steve reich - biography


2. College - Graduation - In C

Reich left Cornell with a B.A. in Philosophy with honors in 1957. His interest in music consuming him, he returned to New York and began studying composition with Hall Overton. In a short time, Reich enrolled at Julliard, studying composition with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti, and eventually finished an M.A. at Mills College in Oakland, California, under the tutelage of Luciano Berio and Darius Milhaud.

At Julliard, Reich met a fellow graduate student named Philip Glass, and they enjoyed an uneasy friendship. They would eventually begin working together, playing in each other's ensembles, and even start a furniture moving business together, before having a falling out (now since tempered) which became one of the legends in the history of Minimalism.

By 1964, Reich had begun an improvisational quintet, a concert of which was walked out on by Terry Riley, another important west coast Minimalist who would have a profound impact on Reich. After a somewhat confrontational beginning to their relationship ("[Reich] came and knocked on the garage door and said 'How come you walked out on my concert last night?' I hadn't even met him yet."), the two eventually joined forces and Reich wound up playing drums for and creating a major part of Terry Riley's landmark Minimalist composition In C. "One of the problems we had in rehearsal was that we couldn't stay together, and, good drummer that I was, I said 'Why don't you have someone just drumming some Cs to keep the beat?'" Although Reich contributed this "pulse" to Riley's piece, he was soon borrowing ideas that Riley had been working on for some time: tape loops as a compositional tool.

Inspired by the repetitive structure of In C, Reich applied his own theories of pulse and repetition to his first major composition, the tape loop piece It's Gonna Rain (1965). Based entiely on a recording of the three words of the title as spoken by a street preacher named Brother Walter, It's Gonna Rain begins with two identical tape loops playing in unison, which gradually shift "out of phase" (Reich's terminology), creating a myriad of rhythmic combinations. The final piece, at 17 minutes long, is repetitive, minimal, and stunningly beautiful.