mescalin Mix] to the French engineer, a very straight guy in a white coat, who fooled around and ended up hooking two tape recorders together. Boy! When I heard that sound it was just what I wanted. . . . What you do is connect two tape recorders. The first one is playing back, the second recording, the tape stretched across the heads of both. As this machine records, it feeds back to the other machine, which plays back what it’s added. It keeps building up . . . ’’54 What Riley had discovered was a setup he would use for the next decade in solo performance, one of the first major instances of interactive real-time electronic music. He called it the ‘‘time-lag accumulator.’’ It allowed looping, but now with the precise time interval between the initial sound and its echo, defined by the length of tape separating the playback from record heads. It also allowed for controlled layering of sounds, critically in real time. By making the decision to also record the performers individually, Riley created a rich inventory of materials that he could then combine and elaborate into an entirely new counterpoint. These source materials opened up the possibility of gradual harmonic shifts, with one scalar plane being gradually overlaid upon another while the former vanished. The D-Eb modal modulation of ‘‘So What’’ was now stretched out into a dreamlike transformation. Music for the Gift is in five movements. The first, 5’44’’ long, subjects Baker’s initial blues solo to ‘‘targeted’’ looping. Riley uses his own musical

Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C : 37

instincts to focus on particular phrases and allow them to expand into a momentarily timeless zone. One fascinating by-product of the process, however, is that as the layering creates ever thicker textures, so the number of rhythmic attacks increases. Since they are out of phase, they create the impression that the tempo is accelerating. The second movement (1’50’’) is more up-tempo, and the texture (using full quartet) is more pointillistic in its ‘‘source form,’’ in turn becoming slightly chaotic when layered. In addition, a vocal gesture occurs several times, a looping of the phrase ‘‘She moves she’’ (apparently a line from the play, whose full text was ‘‘She moves, she follows’’). The third movement (4’35’’) uses all these same elements, but with a more continuous rhythmic accompaniment. Near the end there is a brief pause, and then, sotto voce, the vocal gesture murmurs for the final minute. The fourth movement (1’20’’) has a dense but light texture and is probably the movement in which the ‘‘planar modulations’’ can best be heard, in part because they happen in the most rapid succession (they are also quite audible in the third movement, though often the vocal gesture serves as a sort of pivot between harmonic regions). The final movement (6’) is an extended essay exclusively on ‘‘She moves she,’’ this time in its full form—the phrase, followed by a sound a bit like a falling hammer or closing door. It is presented in its unaltered form for a little over a minute before it begins to loop, moving immediately into a highly reverberant texture. The sound is evocative of Steve Reich’s later tape pieces such as Come Out and It’s Gonna Rain, but without the rigorous focus on process. The jazz combo is heard periodically, but it is now very much in the background. This is by far the most dreamlike (or druglike) section of the work. Then suddenly at 3’45’’ the texture evaporates to reveal the original solo of the first movement. It is unaltered until the final forty-five seconds, when once again the trumpet is subjected to looping on each note of a rising line, creating a cadential gesture through the match of technology to phraseshape. The work, while preserving a spontaneous feel throughout, nevertheless projects shape and at least some direction through its constant interplay of recurring gestures and sections, degree of textural complexity, and varying rates of rhythmic and harmonic change. More than four decades later, its sound remains fresh and radical, even if its language is now familiar to almost all listeners, from both popular and classical backgrounds. Riley has said that this ‘‘was probably my first orchestral piece, but I made it all out of tape. That . . . was when I first really started understanding what repetition could do for musical form. That’s the forerunner of In C.’’55 Indeed, it was the last piece in the puzzle. Now Riley’s eclectic, all-American formation was complete. All the elements were in place for the composition of In C.

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Chapter Three

The Premiere Riley’s European sojourn was cut short by John F. Kennedy’s assassination. As a gesture of mourning, all U.S. Army clubs were closed to entertainment, instantly drying up his major source of revenue. In February 1964 he returned (by boat) to New York, and La Monte Young was waiting on the dock to meet him.1 Within a year New York would become home, but right now it was only a brief way station; steady employment playing ragtime piano awaited in San Francisco. Via a ‘‘driveaway car’’ (a method by which impecunious drivers could travel across the country by delivering automobiles for individuals or companies, described in loving detail in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road), Riley returned to a neighborhood just south of Potrero Hill, Bernal Heights, moving into a house at 215 Bocana Street (fig. 3.1); and he took up his old gig at the Gold Street Saloon. He returned to this familiar terrain at a fortunate moment, in several senses. To begin with, his old colleagues at the San Francisco Tape Music Center had decided to devote the 1964–1965 season to a series of solo concerts by local composers who had been the core members of the organization. Morton Subotnick explained the rationale: [Up to] that season Pauline, Ramon, and I had all done music of other people. . . . We did a concert of Berio . . . because Berio was around at that point, and we had concerts where we were doing semi-staged versions of Charles Ives, and all sorts of things with multimedia . . . but we decided that in the 64–65 season it would be time for all the local composers to do a concert of their own music. So I did a concert, Pauline did a concert, Ramon did a concert, and I knew that Terry was coming back, so I wrote to him or called him, I can’t remember, and said, ‘‘Will you be back by November?’’ He said, ‘‘I’ll be back in time for November’’ and I said, ‘‘Why don’t we do a concert of your music and you write a piece that we can all play?’’ and I guess that’s what he considered a commission!2

In addition, Riley met a neighbor, and they would have a profound influence on each other. Steve Reich, having completed his master’s degree

40 : terry riley’s in c

Figure 3.1. Riley’s 1964 home at 215 Bocana Street (photograph by Terry Riley). at Mills after studying with Berio and Milhaud, was driving a cab, working as music director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and performing in his own improvisation ensemble.3 He lived about 100 yards away from Riley, in a house on Wool Street, which intersects Bocana (Riley’s house was at the exact intersection of the two, itself forming a wedge in a ‘‘flatiron’’ structure), and their meeting is near legendary, though their perspectives on it differ slightly. Riley recalls: [A] friend of mine, Bill Spencer, who had also worked with Ann[a] Halprin, had taken me to the concert, so I didn’t know what to expect. People were saying, ‘‘You’ve got to hear this guy Steve Reich,’’ so I went to hear him, and I just wasn’t impressed. . . . I had left at intermission, and the next day I’m in my studio and there was this loud banging, and Steve was [saying], ‘‘Why did you walk out on my concert?’’ I invited him in, . . . he played me [some of his tape pieces] and we became good friends, and I showed him the In C score, and then we started talking about doing the concert. And then the thing came up with Ramon calling me and asking me to do the concert.4

Reich doesn’t remember an altercation; it seems likely that Riley’s memory is correct, but the differing personalities of the two (Riley generally

The Premiere : 41

understated and cooperative, Reich more forward and authoritative) led to differing perceptions of the interchange. Whatever the case, the result was a bond, which while not long in duration, was to be extremely fertile for both. It’s also clear from Riley’s interview excerpt above that In C had already been written. The story of its composition is one of the great examples of epiphanic compositional ‘‘inspiration’’ in our era, similar to the idea many listeners have of the Romantic era’s creativity. One can be skeptical of this account, but Riley’s telling of it has remained remarkably consistent over the years. While he does not remember the exact day, the date on his autograph score is March ’64 (fig. 3.2). Thus it appears that the piece came to him extremely soon after he had settled back into his old life. A series of factors had laid the groundwork for Riley’s practice and vision, and all that was needed now was a catalyst. Ever since he had discovered the looping principle in his tape pieces and had seen it take off with the ‘‘time-lag accumulator’’ in Music for the Gift, he had wanted to transfer this procedure from the electronic domain to that of real-time performance by instrumentalists. For weeks leading up to his creative ‘‘flash,’’ he had been working on sketches of a piece that fully notated a slowly evolving, repetitive work similar in structure to what became In C, with hopes that it would be performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival. But it wasn’t working out, and Riley felt he was facing a dead end. One March evening, however, on the bus home from playing at the Gold Street Saloon, he suddenly heard the piece: ‘‘It was like music in a dream . . . when I heard it, I knew how to write it down. I think pretty much the next day I had it down. The first patterns, I don’t know how far down into the piece, required the inspiration, and that I retained until I got home . . . Maybe in one sitting, I don’t remember more than that.’’5 The piece in its current form of 53 modules was written apparently in less than a twenty-four hour stretch. Riley says he heard a ‘‘cosmic’’ version of the work in his head, which went at least up to the first major modulation (probably the move to e minor at module 22).6 He maintains there was no major revision of the work afterwards, and the autograph score seems to bear him out.7 Thus, when Riley showed Reich the piece, it was still ‘‘hot off the press,’’ and his thought was that he would do it with Reich and his ensemble. He did not yet know that he would soon be contacted by the Tape Music Center to do a concert. But though it was not ultimately performed by the ensemble, the premiere’s orchestra did contain Reich plus two of his key players: Jon Gibson on soprano saxophone, and Jeanie Brechan (Reich’s girlfriend at the time) on keyboard. The rehearsal process of the piece remains vague, because of both the nature of the piece itself, and the fluctuating roster of musicians. Several of

Figure 3.2. The original score of In C used for premiere performance (courtesy of William McGinnis; copyright Terry Riley, 1964).

The Premiere : 43

the players remember tryouts in house concerts. Most notably, Jon Gibson states: ‘‘I recall performing In C in various private homes, I think before we played it at the Center, some big Victorian houses and bohemian settings . . . people and sides of the city that were new to me.’’8 These run-throughs likely involved smaller numbers of players, possibly some from Reich’s and Riley’s larger pool of players (Riley, for instance, played with Gibson in an ensemble of alto and tenor saxophones, trombone, trumpet, keyboard, bass, and drums, that Gibson calls, ‘‘kind of postbop, we were trying to do Giant Steps, Moment’s Notice . . . these very difficult pieces . . . for me and for everybody, these were very challenging pieces. I don’t think we did them very well, and we did at least one Ornette [Coleman].’’9 By the time the concert emerged as a concrete event, the core group of players was drawn from among Riley’s close friends and collaborators over the previous several years, all of whom had been closely associated with the San Francisco Tape Music Center. These included Steve Reich (Wurlitzer electric piano), Pauline Oliveros (accordion), Morton Subotnick (clarinet), Ramon Sender (Chamberlin organ), and Jon Gibson (soprano saxophone). A number of other players became part of the proceedings nearer the concert date. Stan Shaff, who was working as a high school music teacher but also was committed to developing his own electroacoustic oeuvre, played trumpet. Phil Winsor also played trumpet; like Riley, he had been in the Bay Area for a few years, completing a master’s at San Francisco State, and had also spent the previous year in Europe (Italy) on a Fulbright. Mel Weitsman had trained as a painter at the California School of Fine Arts (later to become the San Francisco Art Institute), studying with Clifford Styl; but he also sought out opportunities for performance and improvisation on sopranino recorder (the instrument he played in the premiere). Warner Jepson played piano with jazz ensembles around town, wrote musicals, was making his own electronic music independently, and had accompanied Anna Halprin’s dancers before Riley and Young took on that role. Jeanie Brechan was playing keyboard through her connection to Reich. Sonny Lewis had played jazz often with Riley on tenor saxophone, and pianist James Lowe was a similar presence in the San Francisco jazz scene.10 Soon before the concert, all the players who would premiere the work had agreed to participate. The November 1, 1964, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle carried an announcement of a concert entitled ‘‘oneyoungamerican.’’ According to all interviewed, there was no money involved; this was an act of love. There is no record of how many rehearsals involved the full ensemble, probably only one or two, perhaps only on the day of the concert. Riley remembers the lead-up to the dress rehearsal:

44 : terry riley’s in c I think Steve and I had a few talk-through sessions over at the house, maybe with Jon, and then we went up to the Divisadero place I think two or three times before the concert, and I don’t think we ever had rehearsals with everybody, I think most of the performances were with the core group, which was Steve and Jon and Jeanie Brechan and I, maybe Mel Weitsman. My memory of the early rehearsals was, at least the first couple, [there] were just a few of us. And then we had one which was almost everybody, including a couple of hippies who came in off the street, who tried to blow over it, and Steve threw them out because he was totally intolerant of anything like that. . . . I would have probably let them do it [laughs]. I remember one guy with a trumpet saying, ‘‘Oh yeah, I’m just blowin’ with this!’’ I think we had one rehearsal with just about everybody, but I don’t think we ever had one with everybody, I’m almost positive of that.11

Whatever the looseness of the atmosphere, the rehearsal process near the time of the concert was straightforward, with Riley handing out the handcopied ozalid score (fig. 3.2).12 He explained the work’s process, and then the group plunged into performing it as a straight run-through. While some modules may have been individually rehearsed, there seems to have been no methodical vetting of the individual units before the musicians started playing the piece. Pauline Oliveros remembers that Riley assumed the work would be easy, but he quickly found out that it was more difficult than he imagined.13 The major stumbling block was rhythm; as soon as the divergence of modules began, it became difficult to maintain a common tempo or metric reference point, and the work fell apart. At this point Reich made a suggestion: Well, it was in rehearsal, and the piece moves along pretty quick. And he [Riley] . . . wants everybody together, and they’re playing whatever pattern they’re playing but they’re locked into the same eighth note. And that did not always work. There were often at least ten people playing, and the room was fairly reverberant, and so sometimes people were slipping and sliding around the eighth note, unintentionally, as a mistake. So, once a drummer always a drummer, I said we kind of need a drummer here, but since drums would be inappropriate, what about use the piano; so Jeanie played some high Cs just to keep us together, and Terry said ‘‘Let’s give it a try’’ or something like that, and we tried it and voila everyone was together.14

And so the Pulse was born. The San Francisco Tape Music Center (SFTMC), the site of the premiere, had a couple of years earlier moved to 321 Divisadero Street from a space in Russian Hill (that burned down at just the time the move was taking place).15 The area, called the Western Division and bordering the Haight, was a thriving middle-class black neighborhood. Although the music made at the Center was far different from the norm in the area, its members appreciated the fact that the musicians were at least similar

The Premiere : 45

Figure 3.3. Concert space for the premiere performance of In C, 321 Divisadero Street (photograph by Robert Carl, 2006). outsiders within mainstream American culture. And being adjacent to the emerging counterculture of the Haight was equally prophetic and fortuitous. The Center itself occupied the second and third floors. The third floor was a recording studio, which was used for both making electroacoustic works and recording concerts.16 On the second floor there were three spaces. One was the in-town dance studio for Anna Halprin’s troupe. Next to it was a small room that KPFA radio used as a booth for live broadcasts and recording of concerts. The largest space on the floor was the performance hall: about 40 yards long, 25 wide, and 25 high, with a small stage toward the far end, raised about two feet above the main floor.17 (See fig. 3.3.) Windows on one side looked out over a back alley. The floors were wooden, and the acoustics of the space were reverberant, though not extremely so. Morton Subotnick remembers that the Center had no more than 120 chairs, the maximum it could hold.18 The arrangement of the audience and performers was deliberately informal. Because there were 13 performers, essentially an experimental chamber orchestra, there had to be overflow from the stage area. The setup did not follow any specific pattern; Riley had decided to leave the seating unstructured: ‘‘The way the concert happened at

46 : terry riley’s in c

the old Tape Music Center was kind of magical because at the beginning they were starting to put chairs out for the audience, and I said, ‘‘Why don’t we just leave the chairs by the door, and let people sit wherever they want and see how they organize themselves in the room. . . . Also I started playing Music for the Gift as they were walking in, so it wasn’t like walking into a concert.’’19 Oliveros distinctly remembers there being two grand pianos, because they were needed for a concert near in time to this one which featured her and David Tudor, and Reich remembers Riley playing at ground level. Winsor has an image of Riley performing with candles on his instrument, and Lowe remembers Brechan playing the pulse in the upper register above Riley. From this information, it seems that:


The two pianos, Reich’s Wurlitzer, and several other performers were on ground level with the audience.
The only amplified instrument, other than the Wurlitzer, was the Chamberlin from the upstairs studio, heard through loudspeakers.
The performers were somewhat randomly distributed, able to see one another in order to cue and communicate, some on the floor and some on the stage.
The ultimate instrumentation was two trumpets, sopranino recorder, clarinet, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, accordion, two pianos (each four-hand), Wurlitzer, Chamberlin organ.20

The Chamberlin deserves explanation. It was a visionary instrument, which can be considered an early prototype for an analog sampler. While it did not record sounds in real time, it did have a mechanism by which each key played a different prerecorded tape loop, each sound at its respective pitch. In addition, one could choose from up to three different sounds, like the ‘‘stops of an organ.’’ Sender played the organ from the upstairs studio and could hear the piece through the recording system, though he could not see what was going on below. He set the organ for male voice, his favorite setting. Reich remembers a ‘‘kind of roundness’’ in the overall sonority, and it seems likely that the background wash of sound from the organ may have been responsible for much of that effect.21 It is thus important to realize that In C from its earliest incarnation had an electroacoustic component, and so was a pioneering instance of live electronic performance integrated into an ensemble of acoustic instruments. There is another aspect of the performance that was unusual and prophetic and that is usually ignored in its history: its light show. Anthony Martin was an artist allied with the Tape Music Center from its earliest days, and he provided real-time visual performance for the premiere. (The Tape Center was already known for pioneering multimedia works, and Elias Romero, one of the most prominent light artists for rock shows, had done collaborations

The Premiere : 47

with composers there prior to Martin’s arrival.) Martin, originally from New York, had come to San Francisco after graduating from the Art Institute of Chicago, and met Sender and Subotnick in 1960. He was a natural fit, because he had always been drawn to music and had actually built an Indian sarod, which he taught himself to play. He immediately began creating visual components to accompany works of such composers as Oliveros (Bye Bye Butterfly) and Sender (Desert Ambulance). Most of these involved slide projections, usually of superimposed images, as well as liquid projections. (Martin would later achieve wider prominence doing similar sorts of shows for Phil Graham’s Fillmore rock concerts, though he is careful to stress that this was only a limited portion of his output, both in terms of quantity and duration.) For In C, Martin chose an approach that was more subtle, abstract, and conceptual. Using an overhead transparency projector, he took off the mirror that would direct the image horizontally, so that it went vertically instead, onto the ceiling.22 In addition, he mounted a prism on the motor, which projected horizontally onto the walls while it rotated. The images projecting upward were monochromatic, but when sent through the prism, those outward were in color. The key imagery was the ceiling projection, which in fact was extremely performative. As Martin describes it: I made drawings with string. I held a quantity of string over the light table and let it fall into a kind of drawing, and into that I diffracted light with my hand, so it moved on the ceiling. I performed intuitively, with a mindset that it would develop through 20 minutes . . . and also be about one image, not a series of images, just developing one image, . . . I allowed the string to make a string image on the light table, and into that I would bring a dish of clear water that made it warble and warp the light further. I held the dish between the lens and the light’s focal point . . . so it became a flexible [distorting] lens. It excited me that you could make a lens out of water. I had some sand, and I spilled the sand in to get rid of the border. One of the aesthetic things I wanted was to get rid of the borders and formats, to destroy formats. Don’t have a square, a rectangle, circles . . . have pieces of light in space. I wasn’t thinking so much of color, it was mostly about high intensity, medium intensity, and black: those were my three components. I knew there would be light in the performing area; I wasn’t going to compete with the performers; I wasn’t going to ask that all the lights be shut off. And then there were other objects, like a fat condenser lens that created a curious bending of the light that made it seem spherical. When I spun this lens on the glass with my hand—this was a quick spin into the dish that I had on the overhead light table part—the projection upon the ceiling looked like a spinning galaxy.

48 : terry riley’s in c There was a wet dish and a dry dish. And then I combined them—I put clear water or clear oil into the sides, trying to destroy any format, and these would move along the string shapes in a very lyrical, sensual way. The liquid would go along a part of the string and leave holes, patches. I only needed a thimbleful here, a thimbleful there. And oil diffracted completely differently, spectrally; it would make fringe patterns, which were also lyrical. . . . I used [what] I called emotional geometry, and by that I meant shapes that have emotional meaning. Either they were coming into being or decaying, and there was a kind of emotionality of having one form: spinning form, with the dark shape that would move up behind it . . . that pretty much completed the palette. I used a little bit of color: a bit of yellow food color, and a little bit of blue food color. But it was a very restricted color palette.23

Though it may seem disproportionate to speak at such length of visual art in the context of a musical premiere, one must realize that this component made the premiere of In C a multimedia event. And as Martin’s precise description indicates, the imagery was hardly facile. Rather, Martin was developing a performative process in the visual domain that paralleled the slowly evolving changes (harmonic, textural) that make In C both distinctive and revolutionary. And to know Martin’s imagery gives us a far greater grasp of the entire visual ambience of the space on that night. The concert occurred on Wednesday, November 4, 1964 (the day after Lyndon Johnson’s victory over Barry Goldwater). The program fell into two halves. (See fig. 3.4.) In the first, Riley presented mostly earlier tape pieces and one keyboard work. As was mentioned earlier, Music for the Gift was playing as the audience entered (again, ahead of its time, since today audiences for most popular music events expect there to be some sort of pre-concert soundtrack playing as they enter a concert hall). Then there were three relatively short electronic works, respectively from July, June, and October of 1964: I (using the voice of John Graham), Shoeshine (using a tune by jazz organ great Jimmy Smith), and In Bb or Is It Ab (using as source Sonny Lewis’s tenor saxophone). This was followed by a solo piano work of Riley’s, Coule, which was an early incarnation of his Keyboard Study No. 1 (described earlier).24 There was a break to arrange for the setup of In C (Sender remembers a fair amount of wine being drunk during this intermission—though by the audience, not the performers), and then the piece began. It is ironic that we have perhaps the sketchiest information of all about this, the climax of the event, but it is logical as well. Performers tend to move into a true ‘‘present’’ in the act of playing. There are few states in which one is more existentially ‘‘there’’ than the act of making music live. One concentrates on the state and idiosyncrasies of one’s instrument; one hears internally the next upcoming event, even if it is only a fraction of a second away; one necessarily forgets

The Premiere : 49

Figure 3.4. The program for the concert premiere (courtesy of Anthony Martin). the immediate past to stay in the current moment and anticipate the looming future. So in this sense, it’s not too surprising that the players don’t remember a lot from the actual performance. Reich has perhaps the clearest memory of the interaction between the players, not surprisingly because he as a composer was listening for particular sorts of contrapuntal relations: ‘‘I think it [the interaction] was excellent. I’ve always been a chamber music type of composer and player, and In C brings the best of

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that out in people. There’s a lot listening to other people, a lot of laying out when it made sense, and a lot of trying to play the same pattern as someone else but to sound interesting in a canon way, and to be aware of where people were, how far ahead you were. I think it was very good ensemble, good listening ensemble.’’25 Oliveros, on the other hand, remembers that there were a few ‘‘rocky stretches’’ where people almost lost the music’s thread (a condition that can occur with the work up to this day; the idea that it is a simple, ‘‘one rehearsal’’ piece has been sadly demolished with performance disasters by those who did not live long enough with the piece to actually internalize its motives and structure; one must rely on active listening throughout the performance to anchor one’s own choices concerning progression from one module to another.) Oliveros also remembers one particularly important point: the tempo of the premiere. It was much slower than that of the later premiere recording, about q ¼ 69.26 As a result the overall feel of the piece was probably more spacious and relaxed than the way it was first perceived by the thousands who came to know it through the recording.27 There is remarkable concord about the duration of the performance. Everyone tends to estimate it as between 45 and 60 minutes, and the San Francisco Chronicle review backs this number up (‘‘the better part of an hour’’). All the performers are also clear about drug use. While they cannot speak for the audience, all those interviewed stated clearly that they performed sober. There was a rigorously professional sensibility at work with this issue. None of the participants had any problems with being high, and indeed, as has already been mentioned, Riley saw certain drug-induced experiences as extremely important to his artistic growth. In addition, there is some sense that for more informal events, such as house concerts (which had a highly social mood, and where a performance might be a natural extension of a party), marijuana in particular probably played a large part in the proceedings. But for In C’s premiere, it seems that everyone wanted to be as alert as possible. This attitude probably came from the sense of newness and risk involved in the performance technique, a feeling that the event might have some importance, and a desire not to let their friend Riley down. Although the room was full, it seems likely the audience was no more than 100 people.28 Subotnick remembers that people were ‘‘colorfully’’ dressed—it was just at the beginning of the hippie era, though the true flowering of Haight-Ashbury in the ‘‘Summer of Love’’ was still three years away.29 While everyone remembers a special sense of the evening, he perhaps expresses it best: ‘‘The audience response was wonderful. There was a buzz. . . . It was a kind of warm, vibrant, happy . . . it was like something had happened, maybe not historical, but something had happened that night that was really special. It was different than other concerts.’’30

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Several participants suggest that there was a silence at the end of the piece (natural, considering its length, spaciousness, and the fade-out of the final motive), followed by warm applause. Only one person walked out (an older local composer named Henry Jacobs31). Riley remembers Ronnie Davis of the San Francisco Mime Troupe coming up to speak with him enthusiastically about the work, and Oliveros remembers the Berkeley composer Richard Felciano expressing admiration. But while the general feeling was that something significant had occurred, there was no sense of its being earth-shattering. So many concerts occurred at the SFTMC, and the group of performers was so communally minded and mutually supportive, that it seems likely that it was seen by all as a special night, but also just another gig. And yet, in large part because so many of the performers were composers, who were in turn to continue to develop significant careers in twentiethcentury music, the ramifications of the piece were only to grow. One thing that is striking is that so many of the participants felt they knew something important had happened that night, and they began to process the unique qualities of the work and incorporate its lessons into their own practice. It is likely that this set of performers was critical to the survival of the work because they were prominent in the field, remembered the performance, and would continue to build its reputation by word of mouth.32 In C was performed twice, the second concert being two days later, on Friday, November 6. The Tape Center’s rationale for repeating a program was to build buzz for a larger audience, since a review usually came out in the paper the day after the first (though that did not happen this time). No one remembers anything especially different happening musically in the second performance (though Oliveros jokes that since it was the second time around, it had to be better). The second concert is particularly memorable, however, for two reasons. The first is that perhaps the greatest drama of the concerts—a threat to their very occurrence—transpired without the players’ and audience’s even realizing it. Subotnick and Sender take up the story: subotnick: The morning of the concert I arrived at the Tape Music Center and found a notice from the Fire Department on our front door declaring the building off limits until further notice. So I phoned our attorney. He was at home trying to avoid being served a subpoena by hiding behind the sofa, so our conversation was a bit odd. Anyway, his advice was just to leave the front door open. It opened out towards the street, so no one would see the notice. sender: Yeah, it was Sol Landau who brought the heat. He had acquired the U.S. rights to Jean Genet’s film Our Lady of the Flowers. The homosexual love scenes in prison were considered somewhat shocking for the era. Every time he hired a

52 : terry riley’s in c hall and showed the film, the fire department closed the hall on some technicality. We didn’t even know Landau was showing the film in our auditorium until we found the notice. Or I should say KPFA’s and our auditorium, because we sublet to KPFA and they in turn allowed different groups like Canyon Cinema to rent it for an evening. subotnick: We found out we were on the House UnAmerican Activities list because the building had been previously rented by the California Labor School. They had taken out a building permit to install sprinklers but had never done the work.33

Subotnick had played in the Wednesday premiere but sat out this performance, anxiously waiting to divert any authority who might arrive to cancel the concert. And a fire marshal did arrive. Subotnick immediately began delaying tactics, which apparently succeeded until the end of the performance: I knew that a fire marshal was coming the next night. So I waited for him in the lobby. When the fire marshal arrived, we talked, and [I was] explaining what we were trying to do at the Tape Center, and I opened the door to give him a sense of what was happening, and he peeked in, and then I closed the door. The piece was still early on [sings a motive], and he said, ‘‘Jesus, you call that music?’’ [laughs] . . . [Later,] it could have been the end of the concert, people were all over the place in the lobby area, . . . and Al Frankenstein, who wrote the review, came out . . . he was standing on one side of me—and the fire marshal . . . standing on the other side of me. I knew Al Frankenstein very well . . . and he was asking me questions about In C. But the thing that was happening was . . . I had been very busy, trying to persuade this marshal at the time, and he was saying, ‘‘What are you doing, you’re not supposed to have an audience in here.’’ And in fact I think they were convinced we were the seat of some sort of drug operation . . . they had sent people to search the place, and we weren’t, and they never found anything, but they wanted to know why these people were here, for this kind of music, was there striptease going on. . . . And so he’s reading this literature as Frankenstein is talking to me, and he says, ‘‘Frankenstein [Bela Lugosi voice], huh? Ha ha ha . . . ’’ I’ve always had a multitasking ability, and so I’m carrying on two conversations, and I’m giving Frankenstein a sense of what’s going on aesthetically and socially, and the other guy, I’m explaining Frankenstein to! [laughs] I didn’t introduce him, but he was standing on the other side, and I said ‘‘Al Frankenstein is a well-known critic and musicologist.’’ I went back to Al, and this guy nudges me . . . and he says, as I recall very vividly, ‘‘What did you do, pay him off?’’34

This brings us to the second memorable aspect, the now-famous review. From Subotnick’s story, it is clear that the critic came to the second concert, not the first. Alfred Frankenstein (1906–1981) was the classical music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and a man of truly wide-ranging cultural tastes

The Premiere : 53

and experience. He at one time played clarinet in the Chicago Civic Orchestra, so he brought a deeply practical musicianship to his criticism.35 But perhaps equally important was the fact that he pursued art criticism with equal intensity and rigor. He published a still-noted volume on fin de sie`cle American trompe l’oeil painting, titled After the Hunt. This range of interests in different aesthetics, media, and artistic periods seems to have made him an almost ideal receptor for what he heard that evening. The full text, titled ‘‘Music Like None Other on Earth,’’ from the [Sunday] November 8, 1964, edition of the Chronicle (p. 28), follows: Terry Riley, who got his training as a composer in the Bay Region, is back after several years in Europe, and he reported in to the local public in a concert Friday night at the San Francisco Tape Center. During his sojourn abroad he has developed a style like that of no one else on earth, and he is bound to make a profound impression with it. He uses a variety of structural devices, but they all seem to eventuate in much the same effect. He begins with very simple melodic material, restricted in compass to only a few notes. This is very simply harmonized, at least at the start. The rhythms are as axiomatic as the other elements, the tempo is brisk and rigidly unchanging, and the volume level is consistently loud. This primitivistic music goes on and on. It is formidably repetitious, but harmonic changes are slowly introduced into it; there are melodic variations and contrasts of rhythm within a framework of relentless continuity, and climaxes of great sonority and high complexity appear and are dissolved in the endlessness. At times you feel you have never done anything all your life long but listen to this music and as if that is all there is or ever will be, but it is altogether absorbing, exciting, and moving, too. One is reminded of the efforts of Carlos Chavez to reconstitute the ceremonial music of pre-Columbian Mexico. Terry Riley may have captured more of its spirit than Chavez did. Not that the pre-Columbian analogy is Riley’s ultimate value. The style discussed here reached its peak in a piece for instrumental ensemble called ‘‘In C,’’ which stayed on C for the better part of an hour but left one refreshed rather than satiated. Riley does other things, too. A piece called ‘‘I’’ turned out to be a dramatic sketch based entirely on inflections of the perpendicular pronoun as taped by John Graham. This was the furthest from the manner of ‘‘In C.’’ But ‘‘In C’’ was the evening’s masterpiece and I hope the same group does it again.

The review first of all had enormous impact. Partly this came from the fact that a group of young, bohemian, experimentalist composers and musicians had received an imprimatur from a highly recognized member of the classical establishment. It is important to realize that at this moment classical music still had a reputation and rank within the culture that was

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far more visible and elevated than today, and simultaneously newspapers were still gatekeepers of information and opinion—a fact that seems increasingly anachronistic in this era of blogging and instant cyber-access to anything. Thus the thrill of this recognition was palpable, and it underlined for everyone the importance of what they had just witnessed and/or created. A second reason for the impact of this review was that it was perhaps the first critical document to identify this new musical language and to be aware of that originality. The term ‘‘minimalism’’ was still some distance down the pike, as least as it is applied to music.36 But Frankenstein essentially nails most of its salient aspects right at the outset (see the entire second paragraph of the review). Third, as a critical document in its own right, the piece is outstanding. Frankenstein’s innate rhetorical sense is clearly structured and directed. In the first paragraph, he gives historical background to Riley, identifies the time and place of the event, and then sets the stage for discussion of its importance. The second paragraph has already been cited: it gives a precise and concise definition of the musical materials heard throughout the concert, though above all it is referring to In C: Simple melodic material, registrally constricted. Similarly simple harmonies, though there is room for development into greater complexity over the work’s course. A similarly restricted rhythmic vocabulary. A quick and unchanging tempo. A largely undifferentiated volume level.

In the fourth paragraph Frankenstein compares Riley’s approach to the aesthetic of the great midcentury composer Carlos Chavez. This may seem a bit of a stretch (the critic himself admits as much in the paragraph’s last sentence), but it also serves several important functions. First, it gives a reference point for some readers who might otherwise have none with which to grasp the nature of this music. Second, Chavez would be known to better informed readers as a close friend of Aaron Copland, who in fact led the latter to an understanding of Latin American music that would culminate in such North American successes as El Salo´n Me´xico, and Danzo´n Cubano. In this sly manner, Frankenstein actually places Riley into an ‘‘All-American’’ school of composition far different from either the serial or aleatoric versions of avant-gardism that most readers would expect. Finally, and most important, by making the reference at all, Frankenstein places Riley immediately into a classical context. By comparing In C’s ad hoc orchestra to the symphonic works of a twentieth-century master,

The Premiere : 55

he creates a connection to traditional repertoire and to the primary medium by which it is both promulgated and validated. It thereby places the work in a completely different context than the marginal one to which it would usually be relegated. The final paragraph returns to the more concrete. It sums things up, suggests the range of pieces on the program without describing every one of them, and makes clear that In C is ‘‘the evening’s masterpiece,’’ though there is also a strong sense that he believes it is a masterpiece as well. Frankenstein was obviously extremely curious about what he had heard, as Subotnick’s remarks already show. Stan Shaff also remembers being accosted by the critic in the street as they were leaving, asking him what he thought of the work.37 In light of this, the one strange thing about the review is that Frankenstein does not mention the radical structure of the piece, that is, its blend of strict notation with improvisatory choice. It would have seemed easy to take a look at the score on a music stand anywhere near the stage at concert’s end. For whatever the reason, we shall see in chapter 5 that Frankenstein was given a second chance to remedy this small omission. The concerts were over, and In C had been launched. But while the moment created a special sense and left an equally special aura in the memory of all concerned, the work would also fall into a sort of limbo for several years while Riley, ever restless, pursued other projects and developed his compositional practice, in a related but different manner. The critical next stage in the work’s elevation to prominence would have to wait for four years and would involve travel to the other side of the North American continent.

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Chapter Four

Analysis Now is the time to look at In C in greater depth, to dig deep into the music. The piece so far has been relatively impervious to analysis. Or perhaps better said, it has been a sort of ‘‘stealth piece’’: its apparently simple and self-evident appearance has discouraged any analytic approach, perhaps because few could imagine there was more to it than what already met the eye. This chapter will attempt to dispel that idea. In C is brilliant in its clarity of concept, and its economy of execution. But that does not preclude closer examination revealing important details, as well as substratal structures that give the work its character and originality. In this book, the analysis will take two parallel tracks, which together give a rounded view of the piece. The first, presented in this chapter, examines the piece in terms of its materials and structures, outside of its realization in performance time. This analysis, which I call ‘‘endogenous,’’ takes the materials presented in the score and instructions as a musical artifact that can be analyzed in its own right, like any other notated piece. This analysis arises from inside the score itself. The second analytic track, which I call ‘‘exogenous,’’ examines the piece as it actually occurs, in real-time performance. This track is pursued in the chapter on the recorded premiere and in the final chapter, which examines later recordings of the work. Any realization of the piece must come from the interaction of the score with outside forces, that is, the choices made throughout performance by the players. Of course, because of the open elements of In C’s inherent structure, different performances will reveal different aspects of the work. The ultimate result should be a greater sense of In C’s multiplicity, which is perhaps its most striking aspect. To understand that the work is a matrix of possibilities, one needs to see those various possibilities realized. And once those differences have been exposed, it is then also possible to see just how the work in fact still projects a fundamental unity. But first we must come to understand the source of all those possibilities, the single page of notated music that has created such a reverberant history of realizations now stretching over decades.

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The Basic Materials Score In C consists of a single score of music (fig. 1.1) consisting of 53 brief modules. The shortest (10 and 34) are only an eighth beat long; the longest (35), thirty beats. The total number of quarter-note beats from all the modules is 260.5. Each module repeats ad lib. The rhythmic vocabulary of the work consists of even subdivisions and multiples of the quarter note: sixteenths, eighths, quarters, halves, and wholes. The one exception is the appearance in 22–26 of modules dominated by figures made up of repeated and rising notes in dotted quarters, which create a feel of a large triplet grouping against the predominant eighth-note pulse. Although that pulse emerged from practical considerations (see chapter 3), it is one of the most important defining features of the work. Originally conceived as high octave Cs on a piano, the pulse is a steady, unvarying eighth-note texture which provides a clear rhythmic anchor, always the same tempo, always the same pattern. It is thus a sort of neutral ‘‘grid’’ backdrop against which the far more sophisticated, complex, and shifting rhythmic relationships between the modules may unfold. In addition, because of its pitch, not only does it give the work its title, but it references every resultant harmonic combination, always including C. One cannot ignore the harmonic content of the pulse, no matter how subliminal it may become.

Instructions The current (2005) edition of the score Riley publishes contains the following instructions: All performers play from the same page of 53 melodic patterns played in sequence. A group of about 35 creates a rich full overlay but interesting performances have been created with many more or many less. Patterns are to be played consecutively, with each performer having the freedom to determine how many times he or she will repeat each pattern before moving to the next. There is no fixed rule as to the number of repetitions a pattern may have, however, since performances normally average between 45 minutes and an hour and a half, it can be assumed that one would repeat each pattern somewhere between 45 seconds and a minute and 1/2 or longer. It is very important that performers listen very carefully to one another and this means to occasionally drop out and listen. As an ensemble, it is desirable to vary dynamics as well as create group crescendos and diminuendos.

Analysis : 59 Each pattern can be played in unison or canonically in any alignment with itself or its neighboring patterns. One of the joys of playing IN C is the interaction of the players in polyrhythmic combinations that spontaneously arise among patterns. Some quite fantastic shapes will arise and disintegrate as the ensemble progresses through the piece. It is important not to hurry from pattern to pattern but to stay on a pattern long enough to interlock with other patterns. 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 lag too far behind the main patterns sounding. The ensemble can be aided by the means of an 1/8th note pulse played on the high C’s of a piano or mallet instrument. It is also allowed to use instead or with the pulse, improvised percussion to keep the rhythm of the ensemble precise. Care must be taken however that the percussion does not overwhelm the ensemble. Players must take care to play each pattern precisely. The first rehearsal should have everyone playing a repetition of each pattern in unison before going on to rehearse sections of the piece. The tempo is left to the discretion of the performers. Extremely fast is discouraged. When a performer is not playing, she should be conscious of the larger periodic composite accents that are sounding. When she re-enters she must be aware of what affect [sic] the entrance will have on the overall flow. The ensemble should aim to merge into a unison at least once, but preferable [sic] often during the course of a performance. If all patterns seemed to be played too much in unison a player should try to offset his pattern by and [sic] 1/8th note or other value so as to create a feeling of shifting alignments. It is OK to transpose patterns. Take care when transposing, especially with patterns in running 16th notes. This can create a very muddy sound. Also all instruments should aim at a blend at [sic] no one instrument should stick out except momentarily. Rhythmic augmentation of patterns can be effective. Players may omit patterns that are too difficult or unsuitable for their instrument. Amplification of instruments is allowed to help achieve a balanced dynamics Electronic instruments are also welcome. IN C usually ends this way: When each performer arrives at figure #53, he or she stays on it until the entire ensemble has arrived there. The group then makes a large crescendo and diminuendo a few times and then each player drops out when he or she wishes.

It’s important to realize that these fairly copious instructions are a sort of afterthought. Riley’s original notated artifact for the premiere appears to have been the score sheet of modules plus a few verbal instructions for its execution. (It also appears, as we saw in the previous chapter, that the rehearsal process was probably less structured than these

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instructions recommend. No one from the San Francisco premiere remembers a systematic unison play-through of the 53 modules, for example. By the time of the Buffalo recording four years later, though, some players do remember Riley rehearsing individual modules in sequence and in unison.) The instructions above are the results of decades of performance, during which Riley determined what decisions and approaches, to his taste, seem to work best. One should also note that he is still careful to leave room for alternative interpretations. As just one example, the paragraph about the ending carefully states ‘‘In C usually ends this way’’. Examination of the text shows a consistent use of ‘‘qualifying’’ words and phrases, such as may, is allowed, left to the discretion of, is discouraged, can be aided, it is important, care must be taken, should be aware of, and so on. The composer’s voice here is not that of an authoritative master, or dictator of practice. Rather, it is that of a mentor, advising the performer on the basis of experience and a certain wisdom won over a long time. Riley is careful to allow the performer leeway in the choices made and to preserve his or her autonomy as an individual within the collective. It is very much in the spirit of its time, celebrating both radical individuality and communitarian values. A final and important point about the instructions is that at the time In C was composed, there were many ‘‘text-pieces’’ being written. Both Cage and Wolff of the New York School were intensively investigating the idea of a score being a set of directions whose precise degree of activity was wideranging.1 The Fluxus movement was based largely on works whose ‘‘conceptual’’ nature was often described in but a sentence or two. La Monte Young, Riley’s good friend since student days, was one of the most visible leaders of this compositional approach.2 But with In C, Riley did something very different from most of these works, even though it shares much spiritually with them. While for many composers at this time, the text was the most important, perhaps the only, element of the score, for Riley it was an appendage. The piece cannot exist without the score of the 53 modules. It remains specific in the exacting manner by which its materials are defined, presented, and organized. With In C, Riley takes the world of both conceptual and indeterminate composition and reaffirms the importance of the score, the traditionally notated artifact, within it. This factor in no way diminishes the radicality of his approach; in some ways it makes it even more extreme, because it shows a way in which the old notation remains the most economical and efficient communication of musical thought, no matter how anti-traditional the impulse. Having defined the premises and materials of the work; we can now examine how its ‘‘nuts and bolts’’ are organized.

Analysis : 61

Pacing Harmonic Density The first task is to define the way in which the entrance and organization of the most basic elements of pitch and rhythm are paced. With the exception of 35 (discussed later), each module tends to use an extremely limited pitch set. The number of different pitch classes (henceforth PC) in a module I will call its harmonic density. At this point we are looking only at the number of PCs used in a module, not the content of those notes and their harmonic implications. Because of the radical restriction of pitch content in In C, this aspect takes on an importance not previously seen for decades, even perhaps centuries. The ranges of this quality are shown in figure 4.1. Looked at from another viewpoint, the sequence of harmonic densities is as follows (each number in the following sequence represents the PC density of each respective module): 2–3–3–3–3–1–1–2–2–2–3–4–3–4–1–3–2–2–1–3–1–5–5–5–5–5–3–2–3–1–3–3–2–2– 9–3–2–3–4–2–2–4–2–3–3–3–2–3–3–2–3–2–2

Note that Riley gradually varies the harmonic densities, progressing from lesser to greater through patterns that repeat a certain number of PCs, ‘‘seed’’ in a new density, and alternate regularly between higher and lower. For example, only after the music has moved between values of 1, 2, and 3 for eleven modules, is a 4 PC set allowed to appear. The two greatest densities occur only well into the piece: the series of rising dotted eighth figures at 22–26, which use 5 PC, and the single longest module, 35, which uses 9. For the remainder of the work there is a gradual paring down to modules of 2 PC, the last 4 PC module being 42 and the last 3 PC being 51.

Number of PC 1 2

3

4 5 9

Module # (6, 7, 15, 19, 21, 30) (1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 17, 18, 28, 33, 34, 37, 40, 41, 43, 47, 50, 52, 53) (2, 4, 5, 11, 13, 16, 20, 27, 29, 31, 32, 36, 38, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49) (12, 14, 39) (22, 23, 24, 25, 26) (35)

Figure 4.1. Pitch content of In C’s modules.

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So far, this analysis doesn’t tell us anything about the harmonic content or direction of In C. It’s not meant to. Rather, it shows how Riley’s sense of pacing governs his allocation of materials in a particular parameter of the music, from moment to moment. In this sense, this precise but fluid control of the music’s raw materials is reflective of a deeply compositional temperament, one that understands development and growth. It is also testimony to a similarly strong improvisational sense, one that knows when to bring in a new idea, when to allow another to fade, how to pace change and growth.

Rhythmic Materials A similar process is at work with the presentation of rhythmic vocabulary, that is, the mix of rhythmic units used in each module. When we catalog this information, the sequence is as shown in figure 4.2. (The values represented numerically are 16 ¼ sixteenth, up to 1 ¼ whole. Dotted values are similarly indicated. Larger values than a whole are indicated by þ ; e.g., a whole tied to a quarter is 1 þ 4): Again we see a similar sort of process as in the module allocation of PC. The music begins with shorter values (eighths), alternates with long-held tones, and gradually introduces sixteenths. By 22, once the greatest range of rhythmic values has been activated, a new continuity emerges in 22–26 with pulsating eighths, a sort of midrange between extremes, in that while the pulse is an eighth note, the actual figures have longer-held tones (resultant dotted quarters), slowly rising. Modules 27–34 return to the wide range of rhythmic figures, ranging from sixteenths to dotted wholes. Module 35 combines almost every different rhythmic duration of the whole piece into a single melodic gesture. Then 36–53 reassert the sixteenth note as the

1: 4 2: 8, 4 3–5: 8 6: 1+1 7: 16, 8 8: 1., 1+1 9–11: 16 12: 8, 1, 2 13: 16, 8, 8., 2. 14: 1 15–17: 16

18: 16, 8. 19: 4. 20: 16, 8 21: 2. 22: 8, 4. 23: 8, 4, 4. 24–26: 8 27: 16, 8 28: 16, 8. 29: 2. 30: 1. 31: 16

Figure 4.2. Rhythmic content of modules.

32: 16, 4. , 2. 33–34: 16 35: 16, 8, 4, 4. , 2, 2. , 1 36–41: 16 42: 1 43: 16, 8 44: 8, 4 45: 4 46–47: 16, 8 48: 1, 1. , 1+4 49–53: 16

Analysis : 63

dominant value, essentially reversing the process of 1–21; the music moves from a sixteenth-note texture in 36–41 to an alternation with longer tones in 42–48, and finally settles on the sixteenth to conclude in 49–53. Finally, if one looks at the actual rhythmic duration of each of the modules, one also sees that there are both short- and long-term shapings of time flow and phrasing. Simply counting beats in quarter-notes, the module lengths are as seen in figure 4.3. Riley tends to create ‘‘waves’’ of durations that either increase to a ‘‘crest’’ and then drop off quickly (e.g., 1–8, 9–14), rise and fall in a generally symmetric pattern (15–34), or alternate between a general rapid, shortduration texture punctuated by ‘‘spikes’’ of longer values (35–53). In fact, these three rhythmic duration templates explain one aspect of the larger form of the piece. But also there is careful attention to the shorter term. For example, even though the total length of each module in 6–8 is relatively long, 7 offsets its neighbors by consisting of a quick three-note figure bounded by silence. Or within 22–26 there is a slight ‘‘shaving’’ of lengths as one moves through the progression, causing it to contract and create a sense of acceleration. Or in 43–45, even though all three modules last three quarter beats, the vocabulary changes from predominant sixteenths to eighths to quarters, creating a micro-expansion. What one sees here is a conversation between the rhythmic units used and the durations given those units in the successive modules. When all the elements of pitch and rhythm discussed above are combined, it becomes

1: 3 2–5: 2 6: 8 7: 9 8: 14 9: 4 10: 0.5 11: 1.5 12: 5 13: 6 14: 16 15: 4 16: 1 17: 1.5 18: 2

19–21: 3 22: 12.5 23: 12 24–25: 10.5 26: 9.5 27: 3 28: 2 29: 9 30: 6 31: 1.5 32: 6 33: 1 34: 0.5 35: 30 36: 1.5

Figure 4.3. Duration of modules.

37: 0.5 38: 0.75 39: 15 40–41: 0.5 42: 12 43–45: 3 46: 5 47: 1 48: 15 49: 1.5 50: 0.5 51: 0.75 52–53: 0.5

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clear that some sort of formal shape is emerging. The defining landmarks after the opening seem to be 22, where the texture shifts in many ways, and 35, which is surely the most distinctive of all the modules. One senses that the piece is a gradual rise to the former, maintains a plateau until the latter, then begins a long process toward a resolution in the remaining modules. Keeping this hypothesis in mind, we can now move to other organizing factors of the work.

Motivic Transformation We have already seen how the rate and manner in which Riley introduces new pitch and rhythmic materials to each successive module create a general shape to the music in terms of the pacing of ‘‘densities.’’ Now we look at those motives in a more traditional manner. Riley uses techniques for a gradual transformation of his motives that come straight from the playbook of more traditional practice, and this approach is evident from the very beginning.3 Take modules 1–5. We have already noted how the PC content grows from two to four within their space (C/E, with F/G added). The initial rhythmic germ of a repeated quarter, combined with grace-note upbeat and reiterated eighth-note pulse, changes to eighth and quarter (2), then straight eighths (3–5). But in addition, Riley plays with rhythmic displacement. He transforms the rhythmic profile of 2 to 3 by reducing the former’s concluding quarter to an eighth and adding an eighth rest at the beginning to make the gesture an offbeat one. That is then contracted into a repeating module of three eighths at 4 (i.e., the rest is dropped), then at 5 the rest returns at the end, creating 3’s rhythmic palindrome. These changes are of course subtle, but they are real, and entirely perceptible in performance. What is their purpose? Riley is creating a texture that is mutable but also stable. One hears essentially the same modal content throughout. What one also perceives is the rhythmic profile beginning to tip in one direction, then another, creating a balancing act that keeps the strictly limited materials fresh. It is also calculated to create this effect in the performance context, where different players will be in different points of the module-map. The overlapping of these modules will create a sense of change that is perceptible in its effect but difficult to identify in its exact timepoint. A similar example occurs at 9–13. The initial motive of two sixteenthnotes, followed by a rest, then accelerates at 10 into a continuous sixteenthnote ostinato. At 11 PC F enters with a two-note gesture at the beginning (F/G), and then those pitches are slowed down substantially in 12 and PC C

Analysis : 65

is added. The effect thus becomes that of 12 being ‘‘foregrounded’’ as a line against the texture of 9–11. Then 13 begins to speed the texture again by creating the most rhythmically syncopated module yet in the piece, F/G/B in a mixture of long and short, onbeat and offbeat rhythms. (One sees similar versions of this technique in 31–34, 36–41, and 49–53.) The idea of displacement takes on a more involved and rigorous form in modules 22–26. The material of every module is a rising scale based on the lower pentachord of E Aeolian (E/F#/G/A/B), but there is a process at work that shifts rhythmic weight throughout. Module 22’s concluding eighth-note moves to the beginning of 23; 23’s end-note B is now a quarter. At 24 one eighth is taken away from the B, and two opening notes now are both eighths. In 25–26, the third and fourth opening notes of each are transformed to eighths. While the rhythmic value of each module’s end-note changes variably, the values of the opening pitches change in a strict process, from 0 to 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 eighths in a row. This progression is a form of rhythmic rotation, but it also serves a harmonic function. In each module, each successive rising note of the pentachord is given the greatest degree of repetition. As a result, one hears the scalar fragment rising as a sort of background urlinie. By the time the music reaches the greatest emphasis on the top pitch, B, the process is complete. The reference to Schenker, while it may seem almost ludicrous in this context, is not as far-fetched as it might seem. That arrival at B plays an important long-range voice-leading function, as only two modules later (when the B of 26 is surely still sounding), the C in the same register enters and then becomes an upper pedal at 30. Thus the B is led up to, and it takes on the role of a leading tone and effects a shift back from E Aeolian to some form of emerging C modality (see harmonic analysis below). This attention to gradual change, to varying one parameter of a module while keeping others constant, of emphasizing common aspects, comes very much from the spirit of motivic development that we find in the core classical canon. Riley’s transformational technique, while pushing gradualism to a new limit, nevertheless is not so far removed from the motivic strategies of Beethoven and Brahms. One final point is to be made concerning module similarities. It is already clear how the identity of most modules is blurred by the proximity of very similar modules that differ only slightly in pitch and rhythmic content. Not only is transformation gradual in a linear sense, but the constant overlapping of the modules creates a sort of ‘‘overlay’’ that blurs the differences further. But there is one further sort of correspondence: the return of identical modules. Only three modules are used twice in exactly the same form. Figure 4.4 stresses the basic symmetry of the modules’ placement. It is not an exact

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10

= 11

41

= 18

=

36 28

Figure 4.4. Symmetry of identical modules. palindrome in either the number of modules or the total number of beats in the score, but it does emphasize an important sense of return embodied in the overall structure. Modules 10 ¼ 41 and 11 ¼ 36 define and then articulate the return of G Mixolydian. Modules 18 ¼ 28 ease the entry into and exit from the prominent section of 22–26. These identities not only establish correspondences and symmetric structures, the sorts of expositions and returns we’ve come to expect from traditional classical practice. They also can be sleights of hand, which bend time as experienced by the listener. For example, 36 is identical to the opening of 35 and very close to 31. Thus performers who actually are on different modules can sound as though they’re on the same one. This effect allows the music to move forward, to accompany earlier modules smoothly, even though it sounds as though it’s remaining in the same place—or even starting over again from an earlier point.

The Significance of Module 35 It’s worth taking a moment to ponder 35. Its distinctive character has been commented upon, but it deserves a fuller list of its unique attributes: It is the longest of any module by far, 30 beats. Its rhythmic vocabulary is by far the most diverse. It uses durational values ranging from sixteenth to whole. It also mixes rests and sounding tones and has several offbeat gestures to generate syncopation.
As a result, it is the only module that can claim to have a character that is genuinely thematic, or melodic, rather than just motivic.
It is also the only module that qualifies as chromatic in its harmonic content. It includes 9 PC, the most of any module (this assumes the existence of C in the accompanying pulse). The only PC used in the work that is not included in the module is D. (C# and Eb are never used.) Most important, the module uses two cross relations, B/Bb and F/F#. These chromatic shifts are critical to the harmonic motion of the work, as we will see below.



Analysis : 67

These characteristics mark 35 as a remarkable event in the course of the piece. Its placement in the sequence and proportion of modules also highlights this importance. If we judge its appearance in terms of number of beats struck up to its entrance (in score alone), it comes at 175.5/260.5 ¼ 0.67. If we measure in terms of number of modules passed before its appearance, it is 34/53 ¼ 0.64. In either case, it’s clear that the appearance of module 35 is paced to occur roughly 2/3 of the way through the global structure of the piece. A powerful symmetry begins to evolve when we examine the other major transformational event in the work, the rising E Aeolian line at 22–26. Examining it again from the perspectives of both beats and modules passed, the resulting proportions are: 93.5/260.5 ¼ 0.36 and 21/53 ¼ 0.39. In either case, it is close to the 1/3 mark of the piece. As a result, these two striking events make their entrances in rough symmetry to one another. At this point a critical reader can, indeed should, raise the following objection: since the players’ ad lib repetitions and progressions from one module to another make any ‘‘definitive’’ version of the piece impossible, how can one claim that there are these ‘‘architectural’’ symmetries and deep structures? Isn’t this a perversion of Riley’s intent, a grafting of an incompatible concept onto the work, that obscures its originality? The point is well taken. The very quicksilver quality of In C is in fact essential to its appreciation and understanding. Also, in any performance, the exact timepoint for the arrival of specific events will inevitably be different than in other performances, since all are dependent on the psyches and metabolisms of the performers. Nevertheless, three points suggest that the insights above have some validity, while in no way claiming any hierarchical rightness for them: 1. Even though the realization in real time of the work will always vary, simultaneously there is a certain general statistical bandwidth within which events tend to occur in In C. Riley himself in his instructions cites the need for players not to get too divergent from one another, and Robert Black (see interview in chapter 6) distills years of performance experience with the work into essentially the same insight. Thus the rough proportions of appearances of events reflect, on average, the arrangement of similar events in the score. 2. In C was still written as a score, before its premiere. Riley is undoubtedly first of all an improvising composer. He has stated often that he finds the act of notation uncomfortable and has had to find idiosyncratic ways to incorporate it into his practice. But no matter how economical and open-ended, the score of In C is a precisely notated document, conceived, written, and delivered to performers before its performance. As such, it merits consideration with the tools that more traditional analysis can offer.

68 : terry riley’s in c 3. Recognizing, however, what is unique about the work, analysis of the piece from the ‘‘interior’’ viewpoint of real-time performance, will be included in this study as well.

Harmonic Analysis From the beginning, the harmonic course of In C was defined by David Behrman’s notes to the 1968 LP premiere recording: ‘‘A good performance reveals a teeming world of groups and subgroups forming, dissolving, and reforming within a modal panorama which shifts, over a period of about forty-five to ninety minutes, from C to E to C to G.’’4 This is all true, but in presenting the essentials it still skims the surface. A close examination of the piece shows that these tonal centers are in fact modal centers, that the types of modes vary from section to section, and that there are important transitional sections where the lines between harmonic regions are blurred, providing a platform for performers to explore more ambiguous relationships. In C begins clearly in C! The first sound is the C eighth note pulse, and the opening module consists of PC C and E. Even here, however, there’s some ambiguity: the C of the module is a grace note, the E is a quarter, so already harmonic weight has been shifted a bit. 2–4 fill in the scale to include E/F/G. Note, however, that D is not sounded; the gap-step effect is like that of a pentatonic scale (if not the actual intervallic content) and suggests more primal, modal resources. Modules 6–7 ‘‘frame’’ the scale with high and low C’s, and 8 gives the F/G motive a more structural sound, elongating it into a pedal. The mode projected here is not C Major. It is C Ionian. There is no strong dominant, and the entire scalar gamut used consists of only four PC. This aspect cannot be emphasized strongly enough: In C creates harmonic flow through the evolution of one modal region to another. This is accomplished not by vertical progression or traditional diatonic relations. Modulation does occur, but it is effected by the careful shifting of weight assigned to the function of individual pitches within a given mode. This in turn is accomplished by the placement of pitch in a particular prominent context, either rhythmic or registral, or by chromatic shifts of PC. Modules 9–13 enlarge the field by adding PC B. This section serves a dual function. On the one hand, the B is a leading tone which connects to and highlights C. At the same time, the disappearance of the lower C creates a tetrachord of F/G/B/C, of which G sounds like more and more of a modal center. This is especially true by 13, which reveals the F to be a leading tone to G far more than being the ‘‘root’’ of the tetrachord.

Analysis : 69

Module 14 presents one of the most dramatic moments of the work. A slow descending line of 12’s tetrachord changes the F to F#. This reinforces the latter’s role as a leading tone, and the move from C to G. But in turn G is quickly subordinated to E, whose appearance in 18 creates a context for E Aeolian, which is affirmed conclusively by the following modules up to 28, and most obviously by the aforementioned passage of 22–26. But what also makes the appearance of F# in 14 so dramatic is that unpredictable quality of In C: the performer’s choice of module repetition and change. It is possible to have a quite jarring cross-relation sounding in the same register between F and F#. And depending on how the players wish to emphasize this, it can go for quite a while and be correspondingly prominent. Modules 29–30 mark the first stage of modulation away from E. The previous pentachord is stripped to its common tones with the previous C scale (E/G), and the high C returns in its original register. Module 31 brings the return of F, so that a cross-relation reappears, but now, because the rhythmic value of the inflected note is much shorter, the effect is not as dramatic as at 14. Modules 31–34 then begin the same shift as before to G, except now we seem to be moving toward a firm G Mixolydian. Module 35 of course disrupts any smooth process and throws everything into question, for reasons now explained. It is as though the music demands a summation of everything that has transpired to this moment, condensed into a single line. Only after every instrument has taken its turn can the process resume. And it does at 36. Modules 36–41 play with the same tetrachord as 12 (F/G/B/C), in a balance between G- and C-‘‘ness.’’ Module 42 introduces A, and the filling of scale now begins to tip the scales toward G. Modules 43–47 bring in the high F and fill in the scale down to G. (Again, idiomatic voice-leading is at work. That F was last heard as the final tone of 35. It is quite possible that it will actually be playing and connect to 43 in performance. Likewise the lower register tones of the scale, from F upwards, will also likely be sounding in remnants of 36–42.) Modules 48–53 are a coda, but Riley has reserved one final surprise. The low pedals of 48 cement the role of G as a ‘‘tonic’’; while the F is the last note of the module, it always returns to the G in the ostinato loop, and the greater duration of G makes it sound as the goal. But then at 49 the second important cross-relation emerges, one that should not be too much of a surprise, since it was predicted in 35: Bb replaces B. Now the G modality is G Dorian (incidentally one of Riley’s favorite modes). By the end, all we hear is the G/Bb ostinato with the C ringing in the stratosphere. The effect is open-ended. Even though the last thing we hear is the Pulse, there’s no chance of a real cadence from G to C. G has been too far weakened to serve that purpose and, paradoxically, becomes autonomous as an independent

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harmonic region. There’s a sense of slight melancholy here, as the music trails off because it’s moved to a point where it can go no further without starting on yet another course which will be as long as the performance we’ve just experienced. In this sense, the refusal to find a clear structural ‘‘cadence’’ is yet another trope of timelessness that the piece embodies.5 So, when close examination is done, Behrman’s description is correct. But God is in the details. And by the end of this study, we’ll see several instances of how those details are played out differently, by a series of ensembles.

Chapter Five

The Columbia Recording: A ‘‘Second Premiere’’ Interim Period In C had a repeat performance at the San Francisco Tape Music Center as part of a three-day festival of Riley’s music on May 25–27, 1965.1 Several of the works on the original program were included, as well as the premiere of Tread the Trail (described below). Many of the original premiere performers participated, as well as the trombonist Stuart Dempster, a close friend of Riley’s, who had not been able to play in the premiere because of a professional conflict. His experience of In C ‘‘from the inside’’ would have a far-reaching effect in the years ahead. The event was a ‘‘farewell’’ concert of sorts, because Riley, ever restless, had decided to return to Europe. The plan was to drive to Veracruz, Mexico, where supposedly a Polish freighter would transport Riley, his family, and a Volkswagen bus to Morocco. Unfortunately, the opportunity vanished once the Rileys arrived at the dock, and after about three months they decided to head to New York instead.2 In fact, it was serendipitous, because no decision could have been better at that moment for Riley’s art and career. Riley’s work now began to incorporate increasing amounts of open form, improvisation, and technological interface. But before we explore this new creative development, we need to assess the legacy of In C within his own output. In one important interview from the 1970s Riley stated: ‘‘I saw at the time that the opportunity was open to me to go on and do In A and In Bb. and make each one more and more elaborate. But I felt In C was really complete. . . . In fact, I never wrote any more music after that; I started improvising.’’3 This statement reflects Riley’s stance at the time, about a decade after writing In C. It is true that he rather quickly transitioned from a notated to

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improvisational practice. But it leaves out three important works in which he explored other facets of the practice he discovered with In C. The first piece Riley wrote after In C was Autumn Leaves. It was premiered at a concert on March 13, 1965, at Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz,4 but Riley was dissatisfied with the result and withdrew the work, convinced it did not work. The piece was assumed to be lost, but Mel Weitsman, who played recorder in the premiere, still possessed a copy of the score, which he passed to me.5 Autumn Leaves is similar to In C in its basic structure and presentation: a single-page score, consisting of 36 modules (though, unlike In C, they are unnumbered), which are played through in the same manner of controlled heterophony as In C. The instrumentation is similarly unspecified. The piece is in F minor and features a similar set of cross-relations that color its ‘‘modulations,’’ in this case between Bb and B and between Eb and E. But it is also different from In C in several ways. First, it uses preexistent materials, being based on the popular standard by Joseph Kosma (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics). Second, the way the original song is used is itself a process, albeit not strict. The original tune is presented a few notes at a time in each successive module, following the basic principle of additive melody. The first three systems of the piece, representing about half the score, illustrate the strategy (see fig. 5.1). Third, the individual modules are far more ornate and rhythmically complex; therefore maintaining a tight ensemble, even with a pulse, is more difficult. Finally, the effect of the work is that of intertwined arabesques tinged with melancholy. While In C is bright and optimistic in tone, Autumn Leaves is its ‘‘darker twin’’. And as such it is a fascinating counterpoint to its far more famous sibling. The second work is Tread the Trail, which premiered at the May 1965 Riley retrospective at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Again the score consists of a single page, and the instrumentation is open, but the substantial structural differences from In C are more pronounced. The players have five lines of music from which to choose, labeled A through E.6 Each is structured as a palindrome, of both measure length and actual material, with a cadential measure of two beats added. The measure-beat structure (counted in eighth notes) is 3–2–5–3–5–4–4–5–3–5–2–3-(2). Line A is shown in figure 5.2.7 Each line must be played through in its entirety. In his instructions, Riley suggests that the players perform a line in unison and then stagger their entrances to explore various canonic relations. Then they return to a unison before entering the next line and repeating the process. Once all the lines have been so explored, more adventurous combinations of different lines and canonic staggerings are permitted.8 Along with having larger chunks of motivic material to be performed intact, the work differs markedly in sound from either In C or Autumn Leaves.

Figure 5.1. First half of Autumn Leaves (transcription by Robert Carl and Matthew Sargent; copyright Terry Riley).

Figure 5.2. Riley, Tread the Trail, opening system (transcribed from autograph copy by author; copyright Terry Riley).

The Columbia Recording: A “Second Premiere” : 75

The figures, with their alternating sixteenths and dotted eighths, naturally lend themselves to be swung. This is one of the most overtly jazzy of Riley’s works, and in fact it was written for the Al Bent–Mel Martin big band, with whom Riley performed and arranged at the time.9 Dedicated to Sonny Rollins (inspired by hearing him perform live), the piece is in some ways closer to the never completed Monterey Festival piece Riley envisioned before In C than to In C itself. There’s also a richer harmonic palette than ever before; within the first two lines, an ‘‘artificial’’ mode emerges that is Dorian with a raised seventh degree, and an alternating raised/lowered fourth. By the end of the work, ten pitch classes have been used, the only ones missing being Db and Bb. The music is intricate and ‘‘quicksilver-ish’’ in its constantly mutating rhythms and harmonies. The final work in this vein emerged two years later as the result of Riley’s friendship with the Swedish composer Folke Rabe. Riley had met him in Finland in 1963 (after the premiere of Music for the Gift), and then Rabe came to San Francisco in early 1965 to work at the Tape Center for a couple of months (he played in the May 1965 performance of In C as well). At Rabe’s instigation, Riley’s Olson III was commissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Association for the Community Music School of Nacka (a suburb of Stockholm) and the Swedish Royal College of Music. Riley devised a one-page, thirty-module score for chorus with instrumental accompaniment. The repetition and alliteration of Riley’s original ‘‘circle poem’’ text allow for easy metamorphosis: ‘‘begin to think about how we are to be to.’’ It is parsed out in single syllables to successive modules, so the verbal transformation is extremely continuous. The general harmonic structure is simpler than that of Tread the Trail. What emerges as a C Dorian scale slowly morphs to C Aeolian with the introduction of Ab, and then into something synthetic with the shift of Eb to E. But the most radical change in practice is rhythmic. Riley made all the modules with even note values (they are notated as stemless black notes), ostensibly removing the need for an aural Pulse. In the early sketches mailed to the performers, however, the work presented enormous difficulties for the student musicians. It was only when Riley arrived to direct rehearsals that the piece began to gel. The composer, by now proficient on the saxophone, led the group in his preferred role as a sort of concertmaster rather than conductor. The premiere, for chorus with an orchestra of winds and brass, took place in Nacka on April 27, 1967, and created a sort of scandal, with the audience becoming increasingly unruly and the performers eventually giving out from the physical stress.10 Of these three pieces, this work has the greatest similarity to In C, in both its more restrictive harmonic range and in what Riley calls in his notes to the score ‘‘primal form.’’ Indeed, the piece is probably his most Stravinskian of all, suggesting the primitivism of Les Noces (though it is unclear whether the

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composer was familiar with this work at the time). Its raw energy remains astonishing, and it is frankly surprising it has not found a place in the choral repertoire. With these three pieces, Riley had worked through the implications of In C to his satisfaction. Having explored veins that were more romantic/ impressionist, jazz, and primitivist, as well as variations of his modular repetition/modal inflection technique, he was ready to move into new realms.11 When Riley arrived in New York in the autumn of 1965, he traded in his VW van for a loft in the Bowery on Grand Street (a deal that will leave many artists today envious and incredulous). One of his first acts was to look up his old friend La Monte Young and restart their collaboration. Young by this time had developed both a practice and an ensemble, based on sustained tones, called the Theater of Eternal Music, and Riley sang with them for several months, replacing John Cale, who had moved on to work with the Velvet Underground. By February 1966 he was performing publicly with the group and would continue to do so for about a year. But he also grew tired of Young’s procedures: ‘‘La Monte would say, ‘Let’s rehearse at 1 o’clock,’ so I’d come over at 1 in the afternoon, and very seldom would we rehearse before maybe 6 or 7 in the evening, if at all . . . That was one of my problems with working with La Monte: his time frame is totally different from anybody else’s, and you have to be willing to give up vast amounts of your own time if you’re hanging out with him—because he’s like a huge gravity center that pulls time into him, and nobody can escape it.’’12 Riley began to pursue his own projects (one of which was a collaboration with Ken Dewey, titled Sames, in November 1965), but perhaps the most important decision was a simple one, a legacy of Young’s influence—with Jon Gibson’s advice he bought a soprano saxophone. As a testament to his musicality, he taught himself to play Is It A b or B b ? after Gibson showed him the fingerings, and he quickly developed a personal performance practice whose ‘‘virtuosity’’ was based on both enormous stamina and the ingenious use of technology (the same ‘‘time-lag accumulator’’ arrangement of tape recorders he had discovered for Music for the Gift).13 Out of these efforts came concerts given at his apartment, which often went all night, the Swedish performance as leader of Olson III, and a first work for this new setup, Dorian Reeds. Dorian Reeds is a structured improvisation using the D Dorian scale, which Riley recorded in his home studio on November 5, 1996, premiering it in one of his loft concerts soon afterwards.14 Originally the only score was a set of directions for the setup of the tape recorders in the ‘‘time-lag accumulator’’ and the nature of the materials to be used by the saxophonist (grouped into

The Columbia Recording: A “Second Premiere” : 77

three sets of: fast flurries of notes, sustained melodies, and more pulsed mid-tempo phrases of separated notes). In 2001 the saxophonist Ulrich Krieger created a more detailed score from a transcription of the original recording, revealing 64 modules. The technological presets created repetitions about every five beats at q ¼ 120, with each resultant delayed texture lasting about 7 to 9 seconds. The recording lasts not quite fifteen minutes, but in live performances it could be much longer and more gradual in its unfolding. The harmonic language is more static than anything Riley had so far produced, with the possible exception of Keyboard Study No. 1. In only 3 of the 64 modules is there any chromatic inflection, flatting the second and sixth degrees of the scale (Eb and Bb). And only the Bb creates a dramatic contrast, through its use as a pitch of longer duration rather than simple ornamentation. But it also never creates the sense of modulation or panmodality that one hears in Riley’s earlier module-based works. The emphasis instead is on the hypnotic interplay of patterns and a counterpoint that treads the thin line between perceptible polyphony and pure texture. Riley’s saxophone improvisations from this period are important to us here in three ways. First, in the eventual premiere recording of In C, he would lead the ensemble as a reed rather than a keyboard player. Second, the improvisations using dense layerings of real-time delay would influence his ideas about the sound of In C when it was recorded, most obviously in the decision to multitrack the recording in a series of three passes. And third, the extended home concerts bore fruit in an important personal connection. David Behrman was a young composer involved in experimental music, in particular early forms of real-time technological interactivity in performance. He was also in the enviable position of being a producer for Columbia Records. His father’s friendship with Columbia’s president, Goddard Lieberson, led to an interview with John McClure, the director of the classical division.15 At the time the company, and McClure in particular, was interested in promoting more adventurous music—it was an era when Stravinsky and Copland were still ‘‘stars’’ of the label, and the desire to find a new generation to replace them remained strong. Behrman was involved in a series of recordings for the budget Odyssey label, as well as Columbia Masterworks, titled ‘‘Music of Our Time,’’ and was on the lookout for suitable material. He describes how he first encountered Riley and his music: One of my other friends it could have been Steve Reich or LaMonte Young, or someone else . . . said, ‘‘You must go, you must hear Terry Riley.’’ I’m not sure exactly when was the first meeting, but I have a vivid memory of going to his little apartment on . . . Grand Street maybe, east of the Bowery. And he had a little apartment upstairs from a bridal shop. And he was doing solo concerts.

78 : terry riley’s in c I remember going into his room, and he was performing saxophone with two Revoxes, with the tape running from one to another. It just blew me away, I’d never heard anything like it; it was just amazing.16

This connection proved particularly important soon thereafter, when Behrman was invited in 1967–1968 to come to the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York at Buffalo, as a Creative Associate composer. The Creative Associates program was created in 1964 by Lukas Foss, then director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and Allen Sapp, chair of the music department at SUNY/Buffalo, with initial funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Its goal was to bring young and emerging virtuosi, both composers and performers, together into an unstructured setting where they could study contemporary music and present their findings to the larger community in a series of concerts. These included Creative Associate recitals, which were done entirely at the initiation of the Associates (who controlled the programming), and more formal ‘‘Evenings of New Music,’’ which had a double runout to the local Albright-Knox Art Museum and to Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City. In the already potent cultural rush of the 1960s, the atmosphere was fast and heady for these talented young people. A vivid description comes from Rene´e Levine (now Levine-Packer), who became the managing director of the program soon after its inception: ‘‘One didn’t realize the time was going, it was snowballing, it was so busy. These people were all my friends, they were all my age. We were all in this boat together, and everybody drinking and everybody dancing and everybody complaining, and it was the 60s and we were zealous about the new music!’’17 So Behrman was present in this environment, Columbia having given him a sabbatical to pursue his own creative research. And one other critical figure was also a Creative Associate that season, trombonist Stuart Dempster, the last piece in the puzzle leading to In C’s recording. Dempster, an old friend of Riley’s from San Francisco State student days, had been invited to the Center on the strength of a recital program of new solo trombone works he had been touring in the previous year (including the Berio Sequenza V, which he commissioned). Not only had he retained a strong memory of In C from hearing and performing it, but he also had the score in hand. He arrived in Buffalo eager to share his enthusiasm for the piece and arranged for a performance of the work on his own Creative Associate recital at Baird Hall, October 25, 1967.18 Dempster invited Riley to come up, and he stayed with the Dempsters in their house at 1773 Hertel Street, the first of many such visits.19 The program does not list the exact instrumentation or specific performers of the piece, but a review by John Dwyer from the October 26, 1967, Buffalo Evening News says that Riley performed with ‘‘a dozen perform-

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ers—three pianos, tuned percussion, strings, and winds.’’20 Performers remember that from the outset Riley led the ensemble as a saxophonist, as he would be the case for every performance they gave of the piece. Next was a repeat performance of the work in New York at Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Hall). It was perhaps a result of a Buffalo critic’s exit (see note 20) that Lukas Foss arranged for a speaker system to be installed that would pipe the performance into other spaces. Dempster remembers: We were so afraid everybody was going to walk out, they devised a speaker system that would broadcast into the hallways and stairways and outside onto the sidewalk, so people would still get it if they left. It seems like that was not necessary at all; there was a lot of excitement about the piece. What I remember most of all was that . . .Terry had suggested people could wander around and change the sound by wherever they stood in the room. . . . Anyway, in the New York thing the audience walked around and hung out some, and then they gravitated to the front of the stage, and they were all grooving like it was a Woody Herman concert. I thought that was so cool, I just loved that! [laughs] I was intrigued by that whole feel. I’m sure some people left, but it was nothing like we had predicted for this crazy West Coast music that New Yorkers were so famous for pushing and shoving aside.21

The concert took place on December 19, 1967, and included the Stravinsky Octet; Harley Gaber’s Voce II for soprano, flute, and percussion; David Rosenboom’s Then We Wound Through an Aura of Yellow Gauze for soprano, mezzo, flute, trombone, guitar, viola, and percussion (the composer was both a Creative Associate and the violist); and Dorrit Licht’s Sonnet Thirty-Five for Two Voices and Violin.22 The New York Times review by Donal Henahan on December 20, 1967 (p. 55) was both bemused and generally open. Titled ‘‘New Music Series Puts Toes to Test’’ and subtitled ‘‘Audience Exhorted to Walk Around—Some Don’t Stop,’’ it reads as follows: For another work, loudspeakers were not only positioned about the auditorium but in the halls as well, while an ensemble plunked and hammered away at simple intervallic patterns, creating gamelanlike sonorities that were overlaid in complex ways. During the latter piece, Terry Riley’s ‘‘In C’’ (1964), the audience was urged by Lukas Foss, who oversaw the concert, to walk around and savor the sounds from various places in and out of the hall. Most of the listeners did so, and a few kept right on walking. There are many precedents for such music, among them Berg’s Invention on One Note in ‘‘Wozzeck.’’ Mr. Riley’s effort produced a happy din, which was a work hypnotic and often fascinating in its multilayered rhythms and sound

80 : terry riley’s in c patterns. One observed with compassion that the woman pianist, whose duty was to pound one note throughout, wore gloves. It put one in mind of Hildegarde.23 [Used with permission of The New York Times, all rights reserved.]

It is interesting that Henahan identifies the ‘‘hypnotic’’ quality of the work toward the negative end of the critical spectrum. It reveals a certain skepticism along the lines of the New York/California split identified earlier by Stuart Dempster. Henahan also seems compelled to identify a European precedent in Berg, perhaps in order to justify what he finds pleasurable in the music.

Making of the LP The recording session of In C occurred several months after this concert, ‘‘piggybacked’’ onto a concert at Carnegie Recital Hall on Tuesday, March 26, 1968, so that the sessions occurred over the two following days, March 27–28.24 Riley gave a solo concert in Buffalo on March 22, so he was on site and would have directed a final set of rehearsals before going to New York. The recording sessions were originally arranged to include not only In C, but works by Carlos Alcina, David Rosenboom, and Yuji Takahashi, and while these were recorded, unfortunately they were later dropped from the project by Columbia. In C thus had almost six months of rehearsal with a superb group of musicians, technically assured and completely sympathetic with the work’s ideas and aesthetic. While these performers were not necessarily better than the San Francisco premiere performers, they were more professionally experienced as a group, had no amateurs among them, and had much more time to prepare. Katrina Krimsky (then known as Margaret Hassell), who played the Pulse, remembers Riley leading the players through all 53 modules, playing each in unison, before beginning run-throughs of the piece.25 Then the rehearsal process concentrated on larger issues, as related by David Rosenboom: What started to emerge was some feeling of how the group cohered about sets of patterns. I think the only directive that sticks in my mind that we got was just ‘‘don’t get too far ahead or too far behind,’’ so the group is always playing within a range of three or four or five patterns of each other, so you’re not too far apart as the group moves through. And you come in, and you don’t play, and you lay out. And thinking compositionally and creatively about entrances was a very big deal, how you think about what you’re about to play or to move to interlocks with what’s already going on, making really considered choices as you move through, so nothing is arbitrary. The musicians are using all their conscious skill, and listening

The Columbia Recording: A “Second Premiere” : 81 skill, to decide when to make a move. And maybe we talked about articulating patterns one way or not, and technical stuff like that. And then we’d just play and play and play until we really gelled as an ensemble.26

As Rosenboom indicates, the two most important considerations were (1) the maintenance of a certain ‘‘bandwidth’’ of module divergence (as had also been a concern in the concert premiere), and (2) making choices about the most interesting and tightly executed entrances and exits of individual performers. Percussionist Jan Williams remembers almost exactly the same discussion, but he phrases the second point slightly differently, framing it in terms of rhythm and tempo, as one would suspect from his background, in contrast to Rosenboom’s more compositional view: ‘‘One of the things we had to work on was the rhythmic tightness of the thing. We had to learn how to make changing from one module to the next and make that change and be absolutely solidly in tempo, not wavering. I remember that was one thing we had to work on, and I don’t think we ever tried different tempi. It was like that first tempo we set, and she started with the Cs, and that was it.’’27 The only other detail that had to be worked out was a technical one involving the Pulse. Krimsky, while a professional pianist with extensive experience of the most demanding and complex new music, faced the challenge of how to protect her hands from the stress of repetitive hammering for an hour. So she devised this strategy: Physically of course it was very challenging, and I had to be steady and strong as the timekeeper so that the members of the ensemble could hear me play the two C’s in the piano’s high register, and follow the beat. So I played forte. That was physically very challenging to do for an hour. I had a couple of things that I did that people may not have been aware of. The critic at the time remarked that the ‘‘woman pulse’’ wore long black gloves, and I did, but I didn’t do it for the theatrical aspect, I did it to protect my fingers! Inside the black kid gloves I wrapped bandaids as cushions on my fingers, and I would change the fingers playing from the second to the third to the fourth, and keep changing it all the time.28

Dempster also remembers that the upper Bs of the piano were tuned to C as well, so that the pianist could shift to another key in case a string broke. Krimsky does not remember this, though she does remember that in the recording session strings did break: ‘‘I do recall that a tuner was sitting nearby, but there was nothing he could do in the recording. I don’t remember if one string broke, or two strings broke, but that’s why the Cs sound different, thinner, at the end than the beginning.’’29 The session was held in Columbia’s recording studio on 30th Street between First and Second Avenues, a decommissioned church (no longer

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standing). Behrman remembers that Columbia had just purchased one of the new Ampex 8-track machines, which used one-inch tape. The microphone setup (Behrman remembers Neumanns) is difficult to assess; most participants remember a series of mikes hanging over them, and most remember special close miking of the Pulse.30 Rosenboom remembers an immense mixing board, still run with ranks of black dial potentiometers. The recording engineer was Fred Plaut.31 Several players have commented to me on how easygoing and invigorating the sessions were, and Behrman says, ‘‘I just remember it was a wonderful experience, doing that recording. The music sounded so great, and everybody was getting along well. It was one of the high points of my five years at Columbia.’’32 Beyond Krimsky’s use of gloves, there were two other special issues that made the recording a challenge, and a breakthrough in terms of ‘‘classical’’ recording practice. The first was the length of an LP, which was basically about 45 minutes when the two sides combined. In C, of course, already had a history of performances longer than that maximum, so it became important to regulate the flow of the work to fit a prescribed duration. Dempster describes the solution: We had to fit it on an LP, so he [Behrman] held up a card every so often, so we wouldn’t get too far afield. We were very worried about that, we thought it would be disruptive, but we didn’t see any other way. Just the number . . . and all that meant was we should be in that neighborhood, on one side or the other of it, not take it too seriously but just know you shouldn’t be on 40 if he held up 51. It was just to keep things at a decent flow. . . . So I guess you could label David Behrman the conductor [laughs].33

The other issue was more radical in its implications. Before the recording even began, Riley had decided it needed to be multitracked. This technique seems to be a legacy of his experience doing layered tape-delay pieces, which could build up a thick, propulsive texture very quickly. (There are eleven performers on the premiere recording, only two fewer than in the San Francisco premiere, so the decision was likely driven at least as much by this aesthetic preference as by logistics.) Thus the recording was conducted in three passes. The performers were Terry Riley, soprano saxophone and leader; Margaret Hassell [now Katrina Krimsky], Pulse; David Shostac, flute; Lawrence Singer, oboe; Jerry Kirkbirde, clarinet; Arlene Reynard, bassoon; John Hassell, trumpet; Stuart Dempster, trombone; David Rosenboom, viola; Ed Burnham, vibraphone; and Jan Williams, marimba. For the second pass, which occurred on March 27, only the Pulse was omitted. This omission was natural, because one function of the first pass was to create a steady common rhythmic grid for the other two. The third

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and final pass occurred the next day, and according to a note in the liner notes by Behrman, clarinet, bassoon, and marimba were now missing.34 Rosenboom remembers that there was some concern on the part of Columbia’s team about the overdubbing process: There was discussion about Terry’s piece, and mine, which was a little unusual for the Columbia engineers, which was that you could take something that they thought of as classical music, and here are some of us talking about music where we would erase the boundaries, we were talking about crossovers between contemporary classical concert music and pop music of the time, and how they related, and we could do things like overdub, either edit and mix and combine things. And they were like, ‘‘What, you can do that?’’ But David Behrman was always the wonderful calm bridge between the Columbia staff and the musicians, saying ‘‘Oh yes, you can do that kind of thing!’’35

The actual process seems to have involved some listening between passes, but not a lot of comment or criticism resulted. Several players, however, do remember performing the second and third passes with headphones piping in the earlier music.36 It seems that the purpose of this was above all to hear the Pulse and ensure tight ensemble. Near the end of the process, the players assembled for a listening, and a small epiphany occurred, related by Rosenboom: And it’s quite transforming . . . transporting when you do it, and then we went back in the recording studio after we had worked on it and we were sitting around and listening, there was a playback of rough mix of the whole thing, and everyone was still, just rapt in their attention to listening, and I remember that we got to the end, the tape stopped, and the room stayed silent, everybody just sat there, and then after a little while the silence was broken by David Behrman, who said, ‘you know I think we’ve just changed music.’’37

Moving to post-production, the actual preparation of the master recording was relatively simple. Because of the nature of the piece, there was no splicing within any takes, because it obviously would have destroyed continuity. As Behrman remembers, he, Riley, and engineer Russ Payne met soon afterwards to adjust levels to taste (a quite intuitive process) and probably add a little bit of reverberation. The biggest issue, however, was the conflict between In C’s nature and duration and the LP format. The piece would have to be on two sides of a record, so how to signal that the piece was not over at Side 1 became important. Riley’s memory is: ‘‘In the studio . . . we were mainly just trying to get a good balance. . . . I remember, since it was an LP, we had to make a break from Side A to Side B, so we had to figure out . . . we tried some techniques with the engineer to end the first

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movement and start the second movement. Seems like we had many hours to do it. Mixing time was cheap.’’38 And Behrman remembers more detail: Terry came up with a kind of electronic sound at the end. He wanted to indicate that . . . he didn’t want to just fade, because that would sound as if the music was over. We came up with a sort of swooping sound which was maybe changing the speed of the tape recorders [imitates swoosh]. And that was kind of controversial, and I think John McClure wasn’t happy about it. . . . I remember wondering if it was a good solution or not. And then I think there were some comments about it, maybe some review saying they didn’t like the ending of Side 1.39

These comments suggest how In C was pushing an envelope of presentation and marketing, especially for a piece that bore the imprimatur of perhaps the most renowned classical division of any record company of that period. Columbia executives probably felt some ambivalence. On the one hand, they wanted to tap into the energy and profit of a youthful market, and they didn’t want to be left behind by cultural and aesthetic changes that were occurring at a dizzying pace. At the same time, there had to have been some concern about presenting the recording which was as at least as much pop as classical. And in the physical presentation of the record itself there were three more groundbreaking aspects. First, the cover (fig. 5.3), with its mix of music staves and schematic clouds, was evocative of the psychedelic paintings of Peter Max, though basically monochromatic and more abstract.40 Second, the entire score was printed on an inside cover. Riley, by allowing this reproduction, took a breathtaking leap, allowing anyone who wanted to perform the work to do so without purchasing the score, essentially for free (though they still needed to buy the record). (This original presentation of the score was ‘‘white-on-black,’’ essentially the same format as in fig. 1.1.) While this decision was partly in line with his communitarian, hippie ethics, it was also visionary, since it suggests a model similar to open-source code, ‘‘freeware,’’ and—more germane to music—free downloads in the current digital domain. In this sense, the description of the piece as a sort of ‘‘software’’ is not that far from the truth. Third, the written notes for the disc were different from the usual classical presentation. Behrman provided comments on the inside cover (across from the score, on the foldout flap), which introduced Riley and described both the work and the recording process. These were succinct and in line with standard practice. But on the back cover of the disc, the one any prospective buyer would have read, was an essay by Paul Williams, the editor and publisher of Crawdaddy! magazine, the first American rock magazine, founded in 1966.41 This was obviously meant to create authenticity for younger listeners who might otherwise ignore the release, and

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Figure 5.3. Cover of 1968 Columbia LP release of In C (courtesy of Sony/ BMG Music Entertainment). Williams’s tone is often informal, exuberant, and hyperbolic in the spirit of rock criticism. For example, it ends with: ‘‘This stuff here is close enough to the basics of what music is to be listened to and appreciated with no musical background of any sort. It’s kind of like not necessarily knowing if you dig ballet, but definitely liking the way the girl across the table moves her hands. No preconceptions, you just dig it. Welcome in.’’ But he also gets to the core of much of the piece—what it was about, what made it revolutionary, how to listen to it. The text is surprisingly long, and it’s worth quoting from the essay at some length: I don’t know anyone who wiggles his ears to music. The experience of music is not fully in the ears. If it were, we would concern ourselves with sound and its permutations to the exclusion of all else that musicians might be interested in. Since it is not, we must realize that we listen partly with our memories, allowing

86 : terry riley’s in c what we hear to clash and sing with the patterns already established in our minds; that we listen mostly with our souls, music serving primarily as some sort of magical matrix that, passing over the scattered pieces of our consciousness, can make us as individuals (and groups) inexpressibly whole. . . . Yes, and ‘‘In C’’ will most certainly happen to you, probably as many times as you choose to play it, certainly as a fresh experience each time. . . . All right, so let’s say that what we have here is a ‘‘trip,’’ a voluntary, unpredictable, absorbing experience, one which brings together parts of one’s self perhaps previously unknown to each other. Is this a pleasant trip, this business of being an audience to this performance? Yes, I believe it is. The music is good to listen to, full of beauty, pleasant to follow; the movements are quiet and exhilarating; the sense of continued growth is too gentle and overwhelming to resist. No attempt is made to shock the listener into awareness. The assumption is that the listener is aware, to varying extents and in various ways; the effort is to integrate this awareness, to ease the experience towards consciousness. It’s an exciting experience. Playing this record for a small group of people is like watching a web being spun. Playing it for a friend means watching a Pilgrim’s Progress of reactions. Playing it for yourself may be like staring at a mirror for forty-five minutes; or it may be more like sitting at a window and watching the carnival of life go on below. It’s a matter of enjoying things that happen, of being moved helplessly by an exciting performance, and somehow determining in your own head what is and isn’t a development and therefore really defining it for yourself, whatever it is you’re following. You’re set up in a world, given a primal sense of motions and left to pick your own way across the world’s surface, the only certain knowledge being that you are moving, and in one direction—beginning to end. The nature of your trip is determined by you. This could be true of any musical experience; the excellence of this one is that it is so involving, and so accessible, regardless of your personal or musical past experience. Turn it on, and it does its tricks. Why? Because it starts at the origins, it starts with sound and pattern-of-sound and motion-of-pattern and then texture-of-sound and aesthetics-of-motion and the art of interaction (the key to great musical performances) and on and on. Most of the prime components of the music experience are expressed here, and expressed in such a basic way that one’s awareness of these components is totally unimportant, unnecessary: There they are all before you, for you to dig; and nobody’s asking you to file them into categories. The music is close to the nitty-gritty; you can go into it with no assumptions whatsoever and come out of it with no assumptions and still be very certain that you heard something, that it was refreshing, and that is was incredible.42 [# 1967, by Paul Williams]

In retrospect, despite all the doom and gloom about the fall of civilization in the chaos of the emerging counterculture, Williams’s remarks are perceptive and articulate. He ‘‘nails’’ several essential aspects of the work.

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Above all, he stresses the openness of the listener’s experience, a complement to the open structure of the piece itself (and while he does not really explain the latter, Behrman’s notes do). Referencing the language of the time, the piece is a ‘‘trip’’; Williams quickly moves beyond any druggy implications by describing how the piece really is a journey; unpredictable, open to multiple interpretations, but still moving from start to finish (the only certainty). He also suggests that on repeated encounters the music’s effect will change for the listener. Also, starting from the premise of the first paragraph that the musical experience is not just a physiological one, he moves in the final paragraph to his series of ‘‘hyphenations.’’ Music begins with sound that is then processed and assembled by the listening intelligence into increasing broad and complex hierarchies of meaning, ending in the realm of aesthetics. Finally, by emphasizing the primal nature of the music (the ‘‘nitty-gritty’’), he argues for its appeal to listeners who come from a broad range of stylistic backgrounds, including even no musical background at all. Thus the idea of this being a ‘‘trans-’’ or ‘‘supra-’’ stylistic work is established at the very outset of its introduction to the general public. The record was released in late 1968, for the standard list price of $5.98. It was immediately the crossover breakthrough its producers intended; it remained in print throughout the remaining life of Columbia until its buyout by Sony, and it was released as a remastered CD in 1990. That version remains in print to this day, an extraordinary testament to its importance and popularity.

Analysis At this point we need to take a closer look at the actual sound of the recorded premiere, since this is the first aural artifact of the piece. As was stated in chapter 4, an endogenous analysis of the score of In C, while revealing a far more involved and coherent structure than its reputation belies, cannot suffice to claim one’s understanding the piece. That can come only from examining the work from its realization in real time, where unforeseeable outside forces interact with the ‘‘pre-performance’’ structure. Only in such an exogenous analysis, as one confronts and understands the decisions performers make collectively, can one begin to understand how the elements identified above are actualized, how variable is the piece, and what elements remain constant within that range of mutations. My methodology for this sort of analysis is straightforward. The first step is to listen carefully and record the entrance and exit of every module in the course of the work. That has meant making a template that plots modules versus timings.

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This is a fruitful ear-training exercise. Identifying entries of modules is not that difficult, but locating their exit is far more challenging (and indeed, readers who set out to do this themselves will inevitably find instances that contradict my findings, for reasons discussed below). The reasons rest in Riley’s technique of motivic transformation discussed earlier: since many motives are very close to one another, they blur one into another, and this blurring is even more pronounced the more instruments there are, and the thicker the resultant texture. Longer-held tones at times begin to sound like overtones of other figures as they emerge, so their distinct character diminishes. If a module has silence built into it, it is harder to catch the point when it stops; one may go a cycle or two further before realizing it is no longer there. As a figure exits, players often diminuendo. And finally, if many players are performing (or there is an overlap of similar orchestration), a module can disappear and seem to be gone for good, only to return unexpectedly as a ‘‘straggler’’ reaches it. As a result, I cannot claim that the timings of every module’s ‘‘life’’ within each version is exact down to the second, but having listened enough times to feel secure, I am confident that my findings support the conclusions drawn. What follows is the distillation of this aural analysis, identifying the recording’s special character, the decisions the ensemble made to negotiate the score, and how the landmarks and processes identified in the ‘‘global analysis’’ above were approached and actualized in real time. The premiere recording of In C was a landmark in the recognition of minimalism as a musical movement, and in the shift of public awareness of what constituted ‘‘new music’’. But it was also a burden to the work, very early in its life, because the recording seemed to define the parameters of the piece, framing it in listeners’ minds with a specific sound and formal sensibility. For a piece whose most revolutionary aspect was its openness, this perception was a disservice (even though it’s hard to imagine releases of multiple versions in a set by a major label at the time; Riley knew when to compromise for the ultimate benefit of his work). The iconic nature of In C was established, but its potential range of realizations was ill-served, perhaps even restricted for longer than necessary. Perhaps the most dramatic change that occurred between the premiere and the recording was the tempo of the work. The initial Pulse of the recording clocks in at q ¼ 132. This is a remarkable change, almost twice as fast as the San Francisco performance, as remembered by the participants. One could jokingly speculate that it has to do with Riley’s move from laidback California to harried New York, or perhaps that LP timing limits made everyone a little more rushed. But whatever the reason, the piece became known as a far more frenetic work than it was when originally presented.

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The recording is also very much an artifact of its time in terms of its actual sound. Because of the multitracking, its eleven players became twentyeight, with a far more dense and jangly sound than would have been the case in a single live performance. This greater number also leads to issues of rhythmic precision. Close listening reveals that the performance is remarkably close to the score, but in a section such as 22–26 (the move into E, starting at 16’40’’) it also creates a sort of ‘‘phasing’’ effect, which is slightly psychedelic (becoming most prominent starting at 17’30’’ and continuing to around 21’30’’, when the rising C triad of 29 arrives). It is also the only point in the recording that the strict tempo feels compromised, since there is a slight sense of accelerando. The overlay of very similar patterns becomes jittery, a fine-grained blurring that reminds one of strobe light effects. The tastes of the age are also reflected in the instrumentation. As was stated earlier, I believe Riley’s renewed engagement with tape delay in his solo performances (he had in fact done one in Buffalo just a few days before the session) led him to prefer a denser, highly textured sound. And while determined largely by the availability of particular players, the predominance of winds and percussion create a ‘‘circus-ish’’ sound. On the one hand, the similarity to gamelan and other East Asian musics is rendered more evident, and on the other, the similarity to 1960’s psychedelic rock is also evoked. One cannot help but feel that the sound of module 35 being played by flute, trumpet, and saxophone bears resemblance to the genial soundworld of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (in particular ‘‘Strawberry Fields’’), which was issued the previous year (the phasing effects mentioned above also resemble it). As for the developmental arc of the performance, Riley and his band are careful to take their time. Every module is repeated at least a minute, and longer is the norm. The opening five modules unfold steadily for three and a half minutes before the long tones of 6 enter. The same is true for the ending: the long-tone G/F figure of 48 starts at 35’25’’ and doesn’t disappear fully until 40’40’’, less than half a minute before the end of the piece, as the G Dorian accompaniment progressively surrounds it. Figure 5.4 shows the march of the modules over the work’s duration, minutes indicated on the horizontal, modules on the vertical axis. The performance also lingers on the harmonic ambiguity of transition points. For example, the entrance of the first inversion C major triad at 29 does not sound initially like a reassertion of C. Rather, it seems to be part of the general E Aeolian structure, with the C being an additional scalar tone. This is so because the lower five notes of the Aeolian mode are still sounding strongly from earlier modules. It is only at the entrance of 31 (about one minute later, at 22’45’’) that one hears a definitive shift away from the E center. Likewise, 42–47 remain highly unstable; one senses both

Figure 5.4. Progression of modules over time, 1968 premiere recording.

Figure 5.4. (Continued)

Figure 5.4. (Continued)

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C and G as strong contenders for a modal center, and it’s only at 35’25’’, with the entrance of 48, that the issue is decided in favor of the latter. In sum, Riley’s recorded maiden voyage of the work shows a taste for gradual, carefully controlled pacing, which causes the work to morph almost imperceptibly from one state to another. In this sense it is very much in the spirit of other minimalist leaders of the period, in particular Reich, with the pacing of module change, and Young, in the expansion of time and the sonic texture of resultant sympathetic upper overtones. The immediate critical reception of the recording was mixed but overall positive. Three reviews in national publications move from guarded to ecstatic in their reactions.43 The most skeptical was Don Heckman’s in Stereo Review.44 He begins with a description of the rules and process of the work; curiously, one thing that he suggests is that the rhythmic precision of the modules is open to interpretation; he constantly refers to the modules as ‘‘melodic,’’ states that the ‘‘rhythms . . . are determined aleatorically by the players,’’ and claims that ‘‘How they choose to synchronize their phrases [with the Pulse]—on upbeat or downbeat, in expanded or compressed meter—is up to the individual players.’’ While Riley later allowed for rhythmic diminution and augmentation of modules, at this point it was not part of the piece’s performance practice, and Behrman in his notes makes no mention of it either. And since the score was included with the recording, it’s strange that Heckman would make this claim. Heckman then continues, however to make an interesting point, one that resonates even today: Heard subjectively, In C produces, over the course of its forty-three minutes, a vague hypnotic effect, that is doubtless related to the repeated C, hammering away incessantly through the musical fabric. Isolated motives, bits and snatches of themes, and a kind of Klangfarbenmelodie of individual pitches drift in and out of one’s consciousness. Very nice, for a while, but ultimately wearing. Riley’s work, much of which consists of similar procedural methods, is usually more effective in concert performances. A visual environment of players, audience, and concert hall seems to provide a focus for the music that is missing in the generally distracting environment of a living room. The recording has been made in the form of three successive over-dubs. Superficially, this raises no particular problem, since the piece is not conceived in terms of specific instrumentation or players. However, with each successive rerecording, the players—given the opportunity to add to what they have previously recorded—can (and do) create thematic relationships and structural patterns that strike me as inconsistent with the intentions of the composition. Had over-dubs been made ‘‘blind,’’ so to speak, with the players unable to hear the previous recordings, such a method would be more consistent with the work’s stated

94 : terry riley’s in c procedures. But, since Riley participated in the recording, it must be considered a definitive performance, despite the inconsistencies. Pieces like In C are truly experimental works. As such, they are necessary efforts because they explore methods, procedures, and formal structures that are difficult to examine in larger works. But they cannot be considered total artistic experiences because their limits have been too closely defined by reactions that are prohibitive of total emotional or aesthetic reaction. They provide a first encounter with elements and concepts that need to be examined further, in more extensive fashion.

Heckman misses entirely the point of the piece when he says it would be better realized with ‘‘blind’’ overdubs. The whole point of In C is listening among the players, to ‘‘create thematic relationships and structural patterns.’’ Riley, while open to surprise, was still writing a piece with a tangible, perceptible structure, and with a notated score. But it seems that Heckman (who from his remarks also suggests he may have heard Riley in concert) views the piece through a lens of Cageian experimentalism, which trusts the beauty of chance encounters in the most random sense. When viewed through this filter, it’s not too surprising that the critic rates the piece as an interesting advance that will be ‘‘examined later’’ by someone more emotionally and aesthetically robust. Indeed, as the veiled reference to Schoenberg suggests, the whole critical approach seems based on the paradigm of a brilliant precursor, who is simultaneously cursed in not being able to fulfill the promise of his innovations, which must be fully realized by a more accomplished successor.45 But Heckman is on the mark in one way. The multitracking does inherently box in the music, in a manner that contradicts the moment-tomoment close exploration of musical relationships that In C encourages. And it’s no surprise that this recording sounds different from every other release of the piece in the decades to follow. Although the Columbia release was an extraordinary coup for Riley and the movement of which he was a leader, it simultaneously pigeonholed the piece more than it needed so early in its life. We will examine the implications of this in the section on later recordings in the final chapter and appendix. The second review comes from, of all places, Glamour.46 Critic Janet Rotter is far less concerned with the purely musical aspects of the work, instead referencing its place within developments of visual arts and culture at large: But this month I’m also driving for a non-pop piece of abstract music, In C, composed by Terry Riley, a former piano player and saxophonist. In it, one can discover the identical kinetic tension (inner motion) of the wildly popular sculptures of Jean Tinguely or Venice Biennale winner Julio Le Parc, and I’m happy to

The Columbia Recording: A “Second Premiere” : 95 say that In C fills a complete record album (Columbia) which has been brightly produced and attractively packaged. It is too improvisatory for classical music, nor does it show jazz roots. If I have to call it something, then that would be ‘‘the global village’s first ritual symphonic piece.’’ Here’s what happens: ‘‘The pulse,’’ a steady drumming of notes on the top two C’s of the piano keyboard, creates a spine of energy for improvisation from vibraphones, saxophones, flutes, violas, oboe, woodwinds, bassoons, etc. Constantly playing, it plays tricks on the listener’s ear, creating illusory sound patterns the way optical illusions are created by the blur of motion in kinetic sculpture. You’ll hear vibrations and echoes which Riley never put in the basic score that comes written down on the inside of the album jacket. That pulse sends out the kind of energy excitement that electrifies a pop-concert audience or a political crowd hearing a victory speech or football fans seeing the last-minute touchdown in a tie game. Terry Riley has not yet reached the mass concert audience that the Beatles have, but he has written in his own way to that audience. In C, I believe, celebrates with honesty and guts the mass life we live today. [Copyright # 1969 Conde´ Nast Publications. All rights reserved. Originally published in Glamour. Used with permission.]

This writer gets several things strikingly right. First, the connection cited between kinetic sculpture and the music is appropriate, not only because of the ‘‘mobile’’ aspects of the piece’s form, but also because at this time a bond was emerging between the visual arts and what would later become known as musical minimalism. This bond would nurture the movement and provide its audience when much of the musical establishment was still hostile. Second, by noting the record’s production values, including visual presentation, one is reminded that Glamour was of course a fashion publication, but that also a nexus between Downtown art and fashion was emerging at this time (think Warhol and the Factory). Third, the critic is attuned to the ‘‘resonant’’ aspect of the piece, where aurally the whole is more than the mere sum of the parts. While this characteristic might apply more to the resultant dancing overtones of La Monte Young’s pieces, it is appropriate for In C, and especially for the sonically dense and jangling texture of this specific recording. And finally, the description of the work as the global village’s first anthem is the perfect ‘‘soundbite’’ and has continued to resonate in the literature. It is also remarkably true, as will be seen later with the range of realizations that the piece has inspired. The final major periodical review came in High Fidelity, written by none other than Alfred Frankenstein:47 Terry Riley’s In C is one of the definitive masterpieces of the twentieth century. It is probably the most important piece of music since Boulez’ Marteau sans ma^ıtre, conceivably it is the most important since the Sacre. For it defines a new aesthetic, and a most important one.

96 : terry riley’s in c This aesthetic involves the endless repetition of the same short phrase and instrumental effect and their very slow and gradual change over a considerable length of time. The repetition both numbs one’s sensibilities and makes them more alert. The subtlest, smallest variation, such as might pass unnoticed in another context, takes on monumental meaning; the hearer is thrown into a kind of trance and at the same time made infinitely more alert than ever before to what sound is all about. The score, which the notes aptly call a ‘‘launching pad’’ for the music, is printed in its entirety on the jacket. It consists of fifty-three figures ranging in lengths from a single sixteenth note to a phrase that would be four or five bars, if there were any bars. Each member of the ensemble goes through these fifty-three figures, but with rests and hiatuses as he desires. Any number of instruments can be employed; in this case an ensemble of eleven instruments was recorded and then overdubbed twice. . . . [Frankenstein then details the instrumental assignments for each successive track.] The triple recording results in an absolutely unique sound. One is aware that it was produced by normal instruments, but their individual timbres are somewhat blurred as they blend into the general hum of the piece. Columbia’s excellent annotator (not identified)48 speaks of the work as revealing a ‘‘teeming world of groups and subgroups forming, dissolving, and re-forming within a modal panorama which shifts, over a period of about forty-five to ninety minutes, from C to E to C to G.’’ Of course not even Columbia has found a way to make a record run forty-five minutes on one occasion and ninety minutes on another; we have to here settle for the shorter, and it is veritably a dilly.

Frankenstein was able this time to get the exact details of the work’s structure correct, since the score was included with the album. It seems that since his review of the concert premiere, he may have been aware that he had not described those technical aspects of the work that were revolutionary, and he wanted to remedy that gap. The review essentially ‘‘speaks for itself.’’ Frankenstein makes the strongest possible argument for the musical revolution In C initiates, just as the Glamour critic pegs the radical artistic-cultural aspects. This critical response, while varied, is remarkable because all the writers understood in varying degrees that they were dealing with something truly new and influential. It is a tribute to the underrated cultural literacy of the time, but it is also evidence of the clarity and directness of Riley’s language and vision, which communicated its intent so succinctly to those who then translated it verbally for the listening public. In C was now truly out in the world, and quickly became of the world.

Chapter Six

Legacy In one sense, our job is done, because after 1968 In C had been premiered in its two formats, and became known to the world. But more than most works, it remained incomplete; indeed, by its very nature, it has to remain incomplete. It is a piece that relies on the continued imagination and reinvention of its performers to survive; this attracts players in the first place, and then gives them the satisfaction of seeming to participate in its ‘‘premiere’’ with every performance. And this quality of ‘‘refreshing’’ itself every time makes it equally engaging for listeners. The work has gone through innumerable incarnations over the succeeding decades. It is performed regularly around the world, by students in colleges and conservatories; by informal groups of musicians, professional and amateur; and in concert halls, with virtuosi. What this final chapter attempts is a sampling of the piece’s different manifestations, and thoughts on its significance. It is laid out in four sections. First, we hear from many of the original participants in its premieres, who assess its impact with over four decades’ perspective. Second, a similar set of observations comes from four musicians in different disciplines of the succeeding generation, who are able to see the work with a ‘‘historical perspective,’’ as a given in their musical formation. We then examine a series of recorded performances (essentially the complete In C discography to the date of this publication), to understand how the piece adapts to different circumstances, so as to bring out different facets of its materials while still preserving a core character. And we conclude with a few final thoughts of my own.

The Participants Those who performed in the premieres of In C have had four decades to reflect on the work and its significance. Part of its history is the fact that

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many of these players themselves became among the most important composers of their generation, in the fields of experimental, electronic, and minimalist music. Riley has always shied away from too much technical description or aesthetic speculation vis-a`-vis In C. Indeed, in the program notes to one recording he has described it as ‘‘a gift that The Universe kindly bestowed on the Terry Riley of 1964, who might possibly be a stranger if he showed up at my door today.’’1 When pressed on specifics, he says: ‘‘More important than the Minimalist theme in my work is the interrelationship of motives. Both In C and the later works have a really strong developmental quality, a lot of variation and permutation of motives. This isn’t theoretical; it’s the way I hear.’’2 But more than any technique, Riley sees the piece as an opening to a spiritual path, one he has pursued with increasing intensity throughout his life. He has spoken of a basic Romanticism within his quest: The word [Minimalism] itself doesn’t inspire me to come up with a definition because it sounds too scientific and dry and cold. It isn’t romantic enough for my nature—there isn’t enough intuition in it, and it doesn’t allow for the real freedom of the human spirit. When you say, ‘‘I’m a minimalist,’’ that nails you down to something in a certain way. What I feel they’re trying to say with minimalism is that they’re stripping music down to its essential factors—what moves us in music. Minimalism is not ‘playing what you don’t have to.’ You can still get to the bones and nerves and fibres of what music is without great decoration.3

Perhaps his most direct and eloquent summation is, ‘‘I saw it as a kind of musical alchemy or magic. I was seeing a spiritual direction for music in that you lose the sense of self and give yourself up to this labyrinth of sound.’’4 Steve Reich has of course gone on to one of the most important careers in American postwar music. He suggests that In C was a turning point for him, because it showed a way that many of his own concerns could be successfully addressed, and it challenged him to find his own solutions: I think In C is a really really great piece, and it’s going to stick around. And just as Terry learned a lot from LaMonte Young, I learned a lot from In C, and maybe Phil Glass from me . . . there’s your ‘‘Minimalism 101’’ [laughs] . . . but In C is a really first-rate piece that I think will be around as long as we’ll be around. . . . Harmonic stasis, repetition, these were all things I was working with. And In C was a way of putting it all together. And here was someone who had the same ingredients, and put it together in this marvelous piece. And I think that set me off. Obviously our paths have diverged quite widely, but credit where credit is due: I certainly learned a lot from In C.5

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Morton Subotnick feels that the surface of the music was revolutionary in the context of its time and finds that it creates a unique blend of the cyclic with the directional: I think there were two aspects to In C . . . One was the beat and the simplicity. . . . For this to happen in ’64, was really a first moment for that beat. The second is the way in which it phases, which really wasn’t phasing. In C brought a forward movement to repetition . . . it blossomed in a direction, and that directionality, and the beat, was not what people were thinking at the time . . . in a way, it was a kind of cockamaimie Ravel Bolero; people don’t think about it now because it’s so ordinary. Everyone’s grown up with Glass and Reich, but that didn’t exist at that point. And I think the idea of everybody starting out with that [sings first motive] and then gradually doing it so that you move in your own time through a chord progression and actually go somewhere . . . it’s sort of like taking peyote and listening to a Bach partita or canon which the voices veer off in time, and don’t get there at the same time. But everything is going in a direction. I don’t know of anything else that did it at that time.6

The nature of that flow and directionality is something that Pauline Oliveros also honed in on, evoking a marvelous metaphor: ‘‘I think of it as a flock of migrating birds. The other night I was looking at some program on television about birds, I’m not exactly sure where, but there are huge flocks of birds that are migrating that have not been seen before in such large numbers. And the patterns and movement of those birds was just astounding, incredible shapes. And I think that’s the feeling I get when I’m involved in a performance.’’7 She also sees it as an essay in communitarian musicmaking, one that expresses a particular aesthetic democracy and acceptance among anyone who performs it: ‘‘There’s a good feeling about the piece that comes about because of a community effort. And it doesn’t come about because someone is better than another person. The motives are easy enough, but what is not so easy is being together and not together at the same time. That’s a wonderful exercise for musicians. It has a metaphorical meaning, symbolic meaning, a meta-musical meaning.’’8 Loren Rush emphasizes that the title is more than just a title, that it bespeaks an approach to harmony that rediscovered its roots and at the same time completely reconsidered its nature and practice: [An important] quality is the sureness of the structural harmonic development in the piece. And the resultant drama . . . Terry’s early work was very tonal. . . . I believe that Terry was influenced by the open sound of Aaron Copland, bringing those sounds into his music. Likewise Pauline [Oliveros] had all of her background in tonal music. The environment was such that the music that was written by Morton Subotnick, Ramon [Sender], and Robert Erickson was adventurous tonality. And I mention this because I really hate the way tonality has gone,

100 : terry riley’s in c where people are misusing it, and it’s imitative and amateurish. So I want to make a distinction about the use of tonality. So you see where I’m going here: Terry didn’t just drop out of nowhere with this tonal piece. . . . It wasn’t even an issue for us, the thing about tonality. We were just working together, trying to figure it out, learning.9

And David Rosenboom identifies two salient aspects of the piece: its extraordinary flexibility of presentation, and the deep musicality that motivates its seemingly simple materials: There are many things that are quite amazing about the piece. One thing that we’ve learned over the years is that it’s a piece that stands up with an enormous range of possible interpretations, instrumentation, approaches to scale and scope, long and short, to size of ensemble, type of ensemble, and it’s my view that it’s perfectly legitimate to make direct interpretations in different ways. There are versions that are very grandiose, versions that are very delicate and simple, that stretch way out of the concept of Western instrumentation. So there are so many ways that it can work very well. I think In C proves that there are millions of correct ways of doing it, so long as one is respectful towards the materials. . . . There are patterns and there are patterns and there are patterns. But the musical sensibility that goes into creating patterns that can be combined with one another with rich musical results is not simple and takes real, deep musicianship, which Terry always had. So it doesn’t work to just choose other patterns and use the same process. There are also really really good ones. Terry’s innate musicianship is one of the reasons that makes his work and this piece work so well.10

Thoughts of the Next Generation In C has now been part of the musical landscape for over forty years. It has emerged as a historical fact for the generation after that of Riley and his collaborators. One aspect of its legacy is how the work is now viewed and valued by those who were too young to be part of its origins. Following is a digest of interviews with four prominent musicians about twenty years younger than In C’s original participants: a critic, composer, performer, and scholar (though these categories blur to some degree for each). Kyle Gann (b. 1955) is one of the leading critics and scholars of the American experimental and alternative classical tradition. He was the Downtown new music critic for The Village Voice for over two decades, chronicling its history and interpreting its impact. He originated the term ‘‘totalist’’ and discusses ‘‘postclassical’’ music extensively in his reviews, online radio station, and blog. He is Professor of Music History at Bard

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College, where he also teaches composition. He brings a rare combination of critic, composer, and scholar to his role as one of the most articulate theorists and advocates of the American experimental tradition. Gann first heard In C from the recording, and he remembered that it ‘‘gave me a headache . . . and I started listening to the tape over and over, and I was so fascinated that someone would do that, which didn’t make any sense to me.’’ But this opinion changed as he encountered other minimalist works, and he saw it as part of an emerging tradition. In 1976, while still an undergraduate at Oberlin, he organized a performance in his home town of Dallas. This was the beginning of a long and fruitful association with the piece. What strikes him now as being the most remarkable aspect of the work is how the score creates an elegant and economical set of directions, which guides players through a performance without too much information as well as without a conductor: It’s almost the perfect paradigm for the performance situation I would like to see. I wish that there were other ways to write a piece where you could walk into any situation, people could just perform it without loads of agonizing rehearsal, and to get so much out of in a spontaneous situation. I don’t think you can do too much dynamic differentiation in the piece, too much would ruin it. The idea of creating climaxes ruins the idea of everyone proceeding through the same material at different rates, and hearing the same thing come from different musicians at different times. You’re trying to impose a group shape on the thing otherwise. I’m embarrassed that students think that notating dynamics and phrasing on every note is the way music has to be; I can show them In C, and say, ‘‘Look, a score is just a recipe at best, there’s no reason you can’t figure out what the piece needs with less information about it.’’ It takes such a sensitivity to other people’s pacing and dynamics, it surprises a certain sort of musicality out of you. For me, that’s a really important paradigm: for the music to tell you what it needs, from the performance situation, rather than the composer having to notate every little nuance. The music should be clear enough that in the process of playing it you suddenly realize, ‘‘I have to move quicker through this, I don’t want to repeat that too often, because it gets more tiresome than this [other] way.’’11

Above all, for Gann, the work is a miracle of the loosening of control in the performance situation. It demonstrates that in fact far less supervision is needed of good musicians if the composer offers a higher level of trust to them and their musicality. Ingram Marshall (b. 1943) is one of the leading composers of the ‘‘second wave’’ of Minimalism. He came to prominence in San Francisco in the 1970s with a series of works using tape loops and recorded ‘‘found sounds’’ in

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combination with live instruments, the most famous being Fog Tropes for brass sextet and the sound of foghorns. Though younger than Riley by about a decade, he was very much a part of the Bay Area alternative music scene in the period following the premiere of In C. Marshall first heard In C as a graduate student, while working as a clerk in a record store in New York City. His experience of In C was thus shaped from the outset by the recording and by what it represented in the context of music on disc in the 1960s. The very medium via which the succeeding generation first encountered the piece created a completely different perception of it, a different taxonomy from what would have come in a traditional concert format: It doesn’t sound very unique, but I think that’s the interesting thing about the story. I think a lot of people just heard it like that, they got the record, played it, and bang! It was like the White Album or Their Satanic Majesties Request . . . , certain Dylan albums people play over and over. Immediately this was another sort of crossover thing; people were listening to this who had never listened to a Stockhausen or Milton Babbitt record, any kind of ‘‘official’’ classical new music. It was definitely something people just enjoyed listening to. I had never heard of any of the Minimalists, never anything by Steve [Reich] or any of them, even though they were around . . . When we say that it was written in 1964, that’s forty years ago. That’s a long time, and if someone had said, ‘‘This is going to be around for forty years, people are going to like it and still be playing it,’’ I would have said, ‘‘No way.’’ It seemed so much of its time, at the time, that one might not have thought it would last. But it has! All through the years, it’s always been on someone’s radar. Another reason why it may be of interest to younger composers and musicians right now is that it deals with the whole idea of the distinctions between pop and classical being irrelevant, and you’re seeing a lot of that. In C is the prototype of that. The other thing I want to say is that most people heard this first on a recording because they had never heard a live performance. It’s a very specific example of mixing and layering; it’s almost an electroacoustic piece because of that. It’s kind of a remix of itself! I have a feeling if the record had just been a live recording of a performance [without the overdubbing], it might not have had the same impact.12

Robert Black (b. 1956) is one of the world’s leading bassists, specializing in contemporary music. Renowned for both solo and ensemble performance, he is perhaps most visible as a member of the Bang On a Can All-Stars [henceforth BOAC], one of the most popular and widely traveled ensembles for new music. Black began playing In C about fifteen years ago with BOAC, as well as in combination with ensembles and on tour with Riley. When we spoke in 2005, I asked him what made a successful performance of the work:

Legacy : 103 Listening. It’s more about listening than it is about playing, and anticipating; when you change patterns, how that affects the whole organism. And especially the way that BOAC does it, registration is open, so we’re not all playing in the same octaves. And so any one of us can very dramatically change . . . it can be any one of us that goes and plays a particular pattern very low on the piano or the low end of the bass, in opposition to the register where everyone [else] is. In our case, it’s listening in an orchestrational way that leads to a successful performance. What I think makes for a not good performance, and especially with a lot of music which is ‘‘free’’ like that, is having performers who are not disciplined enough, who don’t respect the integrity of the piece, who think that anything goes, who think that you can’t make a mistake, just play as you like, repeating a figure until you decide to go on, a completely individual thing. But every person in the group affects everybody else. I don’t feel all that compositional, because there is still a pretty strict path you have to follow, but you can proceed in different ways down that path, at different tempos. Your choices are basically those of timing, instead of the multitude of choices you have when you compose.13

Black remembers in particular a concert with Riley when circumstances led to a radically different structure of the piece, suggesting how open the composer is to varied approaches: [Terry] sings, while he plays the keyboard, and that’s very nice. And I think he improvises even a little further away from the part, but then he can. [laughs] One of the more interesting performances we did was at Wesleyan [in April 2004], and we had a lecture-demonstration before the concert, and the sound equipment hadn’t been set up yet. We usually do the piece with the computer playing the Pulse, but in this case we said, ‘‘Well how are we going to do this? Let’s just take turns keeping track of the C.’’ We did this for just a few minutes, but we all said ‘‘Oh my God,’’ and went ahead and did it that way for the concert that night, and then down to New York and had just an unbelievable time playing it like that. We absolutely didn’t do any predetermined cueing of the Pulse among ourselves. Sometimes there were a lot of people playing the Pulse, sometimes only one. You were still listening but you just had another option of what you could play. I remember toward the end people were all just playing the C, it was almost a fantasy on the C. And Terry was having a wonderful time. I think that while he’s done it a million times, this was one way to make it fresh for him.14

Black also sees the importance of the work from a pedagogic standpoint, particularly important because the work is performed so often in colleges, conservatories, and other schools of music:

104 : terry riley’s in c First of all, it’s a new experience for many students to have to do this timing. When I had an improvisation class, I used it early on. You’re not improvising, in that one has to play these notes, and it’s written, and in a common tempo. But it is [improvisation] in the sense that you need to listen to everyone and you have to move at your own rate. It’s a very communal experience to perform it, and to listen to it too. . . . It’s a very very detailed piece, it’s nice to pay attention to the details. It’s a huge gift to the world.15

David Bernstein (b. 1951) is one of the foremost musicologists of American experimental music. An expert on the music of John Cage, he is Professor of Music at Mills College. He has also devoted the past few years to a massive research and editorial project, a history of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. He suggested two revolutionary aspects of In C. The first is its democratic aspect, the way that it subverts hierarchies, very much in the spirit of its era’s cultural politics: In C is a signature piece in the American counterculture: in its level playing field, the absence of a conductor, the freedom of the individual performers to contribute in their own way. And even the first performance, where Terry decided not to set the chairs for the audience in the traditional way, to allow them to set them up however they wanted to; and Tony Martin’s light show, which instead of projecting onto the performers, came from amidst the performers and projected outward. So that whole idea of the elimination of this hierarchical division between audience and performers is characterized very strongly by In C. And a lot of the musicians who performed—I believe some came from a jazz background, and others were interested in improvisation, which was associated with the counterculture. The idea of free improvisation kind of goes hand-in-hand with ideas of free love, freedom rides, freedom of speech. So that was something that was brewing at the time.16

But Bernstein also sees the significance of the work in its links to traditional standards of craft and excellence that come from the classical canon. As we have seen, Riley confronted and made his peace with European modernism on his way to In C. And because of his innate musicality, the seeming simplicity of the work is in fact underpinned by a precise set of aural choices in materials that makes it particularly adaptable and memorable over successive performances, now numbering (at least) in the thousands: I don’t see it as a rejection of other types of music. Terry was enamored with Schoenberg’s music, his early piano music . . . he still likes it . . . and you know some of his work before In C had some influence of serialism and certainly the sound of Stockhausen and, probably even more, Schoenberg. I look on [In C] as an affirmative piece. Terry came forward with his own musical conception that was conditioned by his experiences with tape music. On the one hand In C is an

Legacy : 105 accessible piece, most of the modules in In C are easy to play. A couple are harder, but not virtuosic. All in all it’s not very difficult to play the individual modules, and Terry I think even allows some to be played at half speed. But to really perform In C on the level of the recording that was done in Buffalo and some of the recordings I’ve heard, it’s not easy. There’s a pitfall that many scholars, listeners, and critics fall into when they see these works that are a breakthrough of some sort. They tend to emphasize that breakthrough but not realize that most of these works that are conceptually revolutionary also artistically have a high level of merit, that keeps them going, and [keeps them] from fading into history. And I think Terry in a different way presents us with a very interesting and rich conception, but the content is also really interesting. . . . Terry has a marvelous ear.17

Ultimately, if one begins to apply the long view of history, Bernstein sees the intersection of classical practice with improvisation, and the ingenious, economical way In C effects this synthesis, as perhaps its greatest contribution: We have to remember that there’s this other tradition developing all along in the jazz tradition, the experimental jazz tradition, that should be part of this whole discourse, because it’s often looked at as being something else. But it’s really all part of the development of an American musical language . . . this idea of performer and improvisation, spreading more and more to different musical genres, and to groups of people, of composers and musicians. We’re always looking for the most innovative thing that’s happening at a given point in time. And we like to look at things in a teleological way, in a developmental, evolutionary way, and some have said that can’t happen anymore, at the end of the twentieth century. There are so many things happening and there isn’t a mainstream, and the idea of that evolution is obsolete. And maybe it is. But there seems to be a flowering of improvised music all around the world, and sometimes under the general title of free improvisation. And I think Terry’s work is at the early stages of that development . . . trying to eliminate the distinction between composition and improvisation.18

The Legacy of Successive Realizations Having taken a close analytic view of the premiere recording’s performance, as an exogenous musical object, this approach yields further insights when one examines other performances of the work. This is perhaps the most tangible legacy of all: an aural record that begins to create a tradition for future performances to draw upon (more like jazz than classical music). In the appendix is a digest of the fourteen commercial recordings within the In C discography. In addition to the bibliographical and technical information about each, there is a capsule-analysis of the most distinctive moments

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and choices made by the performers, which in turn give the interpretation its character. This section could be an exercise in analytic fetishism, a little like the sort of obsessive comparison of recordings one finds in a certain niche of classical music criticism. That is of course not the intent of my listening and description. Whether one reads these analyses before proceeding further, or references them in relation to the observations presented below, I hope the result will be the creation of a framework for a deeper understanding of both the richness and unity of In C. First of all, one must ask, ‘‘How is the work different throughout these different realizations?’’ One simple answer is that basic elements of sound and duration can vary vastly indeed. From Piano Circus at twenty minutes to Riley and his Russian friends at seventy-six, the piece is able to exist in extremely compact or expansive versions. It can use an orchestra or chamber orchestra formation, or that of a small chamber group. And it can use traditional classical instruments, sounds from popular traditions, and nonWestern instruments, all in varying mixtures. All these decisions make for a wide variety of ‘‘characters’’ that are projected via performances of the piece. In the hands of Riley and his Buffalo cohorts, it’s a psychedelic circus, whereas thirty-two years later his rendition in San Francisco sounds more like a Sufi festival. Piano Circus projects a lean, steely, taut world of sharply etched sounds, while the Shanghai Film Orchestra constructs a pseudo-classical edifice with indigenous Chinese instruments. The Russian ‘‘Repetitition’’ Orchestra projects a wild neo-primitive rite, while the Ictus Ensemble makes a crisp, floating, deliberately ‘‘classical’’ version (as does Paul Hillier, in an even more scrupulous rendition, though with the remarkable texture of voices and percussion). Walter Boudreau in his two versions makes the whole piece into first a funk celebration, then a cosmic orchestral bash. The American Microtonal Music Festival, with its predominantly plectra instrumentation, moves the work towards a delicate neo-Renaissance sound. The European Music Project creates an open, generally serene and playful dance work, while Bang On a Can creates what is perhaps the most urgently driven of all the performances. The Styrenes’ vision is drum-driven, thrashing punk, while the Acid Mothers Temple use the score as a pretext for a Japanese dream of what ’60s psychedelia was like. At a more structural level, the piece depends on the degree of repetition that is the norm for the individual players. Thus it can move quickly or slowly through its module-map; the speed determines the overall length. But the variation in number of module-repeats between individuals determines something far more elusive but significant: the degree of discreteness with which the various sections of the work are approached and projected. To take just one example, the role of module 29 showcases these differences

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from one version to another. In Riley’s 1968 version it is a pivot between E and G Aeolian, but one never really hears it as autonomous (instead, the C is an upper leading tone to the pentachordal set of the former, its E a lower neighbor to the F of the latter). But by 1990, the 25th anniversary performance allows it to emerge as a sonority in its own right and to luxuriate for a while in its C triadic nature. The BOAC performance tends more toward the 1968 approach with this module, while Piano Circus tends more toward that of 1990, in an even more extreme form. Boudreau makes it the centerpiece and grand climax of his versions, while the Ictus ensemble allows it to mix with many modules both before and after it. So the opposite question now arises, ‘‘How is the work similar from one version to the next, no matter how the basic elements are varied in both instrumentation and performance?’’ One obvious answer is that the same 53 modules are used by every performance (though the Shanghai version comes perilously close to losing the thread and abandoning the sequentiality central to the work’s concept). And though the way that the music moves from one modal region to another can be very fluid or discrete, very ambiguous or clearly differentiated, the general progression of: C Ionian—G Mixolydian—E Aeolian—(C )—G Mixolydian—G Dorian

tends to be a constant from one performance to the next. Only the edges are blurred, as with the overlap of harmonies, the extension of cross-relations from one region to another. And along a similar line, the major landmarks of the piece tend to exert a similar influence on the course of the work from one version to another, even if their actual unfolding is treated differently in each. Above all, modules 22–26 and 35 stand out as landmarks on the work’s roadmap, which tend to change the course of the music most dramatically from whatever was its state prior to their encounter. Modules 22–26 represent the first grand harmonic shift of the work, emerging in part from the greatest dissonance possible within its constructs, the F–F# cross relation. It is also a profound shift of both rhythmic base and texture. Module 35 stirs the waters even more. Not only do its length and variety stand out in relief against the other modules in the score’s sequence, but its execution can cast materials on either side of it in very different lights (for example, to hear it repeat against the ‘‘cantus’’ of 42 in the 25th anniversary concert, while it is gone before 42’s entrance in the BOAC version, is to hear that C-centered material in radically different ways). Is there an ultimate set of guidelines that emerge from these performances that suggest the most ‘‘authentic’’ rendition of the work? On the one hand, based on Riley’s instructions and an estimation of ‘‘mean’’ attributes in these various versions, one could posit that such a version would:

108 : terry riley’s in c Be about an hour, give or take a few minutes. Have an ensemble averaging about 15 players. Keep the range of modules simultaneously sounding to no more than 5, on average.

But of course the very idea of such a norm goes strongly against the genius of the piece. While one can use these attributes as starting points for a ‘‘template’’ of an idealized performance, they are meant to be subverted. The whole pleasure of the work is in the way that successive performances bring out different aspects of the music and keep it new for all involved, performers and listeners. In short, the work, despite its general approach of smooth, gradual development, is still ‘‘seeded’’ with a number of highprofile events that guarantee real drama. How players deal with these moments, when they inevitably arise, determines the character and integrity of the performance.

Final Thoughts Between my observations in the Introduction, and the reflections of so many thoughtful and creative musicians recounted in this chapter, there remains little for me to say. The thought I feel demands most emphasis here at the conclusion, the quality that makes In C a breakthrough for a musical practice of the future, is its inclusivity. Whatever dichotomy one chooses, it finds a meeting between the opposites and realizes it in performance: Western/non-Western Classical/jazz East Coast/West Coast Improvised/notated Learned/vernacular Individual/group Structured/open Static/directed Single/multiple

And on and on. Indeed, the piece is so all-embracing in its aesthetic that I am sure readers will readily come up with still more pairs to describe what they have learned during this study. That is the charm and the strength of In C. But as David Bernstein so rightly points out, a ‘‘revolutionary’’ piece, if it is to be more than a historical footnote, if it is to enter the repertoire, must have more than just a conceptual edge. It needs to meet the standards of musical substance that have allowed certain works to survive over centuries. Yes, In C has a deceptively simple surface, occupies a single page, and is

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relatively easy to perform (at least in terms of playing the notes and following instructions). But I hope that the close study and analysis of the work—both as a score in its own right and as an object subjected to multiple realizations—has led us to see that In C is in fact a rich and subtle piece. It is the product of a master musician who saw an elegant solution to the challenges creative artists were confronting throughout ‘‘new music’’ in the second half of the twentieth century. All its details contribute to a whole that is greater than the sum of those parts. The micro- and macro- of the work reinforce one another, causing the technical, conceptual, and aesthetic to ‘‘resonate’’ in a way that creates a far grander final product, and one far more influential, than one would suspect at first glance. It is perhaps the ‘‘stealth masterpiece’’ par excellence. After about three years of living with the piece, its history, and cast of characters, I am left with a sense of great hope. Music constantly renews itself. In C is not the ultimate goal of the historical process; it’s not even the single great answer to the questions of its age. Rather, it is yet another way station on an endless process by which music as an art confronts the unique demands of any era and finds the key to interpreting, capturing, and encapsulating that historical period’s essence. If one looks to the future, I feel there is yet one more consolation the piece offers us. For some this may be too sci-fi, but I have to say it anyway. What if our civilization were to endure a collapse that destroyed most of the technological and institutional bases that currently make it function at a level unparalleled in human history? Beyond the chaos and destruction, if humans survived in some form of more primitive existence, how would they make art, and how would they make music? Of course, folk musics of myriad sorts would reassert themselves, multifarious as the different bands of people who scratched out communities in the new, forbidding landscape. But if the score of In C survived (and assuming some could still read music notation), it is perhaps the one piece of ‘‘art music’’ that any group could gather to play. Standard instruments are not even necessary; voices—or perhaps invented soundmakers—would suffice. In short it would be a seed from which a new creative tradition could grow. It’s hard to think of any other work that could serve this purpose so neatly, fully, inclusively. Let’s hope In C does not need to fulfill this role, but we can take comfort that it stands ready to support us in any tough times to come.

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Appendix: Recordings of In C, 1970–2007, with Analysis

Recording : Organ of Corti 2 Date: 1996 (reissue of ‘‘Infonie vol. 33,’’ 1970) Performers: L’Infonie; Walter Boudreau, director Instrumentation: 5 saxophones, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 4 percussion, piano, electric guitar, bass guitar Timing: 29’20’’ (incomplete) Tempo: q ¼ 104 This recording is unusual on several counts. It is the earliest known release after the initial recording of In C, and indeed Walter Boudreau, its Que´becois instigator, writes in its notes that he received the disc from an arts administrator who wanted to end a grant refusal on a more positive note. His ensemble, ‘‘L’Infonie,’’ as one can tell from the orchestration, was essentially a jazz big band with a rock inflection. The recording quality and interpretation of the piece sound a little as though Frank Zappa and Sun Ra conspired to run the session. The performance begins with a free improvisation about two and a half minutes long, before the Pulse emerges, and because ‘‘the tape recorder ran out at module 48,’’ it fades out totally by 46. This is one of the slower performances on disc, suggesting a more wide-open approach to the materials, and it may be closer in spirit to the sound of the San Francisco premiere. Because there is a substantial percussion section, with at least one drum set, there is a strong rock backbeat throughout, exceptional in the work’s discography. Boudreau also admits he misread the score and interpreted the dotted quarters of 22–26 as being triplets, and this is again the only recording that performs the E Aeolian section in that way. The ensemble tends to keep together within about three to four modules at most times, though there are a couple of instances where a player will rush ahead and then hold, or straggle and then try to catch up. The most remarkable moment, however, is the arrival of C with module 29. The Canadians hold onto the rising C triad as an anchor for over three minutes against the remaining E modality, ornamenting it with gongs and crashing cymbals, building a sense of triumphant return, which is accidentally made even more significant by the truncated form of the recording. Boudreau’s idea of In C as a ritual open to his own personal arranging was to return later in an even grander manifestation, to be seen below. Recording : Materiali Sonori 90070 Date: 1983 Performers: Ensemble Percussione Ricerca

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Instrumentation: two vibraphones, glockenspiel, two marimbas, xylophone, crotales Timing: 41:00 Tempo: q ¼ 116 Percussionist Eddy de Fanti gathers five performers on seven instruments. In a spirit totally contrary to the genial free-for-all of Walter Boudreau’s realization, the aesthetic here is truly ‘‘minimalist’’ in its eschewal of dynamic climaxes or any other dramatic gesture. Indeed, the program notes (which curiously refer to the piece as Suite In C) remark on the music’s ‘‘conscious accent put on a ‘cold’ mysticism.’’ This is one of the easiest performances to follow in terms of entry and exit of modules, because of the clearly differentiated timbres and attacks of the instruments (It is kept to a limit of four sounding simultaneously for its first third; in the middle it opens up to encompass a window of 26–32, which creates one of the most polymodal sounds of any performance, the F# and F natural fighting against each other in the same register. Further on it widens to encompass 35–42 before commencing a final contraction.) One could almost imagine this were a computer realization, except for its date of recording. The clockwork precision allows the listener to hear the piece in an idealized format so as to understand its structure most clearly; it’s almost a ‘‘sonic analysis’’ of the work. Recording: Celestial Harmonies 13026–2 Date: 1989 Performers: Shanghai Film Orchestra; Wang Yongji, conductor Instrumentation: ‘‘various lutes, zithers, mouth organs, flute, and percussion’’ Timing: 28’24’’ Tempo: q ¼ 108 (though with fluctuations throughout) This recording is justly celebrated as one of the first attempts of a traditional Asian ensemble to play Western experimental music. It’s also a natural match, because Riley’s aesthetic has always looked eastward, and it seems inevitable that the time would come when a non-Western group attempted In C. This particular collaboration was arranged by the Chinese-American composer David Mingyue Liang, who identified the Shanghai Film Orchestra as the ensemble most likely to succeed with the music, and whose music is also featured on the disc. Rehearsals and recording took place over eight days, and the take on the record comes from two days before the end of the session. Certainly the aspect which immediately strikes the listener is the sound of the Chinese instruments. Their piercing, nasal timbres work wonderfully with Riley’s modules. The gongs and mallet percussion sound more gamelan-like than in any other recorded performance. And the Pulse is provided by Chinese percussion, with xylophones played with more rhythmic variety than is usually heard (it is probably from this experience that Riley’s later instructions gained the sentence about freer percussion accompaniment).

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The aspect of the piece, though, which is most different and least ‘‘purist,’’ is the orchestra’s approach to the open form. Because the ensemble still had a conductor, it seems never to have achieved the sort of truly democratic (indeed, constructively anarchic) collaboration between players that usually makes for successful performance. Transitions seem to be sudden. For example, when 14 arrives, everything but 13 drops out, and this duet continues for a minute and a half (up to 6’). The E Aeolian section at 22–26 seems to have been problematic. The whole thing seems to be over in about a minute, and the measured tremolo of each dotted quarter is not observed. Afterwards there seems to be overall confusion where anyone is. Module 35 seems at sea, surrounded by materials from rather far ahead of and behind it (for example, at 16’10’’ we have 28 and 35 sounding together, a more extreme divergence of modules than usually occurs). But the most memorable gesture of the performance comes with the entrance of 42, which first appears at 18’20’’, Played by a combination of woodwinds and gongs, it affirms a clearer and more decisive C center than is usually the case at this point. And it goes on and on. As more and more successive modules enter, 42 continues, like a chaconne bass. It seems to drop out after 21’, but then it returns at 22’20’’ for another round, dropping out only at 23’, when module 43 takes a dramatic unison turn. But it’s still not over; 42 returns one last time at 26’10’’ and continues for about a minute more, almost to the end of the piece. This is apparently the work of conductor Wang Yongji, who seems to have felt compelled to shape the piece into a more traditional form ( John Schaefer accurately observes in his notes that the effect is like a rondo). It’s ironic that an Asian ensemble would ultimately interpret In C in a manner closest to classical orchestral form. But that incongruity also seems somehow in the spirit of the piece, itself a synthesis of incongruous influences. One also has to admit that the successive returns of 42 take on an almost triumphant tone. While this is about as far from a faithful rendition of Riley’s original vision as one can get, and as a cross-cultural experiment it skates on thin ice, it ultimately delights with its sound and vigor. Recording: Argo 430 380–2 Date: 1990 Performers: Piano Circus Instrumentation: 6 keyboards: concert grand and acoustic piano, Rhodes piano, 2 harpsichords, vibraphone Timing: 20’01’’ Tempo: q ¼ 132 This is perhaps the most ‘‘minimal’’ of all known versions of In C, though the term has less to do with style than with the actual use of the work’s materials. From the headnote, it’s obvious that a very small ensemble is used, and the music unfolds quite quickly (the timing is barely half what most performances of the piece clock). It’s also one of the fastest tempos on record. One virtue of this approach, combined with the sharp attack and quick decay of all the instruments, is extreme clarity. One

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hears the entrances and exits of modules more precisely than in almost any other rendition. The effect also has a quirky charm; more than that of any performance on record; the piece sounds like a large, frenetic music box. Piano Circus makes a clear decision in terms of the music’s structure. Not only are repetitions kept to a minimum, but it appears that the number of repetitions are similar from one module to another. As a result, short modules fly by quickly, whereas longer modules take much longer. To take one example, 1–5 hurtle past, entering at roughly 10-second intervals and lasting about 30 seconds each. But 6 lasts over a minute and stands completely isolated for 10 seconds, then goes another 30 seconds accompanied only by the sporadic low C figure of module 7. This sort of thickening and thinning occurs regularly throughout the piece. One feels that no one in the group is ever more than two or three modules behind the leader. It also makes harmonic transitions sharper than usual: the return to C at 30 is stark, the single pitch ringing alone for about 20 seconds (and in the context of the rapid module overturn of this version, that feels like a long time). This is totally different from the same point in the 1968 recording, where the C’s role is quite ambiguous for over a minute. Module 35 feels rather like each instrument is taking a solo over an accompaniment of 33–34. And because of its length, it dominates the structure of the performance, lasting for almost two minutes. In sum, this performance reveals an In C that is highly sectional, less ambiguous in its harmonic definition and motion, almost breathless in its unfolding, and fluctuating dramatically between extremes of rhythmic texture. Recording: New Albion 071 Date: 1990 Performers: Terry Riley and friends Instrumentation: flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 soprano saxophones, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, 2 trombones, piano, synthesizer, 2 guitars, 2 xylophones, marimba, glockenspiel, drums, Pulse, 4 voices, accordion, 2 violins, viola, ‘cello, ‘‘various instruments’’ [31 performers] Timing: 74’51’’ Tempo: q ¼ 108 This is a recording of the 25th anniversary concert of In C, performed by Terry Riley and friends on January 14, 1990, in San Francisco. Riley’s role, aside from being the proud paterfamilias of the proceedings, is to lead a group of singers. As a result, the general sound of the performance has the most ‘‘Indian’’ feel of all these recordings; there’s an ecstasy in places that suggests the sound of Sufi or Indian mystical singing. It seems that the experience gained from this performance probably informed the instructions Riley now includes with the score of In C. The performance expands to a duration that he regards as optimal. The percussion instruments often elaborate the pulse; for example, in 52’–56’ one hears snare and cymbal rolls, not just regular attacks. And at the 69’ mark, near the grand climax, the percussion departs into what sounds very much like a classic rock drum solo. The use of augmentation is

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also evident: modules 39 and 51 are played at half speed by the electric guitar, the latter also in augmentation by the voices. Large unison gestures by a substantial subgroup of players occur with some frequency: for example, at 16’ the music consists entirely of 14 with an accompaniment of 15, and at 70’, 49 is isolated into a grand unison gesture. In terms of the general shaping of the piece, it’s worth considering how the 1968 recording compares with this one. (Even though Riley is not a conductor in either, one has to assume that his presence exerts some influence.) Of course, by 1990 Riley has the resources and luxury of performing the piece at the pace he has obviously desired (not only in live performance, but with the greater length of CD technology). As a result, the music tends to focus on individual modules more than before. Up to about 25’ and the entrance of module 22, the group tends to play closely together, rarely more than three modules apart, creating important ‘‘mesas’’ such as 7–8 and the aforementioned 14–15. The result is more series of clouds and clearings than in the earlier version, where perhaps the multitracking process tended to encourage the players to play more often and continuously. The ensemble also allows transitions to take their time, gradually morphing from one context to another. The transitional role of 29 is an example, first appearing at 33’30 while 25–28 are still playing. Eventually, around 38’, it remains alone and is joined 20’’ later by 30 (C along with the C major triad of 29), making a grand crescendo over 40’–41’. Modules 29–30 continue up to 45’ and 46’ respectively, now in a completely new modal context. They become grand pivots, and in the middle of the process they project a radiantly open and simple C-ness that helps to clear the dense and throbbing E Aeolian texture of 22–26. After 35, the tighter concentration of modules seems to loosen for the remainder of the piece. Often five modules at a time are playing, and the alto saxophone seems to have become rather far behind the rest of the group: it gets to 43 at the 61’ mark, when 47 is entering, and one has a sense that for the next six minutes or so the ensemble is holding back a little, waiting for it to catch up. But precisely because the saxophone takes its time, there are a series of powerful climaxes culminating in a big build of 48–49 around 69’ as well as the aforementioned grand unison of 49 at 70’. Then music ends on 52–53, swelling the way Riley suggests in his instructions. Recording: ATMA 2 2251 Date: 1997 Performers: Socie´te´ de musique contemporarine de Que´bec, Walter Boudreau, conductor Instrumentation: Raoˆul Duguay, voice; chamber orchestra and choir: 1–1–1–1; 2–2–1–1; pn; hp, 2 percussion; tabla; sitar; 2–1–1–1; SATB (3 to a part) Timing: 35’05’’ Tempo: q ¼ 116 Walter Boudreau continued his love affair with In C with this orchestral version. It perhaps stretches the definition of what In C ‘‘is’’ more than almost any other

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recording. One feels as though it’s the opening of Sergeant Pepper, since there is much audience chatter and laughter before the music starts, with an extended introduction with sitar, tabla, percussion, and Duguay’s voice (whose raga-style singing feels like an homage to Riley’s own practice of that tradition). Only at 5’15’’ does the Pulse even begin, emerging out of the texture, and finally at 7’ module 1 appears. Throughout the work, Duguay interjects and elaborates modules, and at the end there’s an extended sitar solo on motives from the piece, performed over a slowing, fading texture of the last couple of modules. Boudreau’s conductorial hand seems most evident in the way climactic moments are articulated in the piece. Again more than in any other interpretation, when a landmark such as 29 arrives, the whole ensemble quickly coalesces around it, moving into a crescendoing repeated unison. Module 35 is another example, and this time not only do more and more instruments join in on each repeat, but apparently the audience was given a text to sing to the module, and the whole thing takes on the air of a group sing-along. And even though it’s not really In C anymore, it’s still thrilling. In the end, the performance is illuminating, because it suggests the genesis of a genuine orchestral performance practice for the piece. True, it subverts some of the work’s essential aspects, but In C ’s very nature also subverts traditional assumptions of concert decorum and hierarchy. Recording: Cypres 5601 Date: 1997 Performers: Ictus ensemble with Blindman Kwartet Instrumentation: oboe, clarinet, saxophone quartet, guitar, harp, piano, accordion, 2 percussion, violin, cello, 2 doublebass (doubling percussion) Timing: 64’58’’ Tempo: q ¼ 130 This is a live concert recording of May 31, 1997, from Brussels. Ictus plays with incredible precision; this is one of the most crisply ‘‘classical’’ of all the In C recordings. Its tempo is also one of the fastest, along with Piano Circus, though interestingly that speed does not create an impetus to a shorter overall duration. It begins as one of the most ‘‘purist’’ interpretations; for roughly its first third, the pacing of the modules is extremely regular, and Riley’s admonition of ‘‘module bandwidth’’ is observed—usually the maximum number of modules sounding simultaneously is five. But unlike many interpretations, which make the return of C at 29 a major event, here the C triad insinuates itself slowly, while the E Aeolian section is still strongly present. As a result, the number of sounding modules at any given point starts to grow broader and broader. Around the 35’ mark, when we first hear 35, module 24 is still sounding. This spread of about ten modules is maintained for the remainder of the performance. (For example, at the 42’45’’ mark, 32 and 45 are sounding together, and at the 55’ mark, 42 and 51 are still in play.) This makes for perhaps the most gradual and polymodal unfolding of the piece on disc. The interesting thing, though, is that the result always sounds focused and tight, perhaps

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because of the rhythmic precision of the performance and the fact that individual players often ‘‘lay out’’ for many cycles on any given module. (Riley has told the author that the Ictus version is ‘‘very choreographed. It never falls apart . . . it’s still improvised, but they known how to keep the energy going.’’) Recording: Cantaloupe 21004 Date: 1998 Performers: Bang On a Can All-Stars Instrumentation: clarinet, soprano saxophone, electric guitar, pipa, mandolin, piano, 2 percussion (glockenspiel/vibraphone, marimba/chimes), violin, ‘cello, bass Timing: 45’22’’ Tempo: q ¼ 120 If Riley’s 25th anniversary concert is the ultimate West Coast bash, then this recording by Bang On a Can (BOAC) is the quintessential East Coast version from a live concert at the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center in downtown Manhattan. In terms of its general unfolding, this recording does not vary radically from most of the others under consideration here. Its sound, however, is subtly but substantially different. First of all, the instrumentation is a cunning blend of instruments Western and non-Western (most notably the Chinese lute, the pipa), classical and popular (mandolin and electric guitar vs. everyone else). There are slight differences of tuning and color in this ensemble that make for a particularly piquant sound mass. Second, many of the instruments, especially the percussion and plectra, have a very clearly articulated attack and stand out strongly from one another (and from those that don’t tend to be played more staccato or detache´ in this performance to accentuate that quality). Finally, not only is BOAC quite free to have instruments play parts in their most characteristic registers, thus differentiating them further (see remarks of Robert Black in chapter 6 interviews), but the group also allows an instrument to move between registers within the same module (for example, the electric guitar moves through three different octaves in its repetitions of 28, and in 35 it changes its processing with every pass). The resultant sound is light but edgy. Few performances of In C project quite so much darkness, yet without any self-conscious angst. The most dramatic evidence of this approach is in the E Aeolian section, 22–26. These modules dominate the texture from 12’30’’ to 20’, creating a dark harmonic texture, one of the longest of this section on record, always rising in register and volume. Probably no recorded performance brings out such intensity of this material, or better projects the process outlined in the endogenous analysis. There is still real ambiguity in 20’–22’, when module 29 combines with its predecessors, but only as the sustained C of 30 finally begins to chime is there a sense of genuine release and radiance (and relief!) that colors the remainder of the piece. A paramount thing this ensemble does is to linger on ideas and motives and push them to a limit before giving them up. Module 35, for example, is first heard around

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22’ and last appears just before 31’. Over those nine minutes, it becomes a reference point for very different types of music: up to 25’ it is surrounded by the remnants of E Aeolian with the emerging C of 29–30. Then, from that point to 31’, it associates with the brighter G Mixolydian of 36–44. Different instruments take it up one at a time and repeat it often; because it contains so much of every element of the piece, rhythmic and harmonic, it blends easily with many different modules (for example, it sounds at 29’ minutes with every module following it up to 43). When 44 finally appears, it cuts off, and the music now is left with a clear-cut sense of G as the modal center, though as more instruments further behind take up 42, there’s a counter-modality of C that asserts itself before yielding to G at 37’45’’, with the entry of 48 as a cycling bass, around which everything orients itself into G Dorian. Recording: Long Arms Records 01033 Date: 2000 Performers: Terry Riley Repetitition Orchestra Instrumentation: piano, keyboards, clarinet, trumpet, 3 violins, cello, fretless baritone guitar, doublebass, sleighbells, percussion, 1 male voice, three female voices Timing: 76’40’’ Tempo: q ¼ 108 The title is apparently not an error; one assumes ‘‘Repetitition’’ is a verbal joke. The liner notes tell of In C’s first Russian performance, which resulted from the score and recording falling into the hands of the avant-garde serialist Edison Denisov, himself a mentor to an entire generation of Russian composers who would emerge as leaders in post-Soviet culture. Denisov, though famously open-minded, was not pleased with the work, but he passed it on to a student, pianist Alexei Lubimov, who in turn gave the Russian premiere in 1969. Apparently there were only three people in the audience, but two were Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke, so the underground success of the work was assured. This recording comes from Riley’s visit to Moscow in 2000. Along with the Chinese orchestra recording, this is by far the most ‘‘ethnic’’ performance of the work. But despite the exoticism of the instrumental sounds, the Shanghai Film Orchestra sounds like a group of dedicated professionals trying their best, whereas this Moscow performance is far rawer and constantly threatens to teeter over into undisciplined wildness. One senses that there are many fine musicians in the ensemble, but it’s animated by a spirit of primitivism, self-conscious or not, and it seems Riley may be gently guiding and reining in the more chaotic impulses of the group. While he initially sets the Pulse from the piano, it is taken over by sleighbells (called ‘‘chimebells’’ in the notes), which immediately give the work a ‘‘Russian’’ color. Even more characteristic are the female vocalists, who affect a strained and nasal ‘‘peasant’’ timbre. They yodel and often end their lines with cries and whoops. They are also often joined by the clarinet, which parades its rough edges klezmer-style. Perhaps the most remarkable structural aspect of the performance is the way certain modules are used as extended

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‘‘pivots.’’ One may be repeated and traded from one player to another over a very long span, so that even if Riley’s rule of roughly no more than five modules’ separation is maintained, the ‘‘pivot’’ module will relate first to the four before it and then continue with the four afterwards. This effect is most often done by the voices; just when one thinks the module cannot return, it comes back, like an infinite sample delay. The most prominent are 14, 29, and 42—all landmark ‘‘turning points’’ in the large-scale harmony of the work, and using longer sustained tones, like a chant. Module 42 continues for eleven minutes, topped only by 45, which lasts fourteen. The harmonic regions are blurred and made more polymodal as a result. Recording: Enja Records 9435–2 Date: 2000 Performers: The Styrenes Instrumentation: 4 guitars, keyboards, bass, vibraphone, drums Timing: 53’22’’ Tempo: q ¼ 120 Paul Marotta, the leader of the punk/art-rock group the Styrenes, writes in the notes that, ‘‘In C, with its dancing rhythms and subversive simplicity, is the embodiment of the rock and roll aesthetic.’’ He then makes an extremely convincing case for this argument, though he also evidences a great respect for the piece in his interpretive choices. Taking Riley’s lead from the premiere recording, this version is also created by multitracking. The seven-piece band is overdubbed once, and then guitar and keyboards are each given three more tracks, leaving a result of twenty tracks total. The sound is reminiscent of that of the guitar-symphonies of Glen Branca and Rhys Chatham, but the distinct character of all In C ’s modules always comes through, and the work does not turn into a thick sound-mass. Marotta is also careful to keep the players within an average ‘‘module-ambitus’’ of no more than four, though in a couple of places he allows the group to coalesce on one or two modules as a means of driving to a climax: the most notable are 33–34 before the entrance of 35’s long melody, and 40–41 before the sustained tones (and two Cs) of 42. The transition to E Aeolian at 22–26 is one of the edgiest on record, in part because the F# and G a minor ninth apart of 19 and 21 are brought to the foreground, creating a clangorous dissonance. One concession to the tradition is that rather than fade away at the end, the work builds to its loudest climax, though thankfully there are no self-indulgent guitar or drum solos as coda. But perhaps the most original aspect of this interpretation is the percussion. First of all, though this is a rock group, there is no backbeat; the rhythms all come from the score. Second, Mike Hoffman plays the drum part as would any other participant in the piece. You hear him move through every module, in exact rhythm, and using the relative pitch of his instruments to outline the melodic contours. Cymbals are used for sustained tones and isolated figures (cf. 7, 8), but when he

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wants to drive the ensemble, modules built of sixteenth-note ostinati can create propulsion on toms and bass drums (16–18). The result is a model of how unpitched percussion can be used in the work, adding motoric propulsion without flattening out the rhythmic subtleties inherent in the score. Recording: Squealer Music 037 Date: 2002 Performers: Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. Instrumentation: voice, bass, drums, synthesizer, violin, electric guitars, glockenspiel, vibraphone, tambura, shakuhachi Timing: 20’32’’ Tempo: q ¼ 92 Makamoto Kawabata and his group perform probably the most radical surgery upon In C of any interpreters. There are several aspects of this rendition that contradict Riley’s guidelines. First, the Pulse is basically a backbeat drum track (somewhat ‘‘psychedisco’’), that emerges only with module 9. Second, the piece’s constant C is a low drone instead of the traditional high repeated C. As a result, the harmonic shifts are all subordinated to the insistent pedal, and any sense of modal modulation is denied. Third, the modules, while all performed in the course of the work, tend to be played one at a time by the ensemble, with little overlap from one to the next and with moderate heterophony on any single one. As a result, the piece becomes a gradually evolving monophonic line, embellished with a crescendoing rhythm track and swooping electronic glissandi. The result is somewhat like a rock Bole´ro. The record includes original works titled In E and In D, that are in an even more standard trance-rock style. It seems that rather than attempt an interpretation of In C that accepts the basic premises of its practice as outlined by Riley, the Acid Mothers Temple & . . . have taken it instead as an object to subject to their own practice. While this is an homage to the ‘‘psychedelic freakout’’ aesthetic, the connection to the original text is stretched to the limit. Indeed, they seem to see it as an avatar of a late 1960s San Francisco that actually postdates the context for the work’s composition and premiere.1 Recording: Wergo 6650 2 Date: 2002 Performers: European Music Project, zignori þ þ Instrumentation: English horn, clarinets, alto saxophone, marimba, electric piano, violin, viola, ‘cello, two techno DJs Timing: 60’48’’ Tempo: q ¼ 120 From the booklet notes, one would suspect this version of In C to be a very free adaptation of the score, since they stress the contributions of zignori þ þ , who are a pair of techno DJs, armed with a host of synthesizers and drum machines. One

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assumes that this recording is going to be a ‘‘remix’’ and that the Pulse will morph into something far more complex than its original incarnation, perhaps overwhelming the work’s structure and integrity. But in fact, this is a very respectful rendition on most counts. The electronic part does provide a series of dancey ‘‘beats’’ that push the music along, but their effect is subtle. They often add lines to the overall texture derived from the modules in play, and they can add weight to the group sound, especially when it’s desired for crescendi and climaxes. (One example is in the area of modules 29–30 [c. 36’–40’], where the shimmering C’s in the electronic part create a wash of overtones that eases the harmonic transition through the cross relation F/F# on either side of those modules.) The general approach is spacious. The European Music Project tends to take quite a while with musical ideas and textures and also will allow overlays of many modules in a row to build up to a powerful climax. Thus, around 11’ one hears modules 6–11 all sounding. Prominent slow-moving modules cycle for very long times as they are passed between instruments: 6 lasts for over eight minutes, 8 and 12 for seven, 14 for over nine. Whether it is truly spontaneous or planned in advance, the group will at times make very strategic decisions to concentrate on a particular motive as a landmark, or transitional tool. Modules 18 and 19 sound alone, growing in volume, for almost two minutes. The same occurs for 27 and 28, which dominate 34’30’’ to 35’50’’. And since these are basically the same motives, they clearly frame the E Aeolian section of 22–26, setting it apart from the rest of the music. In the final third of the piece the strategy changes, and it seems designed to bring out a new approach to the music, which also helps to create a sense of closure. First of all, the treatment of 35 is unique in contrast to all these performances under review. Twice the ensemble builds up a crescendo using material from 31–34, then a group of instruments in unison execute 35, ‘‘landing’’ into 36 and providing the accompaniment for the next group. The effect is like that of a diver coming up to the edge of the board, pausing before jumping with a drumroll to the hush of the crowd, then executing a complex maneuver. The effect is frankly thrilling. Afterward the dialectic of the piece seems to emphasize smaller groups of modules sounding simultaneously, with the texture repeatedly cleared for the next batch. One hears only 42 and 43 from 48’ to 49’20’’, and then 43 alone all the way to 50’. Modules 44 and 45 take over here and create a lovely sort of ‘‘cuckoo clock’’ sound for almost two minutes. The only compromise to the piece’s structure occurs near the end, where 42, entering around 52’30’’ and continuing in the synthesizers, continues to loop all the way to the end, while all the other instruments are concluding on 53. Recording: Ars Nova 8.226049 Date: 2005 Performers: Ars Nova Copenhagen, Percurama Percussion Ensemble, Paul Hiller, director

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Instrumentation: 12 voices, 7 marimbas, vibraphone, and Balinese gong Timing: 55’10’’ Tempo: q ¼ 116 Paul Hillier, noted for decades as a performer and conductor of chamber singing, creates a version for small choir and percussion. The latter provides the Pulse in one marimba, the remainder of mallet instruments moving through the modules as do the singers. According to the notes, some prior decisions were made concerning ‘‘vocal scoring,’’ with Riley’s permission. The composer also provided a series of ‘‘sacred syllables’’ to use for text; these essentially structure the vocalise so it never gets too blandly repetitive. This feels like a meticulously paced realization; in fact, it averages almost exactly to one module per minute over its course. Also, most of the time the performers stay within about three modules of one another. There is little ‘‘stretching’’ of harmonic fields to blend one into another. On the other hand, this version uses rhythmic diminution and augmentation more obviously than does any other interpretation. This is especially true with the voices, where certain 16th-note figures might be difficult to sing fluently but come out well with doubled values. And the percussion, when performing the same figure at functionally different tempi, can suggest even more the colotomic structure of gamelan, which In C already suggests. There are two memorable events to mention. First, the passage of 15–20, which introduces the F# that will eventually pivot the music into E Aeolian, is extended over more than seven minutes, far longer than the norm in other performances. And complementarily, the return of C at 30 is foregrounded in the most dramatic way possible: the Pulse disappears for almost 45 seconds, and we are left with a single sustained C, suggesting the essence of the work at almost the exact midpoint of the performance. Recording: Pitch 200209 Date: 2007 Performers: American Festival of Microtonal Music Ensemble, Johnny Reinhard, director Instrumentation: 2 ‘‘just fretted’’ guitars, viola, harpsichord, kanon, pulse guitar Timing: 23’ Tempo: q ¼ 112 A live concert recording from the 2007 AFMM festival, this is an extremely delicate rendition of the piece. The players stay close to one another in ‘‘module bandwidth’’ (usually no more than five apart). The overall quiet dynamic is even, with very few swells or contrasts. Because of the small number of players and the use of plucked/ struck instruments, the sound is more fragile than in any other of the versions examined here. Indeed, the performance at times seems a little tentative. Another by-product of the instrumentation is that the longer, ‘‘cantus’’-like modules do not create the sort of contrapuntal contrast one is accustomed to. They cannot sustain long tones, nor do they ring the way certain percussion would.

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Riley was commissioned by the Festival in 1988 to make a just intonation version of In C, and he chose the ratios for all the pitches. It is also striking that the effect of the tuning is far less pronounced than one might expect. Perhaps this comes from In C ’s being already so restricted and pure in its materials. The place where one notices the shifts of temperament the most is in module 35, which uses almost the entire pitch gamut of the piece. Here the notes of more distant ratios from the C tuning base sound more ‘‘viscerally’’ different. But overall, the effect is no more unusual than what one would hear from Renaissance lute ensemble. One feels from the small ensemble and relatively brief duration that the purpose of this rendition may be as much didactic as expressive.

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Notes

Chapter One: Introduction 1. David Schiff, The Music of Elliott Carter (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983/1998), p. 263. 2. Celestial Harmonics 13026–2 and Wergo 6650 2, respectively. 3. James Pritchett, The Music of John Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 37. 4. Cf. Iannis Xenakis, Formalized Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971); and Elliott Carter, Harmony Book ed. Nicholas Hopkins and John Link (New York: Boosey and Hawkes, 2002). 5. This concept was first articulated by Michael Nyman in his Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. in the first chapter, pp. 1–26. Nyman draws a distinction between experimentalism and what he calls the ‘‘avant-garde,’’ which is basically the same as what I refer to as modernist classical music. 6. Robert Carl, ‘‘The Politics of Definition in New Music,’’ College Music Symposium 29 (1989), 101–114. 7. Cf. Michael Hicks, Henry Cowell, Bohemian (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002). 8. Cantaloupe Music 20014. 9. Indeed, if In C is similar to anything, it is to a raga, whose core information of scales and rhythms intersects with a carefully preserved performance tradition, within which musicians can assert their virtuosity and individuality. And this similarity is not surprising, considering Riley’s lifelong interest in and study of Indian music. 10. Author interview with Terry Riley, Richmond, Calif., December 2, 2006.

Chapter Two: Terry Riley’s Life and Art before In C 1. K. Robert Schwarz, Minimalists (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), pp. 24–25. 2. Author interview with Terry Riley, Richmond, Calif., December 2, 2006. 3. Edward Strickland, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 109. 4. Schwarz, Minimalists, pp. 26–27. 5. Author interview with Terry Riley, December 2, 2006. 6. Ibid.

126 : Notes to Pages 15–19

7. Edward Strickland, Minimalism: Origins (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 133. 8. Keith Potter, Four American Minimalists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 95. 9. Author interview with Terry Riley, December 2, 2006. There is one other early work of Riley’s that shows a significant influence of the Second Viennese School, Two Pieces for Piano of 1958. These pieces, roughly two and four minutes long respectively, clearly show Riley’s love of Schoenberg’s piano music. The composer has told the author that it was the fluidity of Schoenberg’s rhythm that attracted him. Listening to a recording of the composer’s performing these pieces at an undated KPFA lunchtime concert (but roughly contemporary with their composition), one is struck first by the degree to which Riley had intuitively assimilated this language. The gestures, the developmental discourse, the motivic and harmonic vocabulary—all are a direct yet spontaneous descendant of their model. But also, one is frankly amazed by Riley’s keyboard virtuosity. These are extremely difficult pieces, and he plays with both an exactness and sensitivity of touch that give the lie to his claiming he could have never been a professional classical pianist. (Recording from Mills College Library archives, courtesy of David Bernstein.) 10. Potter, Four American Minimalists. 11. Rush remembers the sessions this way: ‘‘Robert Erickson was our teacher, and got very interested in improvisation and started coming to the sessions, and then he would ask us to try things, not very much. . . . What he was doing was he was learning how to compose with improvisation, and he was using us as guinea pigs. And we were perfectly willing to do it, because we were just making music. So he’d say, ‘try this’ or ‘try that,’ and we’d do it for him.’’ (Author interview with Loren Rush, Palo Alto, Calif., November 30, 2006.) 12. From the Mills College Library archives, courtesy of David Bernstein. 13. Author interview with Terry Riley, December 2, 20006. 14. Author interview with Pauline Oliveros, Kingston, N.Y., January 19, 2007. 15. David Bernstein, ed., The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde (Berkeley: University of California Press; Troy, N.Y.: Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, 2008), p. 211. 16. Schwarz, Minimalists, p. 28. 17. Author interview with Terry Riley, December 2, 2006. 18. Schwarz, Minimalists, p. 28. 19. Riley relates circumstances as, ‘‘That was my first experience with anything theatrical. LaMonte had met Anna first, he had gone over there to talk to her, and decided he wanted to work with her, and asked if I wanted to go along, so I went there with him, and I had a car!’’ (author interview, December 2, 2006). Another sidelight is that Young and Riley replaced two musicians working earlier with Halprin, Bill Spencer and Warner Jepson; Jepson would be one of the pianists in the premiere of In C. 20. Author phone interview with Anna Halprin, September 2, 2007.

Notes to Pages 20–22 : 127

21. Author interview with Riley, December 2, 2006. 22. Author interview with Halprin, September 2, 2007. 23. Bernstein, San Francisco Music Tape Center, p. 213. Riley also explored with Young the possibilities of more conceptual music, influenced by the example of Cage and Fluxus in Ear Piece, a text piece published in An Anthology whose entire score consists of the following directions: THE PERFORMER TAKES ANY OBJECT(S) SUCH AS A PIECE OF PAPER CARDBOARD PLASTIC ETC AND PLACES IT ON HIS EAR(S) HE THEN PRODUCES THE SOUND BY RUBBING SCRATCHING TAPPING OR TEARING IT OR SIMPLY DRAGGING IT ACROSS HIS EAR HE ALSO MAY JUST HOLD IT THERE IT MAY BE PLAYED IN COUNTERPOINT WITH ANY OTHER PIECE OR SOUND SOURCE IF THE INTERPRETER WEARS A HEARING AID IT WOULD BE BEST TO MAKE THE SOUND CLOSE TO THE MICROPHONE (OF THE HEARING AID) THE DURATION OF THE PERFORMANCE IS UP TO THE PERFORMER CHILDREN PERFORMING EARPIECE SHOULD BE WARNED NOT TO STICK THEIR FINGERS TOO FAR INTO THEIR EARS AS THEY MAY SERIOUSLY DAMAGE THE INNER EAR.

In an era of ‘‘danger music,’’ it is indicative of Riley’s temperament that he shows concern for disabled and young performers, making sure his piece is adapted to avoid injury. 24. Bernstein, San Francisco Music Tape Center, p. 213. 25. Organ of Corti 1. The work was premiered on April 30, 1960, at a Young Composers’ Symposium at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. There is a score published in An Anthology, consisting of graphic symbols and directions, but Riley discounts it, saying it was created only in order to fulfill a requirement for inclusion in the symposium. (Potter, Four American Minimalists, p. 96.) 26. E-mail communication with the author, December 1, 2007. 27. The one recording of the work I have found is in the Mills College archive of Pauline Oliveros. It appears to be from 1964, and curiously, there is a high A drone throughout on what sounds like a violin harmonic. It may be that the performers decided to add this, though it cannot be a homage to In C, since that work wasn’t written yet. Riley says there was no drone indicated in the directions, and there is no sign of it in the score either. It is even possible that this is some sort of artifact of the recording process, though it remains an intriguing suggestion of the use of a ‘‘universal pedal’’ in In C. 28. Cole Gagne, Soundpieces, Vol. 2: Interviews with American Composers (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1993), p. 238. 29. ‘‘But anyone who’s done that knows very quickly you get a lot of noise as a result. So a lot of early pieces were really noisy, and noise becomes the thing that people really seem to like about them [laughs]. I mean the kind of noise becomes part of the musical landscape. And the 60-cycle hum is part of the noise, because the systems weren’t so well grounded then.’’ (Author interview with Terry Riley, December 2, 2006.)

128 : Notes to Pages 22–35

30. Bernstein, San Francisco Music Tape Center, p. 214. 31. Premiered in its dance version by Halprin at her studio on September 24, 1961. The choreography went through successive versions, Four-Legged Stool and FiveLegged Stool, with Morton Subotnick providing the music for the latter. 32. CD: Organ of Corti 1. 33. Potter, Four American Minimalists, p. 104. 34. William Duckworth, Talking Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1995), p. 169. 35. Author interview with Terry Riley, December 2, 2006. 36. Duckworth, Talking Music, p. 270. 37. Author interview with Terry Riley, December 2, 2006. 38. Strickland, Minimalism: Origins, p. 150. 39. Edward Strickland, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music, p. 111 [the interview, however, dates from 1987]. 40. Mark Alburger, ‘‘Shri Terry: Enlightenment at Riley’s Moonshine Ranch,’’ Twentieth-Century Music, vol. 4, no. 3 (March 1997), 2 (q 1997). 41. This harmonic practice renders a sound evocative of Barto´k. Later, as the music becomes more modal, Debussy seems a more evident model. This should not be surprising, as Riley himself has said as much: ‘‘In Western classical music, Barto´k and Debussy are for me the two great masters of the century.’’ (Strickland, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music, op. cit., p. 123.) 42. It’s worth noting also that this hexachord consists of a trichordal set (025) in inversion with itself. 43. Riley’s remark about some motives of this work later appearing in In C seems to stretch the point a bit, but in mm. 95–100 the repeating pitches C#-D-E-G begin to sound like one of the neo-gamelan motives of the later work. 44. Mark Alburger, Shri Terry, p. 3. 45. Riley says that no serial procedures were even used here or elsewhere in the piece, that everything was composed ‘‘by ear, and sometimes by eye.’’ (E-mail communication to the author, September 30, 2007.) 46. Schwarz, Minimalists, p. 36. 47. Bernstein, San Francisco Music Tape Center, p. 215. 48. Schwarz, Minimalists. 49. Author interview with Terry Riley, December 2, 2006. 50. Ibid. While in Europe during the summer of 1963, Riley also traveled to Helsinki with his friend the Swedish composer Folke Rabe, to stay with composer Otto Donner, and also to Darmstadt to attend Stockhausen’s summer courses (Alburger, Shri Terry, p. 5). 51. Keyboard Study No. 1 may also be seen as a precursor of In C ’s notational practice, in its economy using a small set of notated ideas and instructions to generate a much larger, longer, and more open compositional product. But one must be careful not to assume that the version we now have represents fully what Riley had in hand when he presented the work as Coule. The current score was ‘‘recreated’’ by Riley in 1994 for pianist John Tilbury (Potter, Four American Minimalists, p. 122).

Notes to Pages 36–44 : 129

As a result, it is better to assume that the work in 1962–1964 probably existed as a combination of notated fragments and the composer’s memory, assembled in performance but not reified into a final notated product that today so resembles that of In C. 52. Interview (September 20, 1995) with Terry Riley, CD booklet notes, Organ of Corti. 1. 53. Ibid. 54. Strickland, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music, op. cit., p.112. 55. Ibid., p. 113.

Chapter Three: The Premiere 1. Edward Strickland, Minimalism: Origins (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 167. 2. Author interview with Morton Subotnick, Greenwich Village, New York City, January 13, 2007. 3. Included in Reich’s group were Jon Gibson, saxophone; George Ray, violin; and Gwendolyn Walker, cello. (Author phone interview with Steve Reich, August 28, 2007.) 4. Author interview with Terry Riley, Richmond, Calif., December 2, 2006. There is a contradiction between Riley’s memory of Ramon Sender contacting him with the concert offer, and Subotnick’s remembering doing the same. Probably both men spoke to Riley on the subject at different times. 5. Ibid. 6. William Duckworth, Talking Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1995), p. 27. 7. One thing no one seems to have asked Riley before is about the origins of the title. In an e-mail communication with the author (September 30, 2007), he states: ‘‘I don’t have a clear memory of the exact moment the title of In C came to me, but I do know it was there by the time I had the score written up, and I also know there was never another title that I considered.’’ 8. Author interview with Jon Gibson, Tribeca, New York City, January 10, 2007. Both Warner Jepson and Mel Weitsman also remember house concerts as part of a tryout process. 9. Ibid. 10. Author interviews with Weitsman (Berkeley, Calif., December 6, 2006), Jepson (Sonoma, California, December 5, 2006), Winsor (e-mail interview, August 26, 2007), and Shaff (San Francisco, July 21, 2007). 11. Riley interview, Richmond, Calif., December 2, 2006. 12. The original score would have been copied on a transparency, with music staves already printed upon it. After the music was written thereon, it would be taken to a printing shop, where it was reproduced by a process similar to blueprinting. 13. Author interview with Pauline Oliveros, Kingston, N.Y., January 19, 2007.

130 : Notes to Pages 44–50

14. Reich interview, August 28, 2007. 15. Author interview with Ramon Sender and Bill McGinnis, San Francisco, December 7, 2006. 16. Sender would perform the Chamberlin organ during In C’s premiere from this space, and it was piped down to loudspeakers in the hall. 17. All participants remember the stage being there in 1964. 18. Subotnick interview, January 13, 2007. 19. Riley interview, December 2, 2006. 20. James Lowe, a jazz pianist with a wide-ranging musical curiosity, says he was ‘‘attending a seminar, and was mopping floors around the Tape Music Center to get some time on the equipment. I think Terry—he had a lot of people in this thing, and he was grabbing anyone who could play well enough.’’ He remembers that Terry Riley and Jeanie Brechan were playing the Pulse on one piano, and he and Warner Jepson were four-hand on the other. He also remembers that he transposed modules by octaves, allowing the two pianists to perform simultaneously. (Telephone interview with Lowe, January 28, 2008.) 21. Interview with Ramon Sender and Bill McGinnis, December 7, 2006; interview with Reich, August 28, 2007. 22. This explains why several of the original performers did not remember the light show. At the same time, because some of the audience were on seats and some on the floor, many people probably noticed the images above, especially if they were lying down. 23. Author interview with Anthony Martin, Williamsburg, New York City, January 11, 2007. 24. These tape works are apparently lost. However, I, from Alfred Frankenstein’s review, seems to have been more of a speech than a sound-piece, concentrating on inflections of the word rather than using it as a source for musical texture. Shoeshine and In B b or Is It Ab, though, both seem to have been looping pieces. The former was based on a Jimmy Smith tune (exactly which one Riley forgets), and seems to have been the precursor to a similar work that still exists called Bird of Paradise (based on Junior Walker’s ‘‘Shotgun’’). The latter was a clear reference to In C, not only in its title, but in the modulations of motives from one harmonic center to another through overlaid loops of different speeds. The program represented in figure 3.4 shows a date for In C of October 1964, but from all evidence already presented, it was obviously composed much earlier. 25. Reich interview, August 28, 2007. 26. Oliveros interview, January 19, 2007. 27. A recording of the concert premiere was made, but it too has apparently been lost, though there always remains a chance it will turn up some day. Riley decided it was without interest, because when listening to it afterwards, he realized the single mike had been placed too close to Sonny Lewis’s tenor sax, creating the impression of a concerto work with a faint ostinato-driven accompaniment.

Notes to Pages 50–64 : 131

28. Strickland states (Minimalism, p.174) that the audience numbered 500. The true figure is obviously lower, because of the size of the space, Subotnick’s clear estimate of its seating capacity, and the memories of all participants. 29. Subotnick also remembers Riley wearing a ‘‘floppy purple bowtie and orange pants.’’ (‘‘Scenes from a Premiere,’’ program notes to 25th anniversary concert of In C, January 14, 1990.) 30. Subotnick interview, January 13, 2007. 31. Sender/McGinnis interview, December 7, 2006. 32. As an example, in the audience for the second night was trombonist Stuart Dempster, who—as will be seen in chapter 5—was the critical contact in arranging the premiere recording of the work. 33. Sender also remembers that ultimately a solution was found by ‘‘measuring the width of the passageway out the back fire exit into Oak Street. The fire chief decided if we left the gate unlocked, we were legal.’’ (‘‘Scenes from a Premiere.’’) 34. Interview with Subotnick, January 13, 2007. 35. Mark N. Grant, Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music Criticism in America (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), p. 260. 36. Strickland, in Minimalism: pp. 242–243, identifies the first use of the term ‘‘minimal’’ describing a musical style in a Village Voice article by Tom Johnson on September 7, 1972, though even here the critic does not ultimately accept it as the best label, preferring ‘‘hypnotic.’’ 37. Interview with Shaff, July 21, 2007.

Chapter Four: Analysis 1. Examples range from the extreme openness of Cage’s 0’00 (‘‘Perform a disciplined action.’’) to Christian Wolff ’s Stones (‘‘Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stone, using a number of sizes and kinds [and colors]; for the most part discretely; sometimes in rapid sequences. For the most part striking stones with stones, but also stones on other surfaces [inside the open head of a drum for instance], or other than struck [bowing, for instance, or amplified]. Do not break anything.’’) Michael Nyman, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 77, 97. 2. Composition 1961 is the avatar of this aesthetic: ‘‘Draw a straight line and follow it.’’ 3. One of the few earlier attempts at substantive and detailed analysis of In C is Richard Field Vosper’s Structure and Probable Organization of In C by Terry Riley: An Analysis of Stochastic Projection of Pattern Behavior, a 1980 MM thesis from San Jose State University. Vosper’s analysis makes the interesting observation that the modules fall into two categories—‘‘motivic’’ (always shorter rhythmic values) and ‘‘transitional’’ (longer sustained rhythmic values). He uses the alternation of these to demarcate a long-range symmetrical form. While his observation is germane in some ways, he argues that the ‘‘transitional’’ modules are never heard as having a

132 : Notes to Pages 68–72

motivic function. Anyone who listens to the piece, however, will immediately be struck by just how prominent and ‘‘thematic’’ these modules are. Indeed, they often sound as the most prominent motives of all, ‘‘backgrounded’’ by the shorter modules of smaller rhythmic units. 4. Columbia MS 7178, Terry Riley: In C (1968). 5. I am indebted to the composer Ingram Marshall for pointing out that the first two pitches of the work are C/E and the final two are G/B b. Not only do three of these four describe the significant harmonic areas of the piece, but also they (1) sum up the first four different pitches to emerge from the overtone series above C, and (2) comprise a C dominant seventh chord, suggesting that C could become a pivot into another harmony further along, almost the musical equivalent of suggesting ‘‘parallel universes.’’

Chapter Five: The Columbia Recording: A ‘‘Second Premiere’’ 1. Tom Welsh, ‘‘Chronology’’ in David Bernstein, ed., The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde (Berkeley: University of California Press; Troy, N.Y.: Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, 2008), p. 239. 2. Keith Potter, Four American Minimalists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 115. 3. Robert Palmer, ‘‘Terry Riley: Doctor of Improvised Surgery,’’ Downbeat, 42/19 (November 20, 1975), pp. 17–41. 4. Potter, Four American Minimalists, p. 120. This is probably the concert that Mel Weitsman remembers as: ‘‘Terry went to North Africa, and he brought back these robes . . . and he got a date to play at this college down the peninsula, and he said we’d put on these robes, and we’d have this freaky looking ensemble, and do this thing. I can’t remember if we were high or not, we probably were . . . and we got there, and there was only one guy in the auditorium, and he was sitting in the back! [laughs] But we did it, we played, and I think he clapped.’’ (Author interview with Mel Weitsman, Berkeley, Calif., December 6, 2006). 5. Based on this manuscript, an edited version of the piece was produced by the author and Matthew Sargent, and it was ‘‘re-premiered’’ by the Hartt Contemporary Players at the Hartt School, University of Hartford, on October 28, 2007. 6. In 2000 Riley revised the score, adding one more line (D2) and indicating accompanying drones (C, G, D, A) to be played with each line. 7. Readers may notice that the penultimate measure is not the same pitch as the opening; Riley changes the notes this way for Lines A and B, but this is the only violation of the strict palindromic structure. 8. Jon Gibson made the premiere recording of the original score on Point 434 873–2. He follows the sequence of lines rather strictly at the beginning, then takes a

Notes to Pages 75–79 : 133

more circuitous route, revisiting them (with Michael Reisman providing the canonic counterpoint on multitracked keyboards). He avoids any extended unison passages with the other ‘‘players,’’ condensing the work to about eight minutes. A more recent recording of the 2000 version by the Arte Saxophone Quartet on New World Records 80558–2 (also using multitracking) similarly shortens the process, though it allows for drones, unisons, and more far-flung combinations of lines in its roughly ten-minute frame. 9. Welsh, ‘‘Chronology.’’ 10. As one can hear on the CD recording of the premiere, Organ of Corti 3, much of this history comes from Folke Rabe’s booklet notes to the disc. 11. It is important to acknowledge that Keith Potter (Four American Minimalists, pp. 120–122) is the first writer on Riley to identify this family of ‘‘post In C ’’ pieces. 12. Quoted in K. Robert Schwarz, Minimalists (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), p. 46. 13. Potter, Four American Minimalists, p. 127. 14. Organ of Corti 2, ‘‘Reed Streams.’’ Dorian Reeds is also an early version of what would later become Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band, released in 1969 by Columbia along with the keyboard work A Rainbow in Curved Air, a recording that marked the height of Riley’s commercial popularity. 15. Ken Goldsmith, ‘‘David Behrman: Don’t Quit Your Day Job Yet,’’ American Music Center New Music Box (newmusicbox.org, posted April 1, 2000). 16. Author interview with David Behrman, Tribeca, New York City, August 8, 2007. Riley also mentions in a 1996 interview (Mark Alburger, ‘‘Shri Terry: Enlightenment at Riley’s Moonshine Ranch,’’ Twentieth-Century Music, vol. 4, no. 3 [March 1997], p.14) that another connection was Richard Maxfield, a Bay Area friend and composer working at that time as an engineer at Columbia. He may have been the one to point Behrman initially toward Riley. 17. Telephone interview with Rene´e Levine-Packer, January 28, 2008. Ms. Levine-Packer is also completing a manuscript concerning the history of the Creative Associates program. 18. This and many other details which follow come from an author interview with Stuart Dempster in San Francisco, July 25, 2007. 19. One point to clarify is that officially throughout 1967–1968 Terry Riley was not a Creative Associate, even though he was being performed by and was collaborating with the ensemble. He was officially invited into the program for the next season, however. 20. This review is brief, and as snide as Frankenstein’s was perceptive. It also makes clear that the critic left well before the piece’s end: ‘‘It was in C, all right. About 10,000 of them including the ceaseless top one on the piano. Cs everywhere, as we were leaving. If it came out on D, we’ll never forgive ourself.’’ 21. Author interview with Dempster, San Francisco, July 25, 2007. It appears that John McClure attended the concert, which ‘‘sealed the deal’’ for Columbia to record In C (Alburger, ‘‘Shri Terry,’’ p.14).

134 : Notes to Pages 79–83

22. Interestingly enough, In C was not performed in the Albright-Knox version of this program a few days earlier. In its place the Bruno Maderna Serenata II was performed. 23. Hildegarde [Loretta Sell] was a famous cabaret performer of the period, part of whose act included performing on the piano wearing white gloves. 24. The confirmation of this fact, different from what is stated in the existing literature, comes from Stuart Dempster’s copious personal records. 25. Phone interview with Katrina Krimsky, November 10, 2007. 26. Phone interview with David Rosenboom, November 8, 2007. Rosenboom, while playing viola in the ensemble, was a prodigious young composer as well, being only 21 at the time of his invitation to be a Creative Associate. He has gone on to become one of the most important composers of music grounded in interactive compositional systems. And even before coming to Buffalo, he had written a work titled Continental Drift, that itself used performer-driven module choice similar to In C. 27. Phone interview with Jan Williams, October 14, 2007. 28. Author interview with Katrina Krimsky, November 10, 2007. 29. Ibid. When one listens to the recording, the final Cs actually sound like a toy piano, in comparison to the opening. 30. A precise reconstruction of several technical details of the session is difficult, because all session books, if they exist at all, are now untraceable, in part because of the later purchase of Columbia by Sony. Riley, in his 1997 interview with Alburger, says that the session happened in Columbia’s 57th Street studios, but both Behrman and Rosenboom remember the church. In my 2006 interview with Riley, he was unsure of which location. My hunch is that the church was the recording location, but Riley is remembering the studios as the site of the editing session. Finally, as Levine-Packer laments, no one at any of these events—as at the San Francisco premiere—ever thought to take a picture! 31. A man with vast experience recording classical and jazz ensembles. One of his greatest achievements is the recording of Miles Davis’s 1957 album Kind of Blue. He was also a noted photographer, publishing collections of images of the artists he recorded. 32. Author Interview with Behrman, August 8, 2007. 33. Author interview with Dempster, July 25, 2007. 34. Dempster remembers that some musicians needed to return to Buffalo for other professional commitments on the Thursday, perhaps a Philharmonic concert. Jan Williams, however, strongly remembers playing all three passes of the piece, so this remains a small unresolved mystery. 35. Author interview with Rosenboom, November 8, 2007. 36. Though no one is clear whether by the third pass they were hearing a mix of the first two performances, or only the first pass. It is also unclear whether Behrman continued showing the ‘‘module cards’’ in successive takes. Since its purpose was to keep the recording within the LP time limit, and the performers were by now at ease with responding to events as they appeared in the music’s flow, it seems likely that it was the only the first take where he did this.

Notes to Pages 83–101 : 135

37. Rosenboom, November 8, 2007. 38. Author interview with Riley, Richmond, Calif., December 2, 2006. 39. Author interview with Behrman, August 8, 2007. The effect is a little like a spaceship taking off abruptly at the end of Side 1 and landing on Side 2. 40. Rosenboom remembers that this cover also created some friction at Columbia. The artist Billy Bryant (Copley, son of painter William Copley, who changed his name to differentiate himself ) was a friend of Riley. The composer, while usually quite flexible, was firm in demanding the image be used as cover art. 41. Wikipedia.org 42. Columbia MS 7178, Terry Riley: In C (1968). 43. Two publications that one might have thought would review the work seem not to have done so, The American Record Guide and The Gramophone. One assumes that the pop associations of the sound and presentation of In C may have disqualified it in their eyes as not being ‘‘classical enough.’’ Stereo Review presented itself as a more open and eclectic critical source, covering releases in a variety of styles, probably in part because of its audiophile focus. And High Fidelity had Alfred Frankenstein as a critic, which of course prompted his return visit to the piece. 44. March 1969, pp. 103–104. 45. One thinks of the Florentine Camerata, followed by Monteverdi, or the Mannheim School, followed by Mozart. 46. February 1969, p. 66. The record was reviewed along with the Beatles’ ‘‘White Album,’’ with the subtitle ‘‘All bright and beautiful.’’ 47. February 1969, p. 104. 48. Of course he was clearly identified in the notes; it was David Behrman (though his signature is abbreviated ‘‘D.B.’’).

Chapter Six: Legacy 1. ATMA 2 2251, 1997, Walter Boudreau conducting (see following section on recordings analysis). This is a bit like Stravinsky’s remark that he was the vessel through which the Sacre was written. 2. Edward Strickland, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 123. 3. Geoff Smith and Nicole Walker Smith, New Voices: American Composers Talk about Their Music (Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1995), p. 231. 4. K. Robert Schwarz, Minimalists (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), p. 44. 5. Author interview with Steve Reich, August 28, 2007. 6. Author interview with Morton Subotnick, January 13, 2007. 7. Author interview with Pauline Oliveros, January 19, 2007. 8. Ibid. 9. Author interview with Loren Rush, November 30, 2006. 10. Author interview with David Rosenboom, November 8, 2007. 11. Author interview with Kyle Gann, Germantown, N.Y., August 7, 2005.

136 : Notes to Pages 102–120

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Author interview with Ingram Marshall, Hamden, Conn., August 14, 2005. Author interview with Robert Black, August 27, 2005. Ibid. Ibid. Author phone interview with David Bernstein, January 24, 2008. Ibid. Ibid.

Appendix 1. Cecilia Jian-Xuan Sun, in her provocative dissertation ‘‘Experiments in Musical Performance: Historiography, Politics, and the Post-Cageian Avant-Garde’’ (University of California, Los Angeles, 2004), makes this point and explores it in greater depth as part of a cultural analysis of five other recordings of In C.

selected Bibliography

Alburger, Mark. ‘‘Shri Terry: Enlightenment at Riley’s Moonshine Ranch.’’ Twentieth-Century Music 4, no. 3 (March 1997), 1–20. —— . ‘‘Terry Riley to ‘In C.’ ’’ Twentieth-Century Music 2, no. 2 (January 1995), 1–7. Ashley, Robert. Music with Roots in the Aether: Landscape with Terry Riley. 1975 film. Available at www.ubu.com/film/riley.html. Behrman, David. ‘‘Don’t Quit Your Day Job Yet.’’ American Music Center’s New Music Box. Available at newmusicbox.org, posted April 1, 2000. —— . Liner notes to Columbia MS 7178, Terry Riley: In C. Bernstein, David, ed. The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde. Berkeley: University of California Press; Troy, N.Y.: Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, 2008. Carl, Robert. ‘‘The Politics of Definition in New Music.’’ College Music Symposium 29 (1989), 101–114. Carter, Elliott. Harmony Book. Ed. Nicholas Hopkins and John Link. New York: Boosey and Hawkes, 2002. Duckworth, William. Talking Music. New York: Schirmer Books, 1995. Fink, Robert. Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Gagne, Cole. Soundpieces, Vol. 2: Interviews with American Composers. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1993. Gann, Kyle. American Music in the Twentieth Century. New York: Schirmer Books, 1998. Gould, Glenn. A Glenn Gould Reader. New York: Vintage, 1990. Grant, Mark N. Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music Criticism in America. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998. Hicks, Michael. Henry Cowell, Bohemian. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Horton, James. The History of Experimental Music in California. Available at www.o-art. org/history/index.html. Kam, Dennis Koon Ming. Repetition and the Drift Towards Constant Focus in the PatternPulse Music of Terry Riley and Steve Reich. D.M.A. thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1974. Mertens, Wim. American Minimal Music. London: Kahn and Averill, 1983. Morgan, Robert. Twentieth Century Music. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Nyman, Michael. Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Palmer, Robert. ‘‘Terry Riley: Doctor of Improvised Surgery.’’ Downbeat 42, no. 19 (November 20, 1975), 17–41.

138 : Bibliography

Potter, Keith. Four American Minimalists. London: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pritchett, James. The Music of John Cage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Ross, Alex. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Schaefer, John. New Sounds. New York: Harper and Row, 1987. Schiff, David. The Music of Elliott Carter. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983/1998. Schwarz, K. Robert. Minimalists. London: Phaidon Press, 1996. Smith, Geoff, and Nicole Walker. New Voices: American Composers Talk about Their Music. Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1995. Strickland, Edward. American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. —— . Minimalism: Origins. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. —— . ‘‘Riley, Terry,’’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan, 2001. Sun, Cecilia Jian-Xuan. Experiments in Musical Performance: Historiography, Politics, and the Post-Cageian Avant-Garde. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2004. Sutherland, Roger. New Perspectives in Music. London: Sun Tavern Fields, 1994. Vosper, Richard Field. Structure and Probably Organization of In C by Terry Riley: An Analysis of Stochastic Projection of Pattern Behavior. M.A. thesis, San Jose State University, 1980. Williams, Paul. Liner notes to Columbia MS 7178, Terry Riley: In C. Xenakis, Iannis. Formalized Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971.

Index

accordion, In C post-Columbia recordings, 114–115, 116–117 premiere performance, 43, 46 Acid Mothers Temple, 106, 120 After the Hunt (Frankenstein), 53 Alcina, Carlos, 80 American Microtonal Music Festival Ensemble, 106, 122–123 American Record Guide, 135n43 Argo recording, 113–114 Ars Nova recording, 121–122 Arte Saxophone Quartet, 132n8 Artists Bar, Paris, 31 Asian music influence, 18 ATMA recording, 115–116 Autumn Leaves (Riley), 72–73, 132n5 Baker, Chet, 35–36 Bang On a Can All-Stars, 9, 102–103, 106, 107, 117–118 Barto´k, Bela, 128n41 bass In C recordings, 113, 115, 120 Gibson ensemble, 46 Music for the Gift, 36 bassoon In C recording, 82–83 Spectra, 15 Beatles, 89 Behrman, David, 68, 77–78, 82, 83–84 Bent, Al, 75 Berio, Luciano, 3, 5, 8, 39, 78 Bernstein, David, 104–105, 108 bird migration comparison, 99 Bird of Paradise, 130n24 Black, Robert, 21, 67, 102–104 Blindman Kwartet, 116–117 Bocana Street house, 39, 40f Boudreau, Walter, 106, 107, 111, 115–116 Brechan, Jeanie, 41, 43–44, 46, 130n20

Bryant, Billy, 135n40 Buffalo Evening News, 78–79, 133n20 Burke, Helen, 17 Burnham, Ed, 82 Burroughs, William, 31 Bye Bye Butterfly (Oliveros), 47 Cabrillo College, 72, 132n4 Cage, John, 3, 7, 60, 131n1 Cale, John, 76 Cantaloupe recording, 117–118 Carnegie Recital Hall, 78, 79–80, 134n22 Carter, Elliott, 3, 5 Celestial Harmonies recording, 112–113 cello In C recordings, 114–121 Reich’s ensemble, 129n3 Spectra, 15 Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, SUNY, 78–79 Chamberlin organ, In C premiere, 43, 46 Chavez, Carlos, 53, 54 childhood/youth, Riley’s, 13–15 Chinese instruments, 8, 106, 107, 112–113, 118 clarinet, In C Columbia LP recording, 82–83 post-Columbia recordings, 114–115, 116–119, 120–121 premiere performance, 43, 46 clarinet, Spectra, 15 Colfax, California, 13–14 Coltrane, John, 18, 23, 25 Columbia Records encounter with Riley, 77–78, 133n16, n21 Poppy Nogood recording, 133n14 Columbia Records, In C recording cover design and notes, 68, 84–87, 96, 135n40 length problem, 82, 83–84 performance, 81–83, 134n30, n34, n36 reception of, 93–96, 135n43

140 : Index Columbia Records, In C recording (Continued ) rehearsals, 80–81 sound analysis, 87–93 Come Out (Reich), 37 community characteristic, In C, 7–8 compositions, Riley’s Autumn Leaves, 72–73, 132n5 childhood/youth, 14, 15 college years, 15, 126n9, 127n23 Concert for Two Pianos, 20–21 Dorian Reeds, 76–77, 133n14 Envelope, 21, 127n27 Keyboard Study No. 1, 32–35, 128n51 Sames, 76 String Quartet, 25–28, 128nn41–43 String Trio, 28–31, 128n45 Tread the Trail, 72, 74f, 75, 132n6, n8 Young collaborations, 20–21, 127n23 Concert for Two Pianos and Five Tape Recorders (Riley), 20–21 Concerto for Piano (Carter), 3 Continental Drift (Rosenboom), 134n26 Copland, Aaron, 54 Copley, William, 135n40 Coule (Riley), 32–35, 48 cover design, Columbia’s In C recording, 68, 84–87, 96, 135n40 Cowell, Henry, 7 Creative Associates program, 78, 133n19, 134n26 crotales, In C recording, 112 Cypres recording, 116–117 dance performances, 19–20, 126n19, 127n31 Davis, Miles, 134n31 Davis, Ronnie, 51 Debussy, Claude, 128n41 de Fanti, Eddy, 112 Del Tredici, David, 18 democracy characteristic, In C, 7–8 Dempster, Stuart, 71, 78–79, 81, 82, 131n32, 134n34 Denisov, Edison, 118 Desert Ambulance (Sender), 47 Dewey, Ken, 35–36, 76 Donner, Otto, 128n50 Dorian Reeds (Riley), 76–77, 133n14 drug use, 22–24, 32, 50 drums. See percussion entries

Duguay, Raoˆul, 115–116 Dwyer, John, 78–79, 133n20 Ear Piece (Riley), 127n3 East Coast culture, 6–7 Echoplex, 22 electronic media Columbia recording, 82–83, 89, 102, 134n36 Dorian Reeds, 76–77 looping experimentation, 21–22, 127n29 Mescalin Mix, 22 Music for the Gift, 36 saxophone performances, 76–77, 78 English horn, In C, 120–121 Enja Records, 119–120 Ensemble Percussione Ricera, 111–112 Envelope (Riley), 21, 127n27 Erickson, Robert, 15, 16, 126n11 ethno-music, 31–32 European Music Project, 106, 120–121 Europe years, 31–37, 128n50 Experimental Music (Nyman), 125n5 experimentation characteristic, new music, 5, 125n5 Falkenstein, Claire, 17–18 Felciano, Richard, 51 Feldman, Morton, 26 film scores, 17–18 fire marshal encounter, 51–52, 131n33 flute, In C Columbia LP recording, 82–83, 89 post-Columbia recordings, 112, 114–115 flute, Spectra, 15 Fluxus movement, 60, 131n1 foghorns, 25 Fog Tropes (Marshall), 102 formalism characteristic, new music, 5 Foss, Lukas, 78, 79 Frankenstein, Alfred, 52–55, 95–96, 135n43 French horn Envelope, 21 Polyester Moon film, 17, 18 Riley trio, 16 Gann, Kyle, 100–101 Genet, Jean, 51–52 Gibson, Jon, 41, 43–44, 76, 129n3, 132n8 Glamour magazine, 94–95

Index : 141 glockenspiel, In C recordings, 112, 114–115, 117–118, 120 Gold Street Saloon, 24, 39 graduate school years, 16–25, 126n11 Graham, John, 48, 53 Graham, Phil, 47 The Gramaphone, 135n43 Gubaidulina, Sofia, 118 guitar, In C recordings, 111, 114–120, 122–123 Gyson, Brian, 31 Halprin, Ann[a], 19–20, 22, 43, 45, 126n19, 127n31 Hampton, Duane, 14 harmonic structure Autumn Leaves, 72, 73f Dorian Reeds, 77 Keyboard Study No. 1, 32–35 Music of the Gift, 36–37 in new music, 6 Olson III, 75–76 ‘‘So What,’’ 36 String Quartet, 26–28, 128nn41–42 String Trio, 28–31 Tread the Trail, 72, 74f, 75 harmonic structure, In C Columbia recording, 89–93 density, 61–62 legacy comments, 99–100 as modal centers, 68–70, 132n5 module 35 specifically, 66–68 in motivic transformation, 64–66 premiere critique, 53, 54 score and instructions, 58 harp, In C recording, 116–117 harpsichord, In C recordings, 113–114, 122–123 Harrison, Lou, 7 Hart Contemporary Players, 132n5 Hassell, John, 82 Hassell, Margaret (Katrina Krimsky), 80, 81 Heckman, Don, 93–94 Henahan, Donal, 79–80 High Fidelity, 95–96, 135n43 Hildegarde, 80, 134n23 Hillier, Paul, 106, 121–122 Hoffman, Mike, 119–120 Ictus Ensemble, 106, 116–117 improvisation college years, 16–17, 126n11

dance performances, 19–20 Dorian Reeds, 77 Envelope, 21 jazz influences, 25 Keyboard Study No. 1, 32f, 34–35 Polyester Moon film, 17–18 Tread the Trail, 72, 132n8 improvisation, In C Columbia recording, 95, 96 as fundamental characteristic, 9–10, 97, 101, 103–104 from harmonic density, 62 legacy comments, 100 module opportunities, 68 post-Columbia recordings, 111, 115 score instructions, 58–59 and symmetry, 67–68 In C overview, 3–10, 108–109 analysis of, 57–66, 131n3 Buffalo performances, 78–79, 80, 133n20 Carnegie Recital Hall performance, 79–80, 134n22 See also specific topics, e.g., Columbia entries; legacy perspectives; premiere; score inclusive nature, In C, 108 individualism characteristic, In C, 7–8 information density characteristic, new music, 5–6 I (Riley), 53 It’s Gonna Rain (Reich), 37 Jacobs, Henry, 51 jazz childhood/youth, 14 college years, 16–17 influence of, 24–25 Paris years, 31 peyote effects, 23 Tread the Trail, 75 Jennings, Terry, 21 Jepson, Warner, 43, 126n19 Johnson, Tom, 131n36 kanon, In C recording, 122–123 Kawabata, Makamoto, 120 Keyboard Study No. 1 (Riley), 32–35, 128n51 See also piano entries

142 : Index Kind of Blue (Davis), 134n31 Kirkbirde, Jerry, 82 Kosma, Joseph, 72 KPFA studios, 16–17, 45, 52 Krieger, Ulrich, 77 Krimsky, Katrina (Margaret Hassell), 80, 81 Laborinthus II (Berio), 3 Landau, Sol, 51–52 legacy perspectives, of In C next generation musicians, 100–105 original participants, 98–100 recordings compared, 105–108, 111–123 Levine, Rene´e, 78 Lewis, Sonny, 43, 48, 130n27 Liang, David Mingyue, 112–113 Lieberson, Goddard, 77 light show, 46–48, 104, 130n22 L’Infonie, 111 listening requirement, In C as fundamental characteristic, 7–8, 94 legacy comments, 101, 102, 104 premiere performance, 50 score instructions, 58–59 Long Arms Records, 118–119 looping technique In C, 46 Keyboard Study No. 1, 33–35 for Music for the Gift, 36–37 loudspeakers, Carnegie Recital Hall, 79–80 Lowe, James, 43, 46, 130n20 LP recording, premier. See Columbia Records, In C recording Lubimov, Alexei, 118 lutes, In C recording, 112 Magical Mystery Tour (Beatles), 89 mandolin, In C recording, 117–118 marijuana, 23, 50 marimba, In C Columbia LP recording, 82–83 post-Columbia recordings, 112, 114–115, 117–118, 120–122 Marotta, Paul, 119–120 Marshall, Ingram, 101–102, 132n5 Martin, Anthony, 46–48, 104 Martin, Mel, 75 Materiali Sonori recording, 111–112

Maxfield, Richard, 133n16 McClure, John, 77, 84, 133n21 McGinnis, William (SFTMC recording engineer), 42 Melting Paraiso U.F.O., 120 mentor relationships, Riley’s, 13–15, 18–19, 24 Mercer, Johnny, 72 Mescalin Mix (Riley), 22 Mexico, 71 Middle Eastern music, 32 minimalism, 3–5, 23, 54, 98, 131n36 module 35, In C analysis of, 62, 66–68, 69, 107 Columbia LP recording, 89 post-Columbia recordings, 113, 114, 116, 117–118, 123 See also module units, In C module units Autumn Leaves, 72 Dorian Reeds, 77 Keyboard Study No. 1, 32–35 module units, In C Columbia LP recording, 87–93, 96 harmony, 68–70 motivic transformations, 64–66, 88, 131n3 number 35 specifically, 66–68 pacing, 61–64 recording comparisons, 106–107, 111–123 rehearsals, 59, 60 score and instructions, 58, 59, 60 Momente (Stockhausen), 3 Morocco, 32 motivic transformation, In C, 64–66, 88, 131n3 mouth organ, In C recording, 112–113 multitracking issue, Columbia recording session, 82–83, 89, 93–94 Music for the Gift (Riley), 35–37, 46, 48 ‘‘Music Like None Other on Earth’’ (Frankenstein), 53 New Albion recording, 114–115 new music, characteristics, 4–6 ‘‘New Music Series Puts Toes to Test’’ (Henahan), 79–80 New World Records, Tread the Trail, 132n8 New York Times, 79–80 non-Western music as In C characteristic, 8–9

Index : 143 influences of, 18, 31–32 North African attire, 132n4 Nyman, Michael, 125n5 oboe, In C recordings, 82–83, 116–117 Oliveros, Pauline Bye Bye Butterfly composition, 47 on In C, 50, 51, 99 premiere of In C, 43–44, 46 solo concert, 39 trio with Riley, 16–18 Olson III (Riley), 75–76 organ, In C premiere performance, 43, 46 Organ of Corti recordings, 111, 133n14 Otey, Wendell, 14 Our Lady of the Flowers (Genet), 51–52 pacing, In C analysis, 61–64, 89–93 See also tempo entries Paris years, 31–37, 128n50 Partch, Harry, 7 Payne, Fred, 31 Payne, Russ, 83 Percurama Percussion Ensemble, 121–122 percussion Gibson ensemble, 43 Music for the Gift, 36 new music innovations, 7 Polyester Moon film, 18 Riley trio, 16, 18 percussion, In C Buffalo performance, 79 Columbia recording, 81, 89 post-Columbia recordings, 106, 114–120, 121–122 premiere performance, 44 See also Pulse, In C peyote, 23 piano childhood lessons, 14 college years, 4, 15, 16–17, 126n9 Concert for Two Pianos . . . , 20–21 dance improvisations, 20 Envelope, 21 Gibson ensemble, 43 Keyboard Study No. 1, 32–35, 128n51 Paris years, 31 Polyester Moon film, 17–18 Tread the Trail, 132n8

in Young collaborations, 20–21, 127n25 piano, In C Carnegie Recital Hall performance, 79, 80 Columbia recording, 81, 82, 95, 134n29 post-Columbia recordings, 111, 113–115, 116–119, 120–121 premiere performance, 41, 43, 46, 130n20 score instructions, 59 Piano Circus, 106, 107, 113–114 pipa, In C recording, 117–118 pitch elements Autumn Leaves, 72 Dorian Reeds, 77 Keyboard Study No. 1, 32f, 34, 35 in new music generally, 6 String Quartet, 26–28, 128nn42–43 String Trio, 28–31 Tread the Trail, 72, 75, 132n7 pitch elements, In C analysis of, 61–62, 63–65, 66, 68–70, 132n5 premiere performance, 46 recording comparisons, 111–123 Pitch recording, 122–123 Plaut, Fred, 82, 134n31 Point recording, Tread the Trail, 132n8 Polyester Moon (film), 17–18 Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band (Riley), 133n14 Potter, Keith, 23, 133n11 precompositional procedures, defined, 5 premiere, In C concert invitation, 39, 40, 129n4 fire marshal encounter, 51–52, 131n33 light show, 46–48 performances, 48–52, 130n20, n24, n27, 131n29 recording, 130n27 rehearsals, 41, 43–44 review of, 52–55 setting, 44–46 Pulse, In C Columbia recording, 81, 82, 88, 93, 95 as non-Western foundation, 8 origins, 44 post-Columbia recordings, 103, 112, 116, 118, 121 score and instructions, 58–59 Wesleyan concert improvisation, 103

144 : Index Rabe, Folke, 75, 128n50 raga comparison, 125n9 ragtime performances, 24, 31 A Rainbow in Curved Air (Riley), 133n14 Raka, Allah, 32 Ray, George, 129n3 recordings of In C, comparisons, 105–108, 111–123 Redding, California, 24 rehearsal processes In C, 41, 43–44, 59–60, 80–81, 112 Music for the Gift, 35–36 Reich, Steve on In C legacy, 98 improvisation ensemble, 129n3 meeting of Riley, 39–41 premiere of In C, 41, 43–44, 46, 49–50 Reinhard, Johnny, 122–123 Reisman, Michael, 132n8 repetition Dorian Reeds, 77 Music of the Gift, 37 Olson III, 75 String Quartet, 26 String Trio, 28 repetition, In C Columbia recording, 89, 96 legacy comments, 98–99 motivic transformations, 64–67 pitch elements, 61–62 post-Columbia recordings, 114, 119 premiere critique, 53 recording comparisons, 106–107 score and instructions, 58–59 research characteristic, new music, 5 Reynard, Arlene, 82 rhythms Keyboard Study No. 1, 32f, 34, 35 Music of the Gift, 37 new music characteristics, 6 Olson III, 75 Spectra, 16 String Trio, 31, 128n45 rhythms, In C analysis of, 62–67 Columbia recording, 81, 93 premiere performance, 44, 53, 54 score and instructions, 58–59 Rich, Alan, 17

Ridolfi, Wilma Amelia (later Riley), 13 Riley, Anne, 16 Riley, Charles, 13 Riley, Colleen, 16 Riley, Terry childhood/youth, 13–15 college years, 15–18, 126n11 drug use, 22–24 graduate school years, 16–25, 126n11 Paris years, 31–35 as West Coast shift, 7 See also specific topics, e.g., compositions, Riley’s; improvisation entries; legacy perspectives Riley, Wilma Amelia (born Ridolfi), 13 Rollins, Sonny, 75 Romero, Elias, 46–47 Rose, Wally, 24 Rosenboom, David, 80–81, 82–83, 100, 134n26, 135n40 Rotter, Janet, 94–95 Rush, Loren, 16–18, 99–100 Russian ‘‘Repetition’’ Orchestra, 106, 118–119 Sames (Dewey and Riley), 76 San Francisco Chronicle, 43, 50, 52–55 San Francisco State University, 24 San Francisco Tape Center In C performances, 43–52, 71, 131n33 electronic media experimentation, 22 solo concert season, 39 Tread the Trail performance, 72 Sapp, Allen, 78 Sargent, Matthew, 132n5 saxophone Dorian Reeds, 76–77 Envelope, 21 Gibson’s ensemble, 43 Olson III, 75 Reich’s ensemble, 129n3 Riley’s purchase, 76 saxophone, In C Buffalo performance, 79 Columbia recording, 82–83, 89 post-Columbia recordings, 111, 114–115, 116–118, 120–121 premiere performance, 46, 130n27 Schaefer, John, 113 Schnittke, Alfred, 118

Index : 145 Schoenberg, Arnold, 126n9 Schwartz, K. Robert, 23 score, In C analysis of, 58–60, 67 in legacy comments, 101 on LP cover, 84, 96 rehearsal process, 44, 129n12 writing of, 41, 129n7 Sell, Loretta (Hildegarde), 80, 134n23 Sender, Ramon Desert Ambulance composition, 47 looping experimentation, 22 premiere of In C, 43, 46, 48, 51–52, 131n33 solo concert season, 39, 40, 129n4 Sequenza V (Berio), 78 serialism, 3–5 Shaff, Stan, 43, 55 shakuhachi, In C recording, 120 shamans, 23 Shanghai Film Orchestra, 8, 106, 107, 118 Shankar, Ravi, 31–32 Shifrin, Seymour, 19 Shoeshine (Riley/Smith), 48, 130n24 Shostac, David, 82, 83 Sinfonia (Berio), 3 Singer, Lawrence, 82 sitar, In C recording, 115–116 sleighbells, In C recording, 118–119 Smith, Jimmy, 48, 130n24 Socie´te´ de musique contemporarine de Que´bec, 115–116 software analogy, 9 sopranino recorder, In C, 43, 46 ‘‘South of the Border, Down Mexico Way’’ (song), 13–14 ‘‘So What,’’ 36 Spaghetti Factory, 24 Spain, 32 Spectra (Riley), 15–18 Spencer, Bill, 40, 126n19 Squealer Music recording, 120 Stereo Review, 93–94, 135n43 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 3, 8, 15, 16, 128n50 Stones (Wolff ), 60, 131n1 Strickland, Edward, 130n27, 131n36 String Quartet (Riley), 25–28, 128nn41–43 String Trio (Riley), 28–31, 128n45 Structure and Probable Organization of In C by Terry Riley (Vosper), 131n3

Study 1 (Del Tredici), 18 Styrenes, 106, 119–120 Subotnick, Morton on In C legacy, 99 dance music, 128n31 premiere of In C, 43, 45, 50, 51–52, 131n29 on solo concert decision, 39 Sun, Cecilia Jian-Xuan, 136n1 SUNY, Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, 78–79 Sweden, 75, 128n50 tabla, In C recording, 115–116 Takahashi, Yuju, 80 tambura, In C recording, 120 tape recorders. See electronic media tempo Music of the Gift, 37 Spectra, 16 Young’s compositions, 19 tempo, In C Columbia recording, 81, 88–89 post-Columbia recordings, 111–123 premiere performance, 44, 50, 53, 54 score and instructions, 58–59 Terry Riley Repetitition Orchestra, 118–119 Theater of Eternal Music, 76 Three-Legged Stool (Riley), 22, 128n31 Tilbury, John, 128n51 time, drug use effects, 24 See also looping technique; tempo time-lag accumulator Dorian Reeds, 76–77 Music for the Gift, 36 tones, sustained Spectra, 15–16 String Quartet, 25–26 String Trio, 28–31 in Young’s compositions, 18–19 Tread the Trail (Riley), 72, 74f, 75, 132n6, n8 Trio for Strings (Young), 19 Trio for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano (Riley), 15 trombone In C, 82–83, 111, 114–115 Gibson ensemble, 46 Music for the Gift, 36 trumpet Gibson ensemble, 46 Music for the Gift, 36, 37

146 : Index trumpet, In C Columbia LP recording, 82–83, 89 post-Columbia recordings, 111, 118–119 premiere performance, 43, 46 Tudor, David, 46 Two Pieces for Piano (Riley), 126n9 Two Sounds (Young), 19 UC Berkeley, 16 United Airlines, 16 Velvet Underground, 76 vibraphone, In C Columbia recording, 82–83 post-Columbia recordings, 112, 113–114, 117–120, 122 viola In C recordings, 82–83, 114–115, 120–123 Spectra, 15 String Trio, 28 violin In C recordings, 114–121 Envelope, 21 Reich’s ensemble, 129n3 Spectra, 15 vocals, In C recordings, 114–116, 118–119, 120, 122 Vosper, Richard Field, 131n3

Walker, Gwendolyn, 129n3 Wang Yongi, 112–113 Webern, Anton, 26 Weitsman, Mel, 43–44, 72, 132n4 Wergo recording, 120–121 Wesleyan performance, 103 West Coast culture, 6–7 Williams, Doug, 21 Williams, Jan, 81, 82, 134n34 Williams, Paul, 84–87 Winsor, Phil, 43, 46 Wolff, Christian, 60, 131n1 Xenakis, Iannis, 5 xylophone, In C recordings, 112, 114–115 Young, La Monte composition writing, 4, 60, 127n23 drug use, 23 ensemble, 76 mentor relationship, 18–21, 39, 126n19, 127n25 Young Composer’s Symposium, 127n25 Zeitmasse (Stockhausen), 15, 16 zithers, In C recording, 112 Zyklus (Stockhausen), 21