In Steve Reich’s instrumental process music of the late 1960s, patterns were subjected to audible musical processes that drove the work by gradual change to a predetermined completion. Shortly after, Reich’s works exhibited more articulate and salient forms in which change and, subsequently, completion were determined primarily by texture. The pattern remained the focal point and was crucial to Reich’s compositional style following his process music. In his works in the 1970’s, Reich focused on how he could develop the pattern rhythmically, texturally, and dynamically.
One of the first works that highlighted pattern development was Music for Pieces of Wood (1973),1 a work for five clave players that develops unique rhythmic pattern interactions in sections of six, four, and three beats. Within each section, Clave 1 plays a constant eighth-note pulse, Clave 2 plays a fixed pattern, and Claves 3–5 enter in consecutive iterations by substituting rests with notes, known as Reich’s “build-up” technique. The three sections begin with successively shorter periodicities (6/4, 4/4, 3/4), thus formally compressing each instance of textural build-up.
This chapter explores the narrative potential of Pieces of Wood by asking three questions. First, can rhythmic patterns create a narrative? Second, can we assign an alternative goal to explain the work’s narrativity? Finally, can we add significant context to a narrative interpretation by discussing how Reich utilized African materials? I investigate these questions by using several indexical processes to show how the composer’s composite and build-up patterns signify the work’s progress gesturally. In my analysis, musical gestures are determined by how and when build-up patterns originate as a rhythm (a vertical entity articulated by the composite pattern) and over time become a pattern (a separate, linear entity from the composite pattern).
Due to the work’s minimal design and instrumentation, my narrative interpretation is motivated by a fulfillment-based telos. The aforementioned gestural activity is further contextualized when the ever-growing composite pattern deictically points to each build-up pattern. Not only does this pointing affect the build-up pattern’s quality, but the pattern interactions elicit an iconic resemblance to dialogue. Each section is marked by textural plentitude: as Clave 5 completes their build-up pattern, the texture (and the dialogue by extension) becomes saturated enough to reach a level of fulfillment that a listener can recognize.
Lastly, examining the non-western music Reich used in his compositional processes, notably from African rhythms, recognizes the debt Reich owes as well as adds a culturally fundamental interpretive layer to this analysis. Through the indexical process of metonymy, I look at the contextual parallels between African performance and Reich’s performance practice of the 1970s. The metonymic context further affects both the musical gestures formed and viewing the work as a whole. The trajectory of gestural events and processes in this work serve as the basis for a minimal but significant narrative interpretation. The evolving gestural patterns afford a potential narrative interpretation for an engaged and active listener.
1 Following Process Music
In his process music, spanning from It’s Gonna Rain (1966) to Four Organs (1970), Reich used musical processes that determined both the form and the content of the work to its instructed completion. In the composer’s words, “[m]aterial may suggest what sort of process it should be run through (content suggests form), and processes may suggest what sort of material should be run through them (form suggests content)” (Writings on Music 34). Moving into the 1970s, Reich searched for ways to evolve from such predetermined structural rigidity. Because of the expanded role of the performer, Reich’s works in the 1970s saw the beginning of a performance practice specifically tailored to the composer’s evolving interests. Along with composing for larger ensembles, moving away from electronic to acoustic instruments, and focusing on the intricacies of the pattern, Reich was beginning to establish a new minimalist style.
Though some of Reich’s 1970s works carried over process music’s rhythmic attributes (e.g., Clapping Music’s rotational pattern progression; Drumming’s use of phase as a technique to shift patterns), newer works removed the form-content fusion. In his seminal article qualifying minimalist music as an aesthetic, style, and technique, Timothy Johnson discusses how form, texture, harmony, melody, and rhythm are integral in creating a “minimalist style”. For my intents and purposes, the rhythmic attribute is of the most interest. Johnson characterizes rhythm in the minimalist style as ubiquitous repetitive patterns, and their organization, combination, and individual shapes provide the primary points of interest (see 748). Rhythmic change in Reich’s process music, either by phase or augmentation, was the primary focal point. Such change relied on fixed, relatively short rhythms or patterns to convey the process realization. Moving forward, Reich’s patterns became longer, which made them more susceptible to different compositional techniques.
Although Johnson’s descriptions of the stylistic attributes are meant to encompass the style of multiple composers, they shed light on how Reich adapts and shifts from the rigid procedures of process music into the development of works with more formal, textural, harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic variety. For Reich, rhythmic patterns became longer, the music was not subjected to an overall process, a plural usage of harmonic sonorities was employed, and primarily acoustic instruments were used. This laid the groundwork for what would be the conventionalized techniques abound in his works to come.
African Materials
Reich’s choice and configuration of patterns beginning with his process music are fundamentally grounded in African music. Though the composer explains that non-western influence manifested in his thinking and his own musical structures (Writings on Music 71; 106–7), Reich’s intense study of African music and its application in his music necessitates discussion of cultural appropriation. In his comprehensive essay “Afro-Electric Counterpoint”, Martin Scherzinger provides musical, analytical, and archival evidence explaining how Reich’s engagement with east, central, and southern African music is “the foundational feature of his basic compositional endeavor” (“Afro-Electric Counterpoint” 264, emphasis in original). For Scherzinger, such an endeavor is less about a “confirmation” of what Reich was already thinking than it is “a thoroughgoing debt to African musical thought” (“Afro-Electric Counterpoint” 260).2
There are three notable aspects that impacted Reich’s thinking. First, Reich read literature on African music by ethnomusicologists Arthur Morris Jones, Gerhard Kubik, Kwabena Nketia, Simha Arom, Paul Berliner, Hugh Tracey, David Rycroft, and John Blacking. He even corresponded with many of these scholars about their research, sourcing recordings, and transcribing African music. These conversations occurred before he began composing his process works in the mid-1960s.3 Second, Reich spent the summer of 1970 at the University of Accra to study West African drumming. Third, sketches of the pattern in Clapping Music (1972) and Pieces of Wood show how Reich questions whether his patterns sounded “too African” (“Afro-Electric Counterpoint” 295–96).
The pattern in Reich’s Clapping Music, Pieces of Wood, Music for 18 Musicians (1974–76), and Sextet (1984), known as his signature pattern,4 consists of eight onsets (attacks) within a twelve-beat measure. The onsets are grouped as 3+2+1+2 with rests separating each grouping. This pattern derives from the standard pattern played by the gankogui or atoke in music of the Ewe people of Ghana as well as a common makwa handclapping pattern in the Mbira dza Vadzimu music of Zimbabwe. The gankogui pattern and Reich’s signature pattern are shown in Figure 14.1.5 These onset arrangements allow for multiple metric possibilities and ambiguity. I will address this in further detail later.
a) The gankogui standard pattern b) Reich’s signature pattern.
One of the most significant attributes in African music that Reich used in his music was inherent patterns. Inherent patterns are underlying sub-patterns within an overall composite pattern. When a listener identifies inherent patterns, they are identifying what Reich describes as their own “psychoacoustic by-products” within the music (Writings on Music 35). Resultant (or resulting) patterns are Reich’s compositionally explicit form of inherent patterns. In Violin Phase, Phase Patterns, and Drumming, Reich has a separate performer play an inherent pattern, one that is the result of the composite pattern.6
Even though it does not make use of resulting patterns, the African performance practice behind inherent rhythms/patterns (and resulting rhythms/patterns by extension) are essential to performing Pieces of Wood. Scherzinger summarizes three conditions for inherent rhythms set by Kubik as such:
Recall that Kubik’s conditions for the emergence of inherent patterns include largeness of intervals (to facilitate the audible delinking of individual tones from their module and permit gestalt formation with different modules), a high-speed and unaccented approach to performance (to avoid the constraints of a singular metric entrainment), and the registral overlap between parts (to facilitate the fusion of individual tones to produce additive lines). (“Afro-Electric Counterpoint” 283)
The second condition – a high-speed and unaccented approach – is integral to performing Pieces of Wood and other Reich works in the 1970s.7 For Reich, an even value in his attack thus leave the patterns to their own natural rhythmic devices: patterns are layered in such a way to provide their own rhythmic ambiguity without the need for accents. In his book on performance practice in Reich’s music, Russell Hartenberger explains that performing even attacks “allows the listener and the player to hear patterns that are repeated for an extended period of time in different ways and creates the interest in pulse-based repetitive music” (32, emphasis added). This intentional rhythmic ambiguity creates possibilities rather than vagueness, thus allowing a listener to entertain multiple rhythmic interpretations.8
2 Musical Gesture
Pattern development in Pieces of Wood can be qualified gesturally. In his book on gesture in common-practice music, Robert Hatten asserts that gesture relies upon “the ability to recognize the significance of energetic shaping through time” (93). I will use Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics to establish the gestural framework for this analysis. Peircean semiotics works in threes: there is an overarching triad of signification as well as three different categorical trichotomies, consisting of three signs within each trichotomy. The triad of signification includes a Representamen, an Object, and an Interpretant.9 Peirce explains, “A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object” (CP 2.274)10. In other words, a Sign or Representamen represents or signifies an Object, leading a subject to create an Interpretation. Naomi Cumming describes the principal value of a semiotic theory as “the guidance it gives to the process of interpretation itself” (The Sonic Self 80). Thus, a semiotic framework can explain how the dialogue is represented through the pattern such that one can create gestural interpretations.
Peirce’s second trichotomy, consisting of an icon, index, and symbol, concerns the sign’s relation to its object. Icons evoke a likeness or resemblance to their object. Indices create connections to their object such that a subject’s attention is directed towards it. It can signify the direction or position of an object. Symbols form stipulated relationships to their object, typically by means of convention. Much of the time, the shared agreement symbols possess by such stipulated means is embedded culturally.
Musically, Cumming explains that gesture acts as a semiotic interpretant (“Subjectivities” 8). This analysis consists of two significant interpretations in Pieces of Wood. First, I discuss how the composite pattern’s repetition indexes a listener toward the build-up pattern’s development. This indexing allows a listener to reorient the build-up pattern. The engagement from this indexical process allows gestural activity to emerge. A subsequent interpretation will serve as the crux of the narrative potential in the work. The indexical gestures will shift from being an interpretant of the pattern interaction and become an iconic representation of narrative dialogue. Felicia E. Kruse explains the semiotic impact behind this:
The functional relativity of the elements of the sign relation and of Peirce’s categories themselves – the fact that, for example, what serves as an interpretant (a Third) in one sign relation can become a representamen (a First) in a subsequent act of semiosis – suggests that in the performance and hearing of a musical work, the boundary between “musical” meanings and at least some “extramusical” meanings is a pragmatically shifting one. (773–4)
If the gestures can signify a resemblance to dialogue (i.e., conversing back and forth), a possible narrative trajectory can be mapped onto the work. According to Kruse, shifting between what is “musical” (the patterns) and “extramusical” (dialogue) is made possible by functional relativity. The next section is an analysis of how the build-up and composite patterns create a gestural interpretant.
3 Music for Pieces of Wood
Like Clapping Music, this work utilizes the same 3+2+1+2 signature pattern but subjects it to a different compositional technique: the build-up pattern. Although Reich’s earlier Drumming uses the same technique, among others, Pieces of Wood exclusively focuses on Reich’s treatment and development of the pattern, which functions as the fixed pattern in the beginning 6/4 section.11 As the work progresses, the signature pattern combines together with the build-up pattern in its different stages. This allows for an analysis solely focused on the patterns and their perception. The stylistic choice of rhythmic ambiguity, achieved through even attacks, creates several subjective possibilities for interpreting how patterns build up and become part of the composite pattern.
The Build-up
For five clave players, Reich’s Pieces of Wood takes a more simplistic approach to the pattern development. The work is divided into three sections, one in 6/4, one in 4/4, and one in 3/4. I will focus primarily on the first section in this analysis with the implication that the concepts discussed are applicable to the other two. Along with the Clave 1’s constant pulse, Clave 2 plays the fixed pattern. Figure 14.2 below shows Clave 2’s fixed patterns in each respective section.
While beginning with the signature pattern in this section, Reich removes material while shifting to the new sections. The first two beats in the 6/4 measure are removed to make the 4/4 section, and the second beat in the 4/4 section is removed to make the 3/4 section. At the same time, Reich maintains patterns with a palindromic distribution of onsets: 3+2+1+2, 2+1+2, and 2+2.12
Reich, Music for Pieces of Wood, Clave 2’s fixed patterns, one for each section; acceleration of periodicity from 6 to 4 to 3 quarter-note beats.
Claves 3–5 create build-up patterns as such: as the fixed pattern (Clave 2) plays with the pulse (Clave 1), Clave 3 enters with a single onset. Figure 14.3 shows Clave 3’s build-up in the 6/4 section. After an agreed-upon number of repeats, Clave 3 moves into the next measure where a rest is substituted with a beat, creating an additional onset. This continues until Clave 3 has matched the same number of onsets as Clave 2: eight onsets in the 6/4 section, five in the 4/4 section, and four in the 3/4 section.
Reich, Music for Pieces of Wood, mm. 1–10, Clave 3’s build-up in the 6/4 section.
© Copyright 1980 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London All rights in the USA owned and controlled by Boosey & Hawkes Inc., New York.
Reich tends to build up patterns where the spacing allows for the consecutive onsets (two and three consecutive eighth notes) to occur near the end of the build-up, with the triple consecutive onset always appearing last. After Clave 3 matches the volume of Claves 1 and 2, Clave 4 enters and repeats the same build-up compositional process. The final patterns will always be transpositions of Clave 2’s fixed pattern.13
Indexing and Textural Repetition
The actions that performers take to realize the score’s potentialities and make them actual can be defined as a semiotic index. According to Peirce, “[a]nything which focuses the attention is an index” (CP 2.285). The index is the most apparent sign to a subject because it draws the attention towards the object to which it signifies, or, in an atemporal context, it is indicative of the object to which it signifies. In his article on ceremonial mbira music of Zimbabwe, Tony Perman explains, “[i]ndexicality is defined by contiguity, it directs attention, and is necessarily tied to the here and now” (68).
The process of indexical pointing is known as deixis, which “draws attention to the immediate present, the here and now” (Perman 69). This here and now, known as haecceity, “is the essential foundation for trance, flow, participation, communitas, and the possession that defines ceremonial success” (Perman 69–70). Sustaining attention in the form of active participation is a beneficial component for one listening to minimalist music. A listener engaged in the work’s haecceity will readily distinguish between different types of pattern interactions in Pieces of Wood. The unaccented approach, fast tempo, and repetition in the work will also maintain contiguity with a listener familiar with minimalist music and/or African music.
In a performative context, David Lidov states, “[t]he immediate expression of physiological values in sound as performed nuance is indexical” (“Mind and Body” 74). Along with the type of pattern being played, performative nuance in Pieces of Wood is motivated by repetition. In his writings on musical repetition, Lidov outlines three referential types: a formative repetition that interprets what is repeated, a focal repetition that is self-referential, and a textural repetition “which points away from the repeated material to other musical signs while, at the same time, influencing their quality” (Is Language a Music 29). Textural repetition is commonly found in the composite pattern of Pieces of Wood and other Reich works, as the composite pattern functions as the underlying pattern being played while the build-up pattern is developed.
With every development (i.e., every subsequent build-up pattern), a denser composite pattern is created. Clave 4, for example, will have a denser composite pattern when it progresses with its build-up than Clave 3’s respective build-up; the same goes for Clave 5’s build-up compared to Clave 4’s. The composite patterns in the 6/4 section are shown in Figure 14.4. The overall texture becomes denser with every new onset addition, and by the addition of Clave 3’s full pattern added in measure 11, the composite pattern creates a measure of consecutive eighth notes.14
Reich, Music for Pieces of Wood, 6/4 section, mm. 3, 11, and 19, showing completed composite patterns.
The number of designated repetitions at the beginning, as shown in Figure 14.3, fits textural repetition’s behavior, elaborated by Lidov as such:
Textural repetition occurs with the continuing repetition of an idea more than three or four times, which cancels out its own claim on our attention and thereby refers our focus elsewhere, to another voice or to a changing aspect. The figure maintains, nevertheless, a background influence on our musical consciousness. (Is Language a Music 35)
The composite pattern is continuously maintained while a build-up pattern develops, making its repetition saturated enough to direct one’s attention to the build-up. In her book on James Brown and Parliament, Anne Danielsen attributes textural repetition to Reich’s music (161).15
Reich further confirms the repetition’s indexicality for every layer added to the composite pattern through his treatment of dynamics. Whereas Claves 1 and 2 maintain a forte dynamic throughout, Claves 3 and 4 begin their onsets at fortissimo. Once their build-up patterns are finished, their dynamic diminishes to a forte, matching the volume of the rest of the composite pattern.16 The composite pattern’s textural repetition and the change in volume are both deictic processes. While attending an ancestral spirit ceremony (bira) in Zimbabwe, Perman recounts a performance of “Sumba,” a common ceremonial mbira piece. The mbira player began the work as the primary performer both melodically and rhythmically. They were soon joined by someone on the hosho (gourd shakers) to serve in a secondary role that reinforced the beat with a secondary pulse. Perman elaborates on the deictic function of the hosho:
The hosho drove proceedings with its deixis of now. The predictable repetition inherent in the style, combined with the tension produced by the subtle anticipation of the second pulse in the hosho, to sustain the attention to the here and now needed for the kinds of experiences that lead to trance and communitas; the sound’s haecceity points to a continuously emerging present. (71)
The build-up and composite patterns are analogous to the roles the mbira and hosho played in the particular performance of “Shumba”, respectively. The composite pattern will direct a listener to a continuously emerging present, the here and now. In Pieces of Wood, this consists of the ongoing build-up patterns steadily substituting rests with onsets and the ever-growing composite pattern affecting their quality.
The Indexical Gesture
How the repetition changes the quality of the build-up pattern is unique in that it offers a listener a choice: allow their perception of the build-up to homogeneously interact with the composite pattern or allow the build-up to heterogeneously develop against the composite. The former perception is vertical, and the latter is linear.
The work’s formal design allows a listener to follow which clave part plays their build-up against the composite pattern; the latter’s texture becomes thicker as each section progresses. This largely involves the clave’s vertical interaction with the composite pattern and the emergence of a linear pattern. In other words, when does the build-up become a recognizable pattern? By the third build-up measure in the 6/4 section, there are two onsets in close proximity and one further away. By the fourth build-up measure, a listener has familiarized themselves with the substituting part of the build-up, and the rhythm has enough onsets for the substitutions not to be considered spontaneous. Instead, the pattern grows with more onsets either before or after a listener perceives to be what I call the “initiatory point” (IP) of the pattern.
Figure 14.5 shows a comparison between Clave 3’s original build-up in the 6/4 section and a reorientation of the pattern. The substitutions made from left to right in the reoriented pattern create a 2+1+2+3 pattern, a retrograded onset counterpart to Clave 2’s fixed pattern.17 Also, the triple consecutive onset is complete at the end of the measure rather than the beginning. The reoriented pattern continually adds onsets that, due to the new position of the pattern, favor the start of the pattern (the IP) as the new one by the fourth build-up measure rather than waiting for the triple consecutive onset.
a) Clave 3’s original build-up (see mm. 3–10) and b) a reorientation of the initiatory point (IP) based on where a listener experiences the rhythm becoming a pattern (Steve Reich, Music for Pieces of Wood).
Clave 2’s fixed pattern in dialogue with Clave 3’s build-up pattern with respect to point of initiation. (Steve Reich, Music for Pieces of Wood).
A listener’s conscious experience will allow them to shift their attention to match how they perceive the rhythmic arrangement. At some point in the build-up, a listener’s attention moves away from the anticipation of the next substitution in relation to its initial starting position of the build-up. Instead, it moves towards its relation from their own established starting position, where they believe to be the beginning of the pattern. Such a listening experience is informed not by treating the first note in the build-up as one, but a new one that is informed by the build-up itself. As an example, perhaps the focus shifts away from the triple consecutive onset as the starting point, which is how the 3+2+1+2 signature pattern begins, and towards the 2+1+2+3. The effect of the fixed pattern informing the build-up pattern and vice versa is shown in Figure 14.6.
When a listener can manipulate the pattern such that the build-up informs the fixed pattern, thereby altering the given figuration and creating their own subjective somatic event, the pattern becomes a gesture. Subsequently, a listener can go through the same semiotic processes in the 4/4 and 3/4 sections. Their interpretations are informed by a new fixed pattern, different build-ups, and a textural repetition that allows the performer and listener to determine when the vertical rhythm becomes a linear pattern. As Claves 4 and 5 initiate their build-up, the fixed pattern informing the build-up becomes more complex due to the thicker texture. Thus, it is increasingly probable that a listener will focus on the build-up, and subsequently the textural repetition from the composite pattern becomes more indexical. The indexicality’s rate of change speeds up when moving to the 4/4 and 3/4 sections. Though it follows the same build-up formula, a listener must adapt by anticipating the shorter patterns at a faster rate.
4 Minimalist Narrativity
On a larger scale, the engagement with this indexical gesture leads to a second act of semiosis: the interpretant created by the pattern interaction will now be considered an iconic representation of dialogue. This representation grounds the narrative reading of Pieces of Wood. In his article on narrative archetypes, Byron Almén asserts that music that “would be expected to be listened to as narrative” requires 1) a syntax that could group constituent elements into dialogic and/or conflictual relationships, 2) a continued coherence of these groupings, 3) teleological directedness, and 4) “cultural preconditions of performance which permit or invite a listener to be attentive to the above features” (8). Pieces of Wood contains all four of Almén’s required features. The two main constituent elements, which present themselves into a dialogic relationship from a narrative perspective, are the composite pattern and the build-up pattern. Every time the dialogue between one build-up pattern and the current composite pattern finishes, which has its own relationship of interest, a novel dialogue begins between a new build-up pattern and a denser composite pattern. Subsequently, one can interpret the dialogue becoming more involved. Such a dialogue in this work is only possible through Almén’s fourth feature: a performance practice that allows a listener to interpret not only rhythmic ambiguity (via performing even attacks and a fast tempo), but also allows them to properly engage with the pattern relationship (our dialogue).
A Fulfillment-based telos
Teleology has been addressed in minimalist music scholarship, notably by Robert Fink in his 2005 book Repeating Ourselves. Fink describes Reich’s music as “pulse-pattern minimalism”, defining it as “minimalism as repetition, particularly as repetition with a regular pulse, a pulse that underlies the complex evolution of musical patterns to alter listener perceptions of time and telos in systematic, culturally influential ways” (20). Pulse-pattern minimalism is a particularly apt way to describe Pieces of Wood, given that both attributes in the definition are the musical content.
Because minimalist music subverts typical anticipations and expectancies, Fink suggests a “recombinant teleology” that expands rather than restricts works to a teleological/nonteleological dichotomy. Per Fink, “any music with a regular pulse, a clear tonal center, and some degree of process is more likely to be an example of recombinant teleology” (43). Fink’s recombinant teleology considers more works to have teleological tendencies (i.e., not only goal, but also climax, fulfillment, and completion). Teleology factors into any work insofar as there is a goal in mind. For example, works that follow a tonal syntax use the tension between consonance and dissonance, both harmonically and melodically, to come towards (or disrupt) a goal. Most times, regarding the former outcome, this goal is a resolution. The denial of a teleological goal, however, is typically not prescribed by the work, but by an interpreter – in our case, the analyst.
In their work on narrative engagement in twentieth-century music, Almén and Hatten assert that Reich’s process works “seek to erase or preclude narrative […] by finding ways to discourage a listener from imposing a narrative reading” (60). Moving into the 1970s, Reich creates ending points within sections through different changes, mainly instrumental and through the pattern. These changes are primarily motivated by texture. Hatten discusses this as a deictic act that can be tracked gesturally: “Deictics may either point to a concrete object, or in the case of narrative pointing, to a relative location in the gestural space that corresponds to the relative positioning of events in narrative time” (105, emphasis in original).
In Pieces of Wood, there are two locations in which deictics can guide us in narrative time. The first includes areas containing the aforementioned rhythm-to-pattern formulation made possible by textural repetition. The other is the transitions from the 6/4 section to the 4/4 section, and the 4/4 to the 3/4 section. The 6/4 and 4/4 sections articulate their respective “endings” by switching from the final composite pattern (after Clave 5’s build-up is complete) to playing the fixed pattern in unison (a “unison pattern”) in Claves 2–5.
A Narrative Marked by Plentitude
However, the final 3/4 section does not use a unison pattern to articulate its completion. Furthermore, presence of one final composite pattern in lieu of a unison pattern builds the ultimate tension before the work is complete. The tension created by the dense texture is motivated by plentitude. According to Hatten, “[a]s part of a compositional premise, plentitude may be understood as a desired goal achieved by processes that lead to the ultimate saturation of texture, and fulfillment – perhaps even apotheosis – in the case of a theme” (43). A textural plentitude in Pieces of Wood may be understood as a teleological goal that is marked in its progression by gestural events (e.g., pattern dialogue and build-up completions). By the end of each section the build-up process reaches its highest level of textural saturation. Clave 5’s completion of its build-up pattern marks a stage of plentitude as fulfillment of a textural premise. As the piece formally compresses, the activity is intensified by a quicker rate of progression.
One of the striking formal characteristics in Pieces of Wood is that Reich follows a formula for the first two sections – he presents the fixed pattern in Clave 2, builds up the patterns in Claves 3–5, and ends with a unison pattern – but not in the final section. Along with Reich compositionally evolving towards a minimalist style, the answer as to why there is no unison pattern in the final 3/4 section might lie in Clave 5. I previously discussed how the part never has the chance to contribute to the textural repetition. It does, however, function as an ending point by repeating its final build-up measure longer than any of the other build-up measures in each section. In the Universal Edition score, Claves 3 and 4’s instructed repetitions in build-up measures are 5–9 times in the 6/4 section, 10–16 times in the 4/4 section, and 12–18 times in the 3/4 section. However, Clave 5 is instructed to repeat its final build-up measure 8–16 times, 16–32 times, and 24–48 times in each respective section (Music for Pieces of Wood).
These longer repetitions by Clave 5 establish that the final build-up pattern is complete, subsequently creating a complete composite pattern, yet the 6/4 and 4/4 sections are marked even further with a unison pattern in Claves 2–5. From these interactions, our gestural dialogues have enough repetition at the level of the pattern and the level of the section for a listener to determine when the dialogue is complete. Hartenberger recalls an audience’s reaction that is consistent with this interpretation:
Despite the ambiguity created by the sense of downbeat displacement with each new attack in the build-ups, the structure of Music for Pieces of Wood is straightforward and can be clearly heard by listeners. In fact, at a concert many years ago in the Netherlands, the audience broke into cheers and applause when [James] Preiss completed the final build-up in the third section of the piece. (173)
The audience’s applause is a response to textural plentitude. The final 3/4 section omits the unison pattern, yet there was enough familiarity from what came before for an attentive audience to recognize a section and, soon following, the work’s completion.
Metonymic Influence
The audience’s response was seemingly informed by recollection and previous experience with minimalist music. They recognized that Clave 5’s completion marked the end of the 3/4 section just as it did with the previous two. A second indexical process, where habits, memory, and context influence present actions, is known as metonymy. Unlike drawing attention to an object through deictic pointing, metonyms direct a subject towards their object by reference (i.e., objects are not in existential relation to metonyms).
Given that such references can be culturally motivated, non-western music can potentially impact the Pieces of Wood analysis from a culturally metonymic standpoint. While summarizing Reich’s debt to African music, Scherzinger states, “[t]he full range and subtlety of Reich’s intertextual resonance can only be perceived if its African components are reconstituted as one of its fundamental referents” (“Afro-Electric Counterpoint” 280). The gestural activity and narrative interpretation is made possible by the makwa/gankogui pattern, even/unaccented attacks, and a fast tempo. Given these African referents, can we add an additional layer that considers the cultural implications?
Consider the bira ceremony Perman attended. The following explains metonymy’s effect on the ceremony:
Each of the objects that mediums use to generate an icon of the ancestral mudzimu spirit is a metonym of that spirit. The clothing worn, the snuff consumed, even the mbira played, are indexically associated with vadzimu (pl. of mudzimu) and their ceremonies as attributes of those spirits because of a previously established existential contiguity in previous ceremonial experiences. As these associations are repeated and confirmed over time, the recognition of the object represented, the spirit, becomes habitual, even conventional. (Perman 71)
Given this, a subject can potentially engage with Pieces of Wood through a metonymic process created by previous knowledge and experience of African music.
If the African referents serve as metonyms, they can connect the contiguity from past events with the present. To give an example, suppose someone listening to Pieces of Wood has a previous understanding of the interaction between a lead performer (kushaura) and a following performer (kutsinhira) in Zimbabwean Shona music (in the “Shumba” performance Perman attended, these were played by the mbira and hosho, respectively). In this Pieces of Wood scenario, metonymy works if a listener believes there is a resemblance (iconic likeness) between the kushaura/kutsinhira interaction and the build-up/composite pattern interaction. This is all contingent upon whether there is a connection to be made. Are there enough similarities between the hosho indexing the mbira and the composite pattern indexing the build-up? It can be argued that both interactions fall under a general lead/accompaniment type of performance.18 The resulting interpretations from both metonymic scenarios vary depending on the interpreter’s judgment of how Reich uses African materials. Based on the interpretive subject, it can confirm anything between paraphrasing, quotation, borrowing, and appropriation.
Metonymy’s effect on a narrative reading in Pieces of Wood posits a different scenario. Reich’s work demonstrates his shift toward formally articulate pieces over predetermined processes. Per Scherzinger, Reich’s Electric Counterpoint (1987) cites formal processes found in the Ippy horn music of the Banda Linda people in the Central African Republic (“Afro-Electric Counterpoint” 298). These processes include parts consecutively entering at different pitch intervals, using even attacks and a fast tempo. There could be a connection made between the staggered entrances in Pieces of Wood to Electric Counterpoint and Banda Linda music by extension.19 Again, the result of this cultural metonymic process from a narrative perspective will depend on an interpreter’s judgment.
5 Conclusion
My analysis of Pieces of Wood focused on two different acts of semiosis. First, a listener’s engagement with the interaction between composite and build-up patterns established musical gestures. These gestures are informed by textural repetition: the composite pattern’s repetition indexes a listener toward the build-up pattern. This deictic repetition allows one to focus on the build-up process rather than the pattern’s vertical relation to each composite pattern.
A narrative reading allows the created gestural interpretant to also be considered as an iconic representamen to dialogue. In all three sections, every completed build-up pattern creates a denser composite pattern and thus a more involved form of dialogue. Clave 5’s completed build-up patterns mark formal stages of textual plentitude, where the texture reaches a level of saturation that cannot be developed further. Textural plentitude is made possible by a fulfillment-based telos that acknowledges a type of completion in the work while accounting for the subversive attributes of minimalist music.
Beyond the work, there is analytical merit in recognizing the debt Reich has towards African music when creating his minimalist style. It opens up another avenue that explores whether cultural metonymy can affect a listener’s interpretation of a work like Pieces of Wood. More insight into the connections between African music and narrative potentiality in Reich’s music is certainly worth exploring further.
Rather than simply inferring a dialogic trope within the music to explain the patterns’ interactions without any further context, qualifying the energetic events as gestures established the needed signification behind this minimal work. From this semiotic perspective, which is further made possible by a listener engaged in an attentive process, Pieces of Wood exemplifies how a simple composition can still create narrative potential.
References
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Almén, Byron. “Narrative Archetypes: A Critique, Theory, and Method of Narrative Analysis.” Journal of Music Theory, vol. 47, no. 1, 2003, pp. 1–39.
Almén, Byron, and Robert Hatten. “Narrative Engagement with Twentieth-Century Music: Possibilities and Limits.” Music and Narrative Since 1900, edited by Michael L. Klein, and Nicholas Reyland, Indiana University Press, 2013, pp. 59–85.
Cohn, Richard. “Transpositional Combination of Beat-Class Sets in Steve Reich’s Phase-Shifting Music.” Perspectives of New Music, vol. 30, no. 2, 1992, pp. 146–177.
Cumming, Naomi. “The Subjectivities of ‘Erbarme Dich.’” Music Analysis, vol. 16, no. 1, 1997, pp. 5–44.
Cumming, Naomi. The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification. Indiana University Press, 2000.
Danielsen, Anne. Presence and Pleasure: The Funk Grooves of James Brown and Parliament. Wesleyan University Press, 2006.
Fink, Robert. Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice. University of California Press, 2005.
Gopinath, Sumanth. “‘A Composer Looks East’: Steve Reich and Discourse on Non-Western Music.” Glendora Review: African Quarterly on the Arts, vol. 3, no. 3/4, 2004, pp. 134–145.
Hartenberger, Russell. Performance Practice in the Music of Steve Reich. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Hatten, Robert. Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Indiana University Press, 2004.
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Johnson, Timothy A. “Minimalism: Aesthetic, Style, or Technique?” The Musical Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1, 1994, pp. 742–773.
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Peirce, Charles Sanders. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Vols. 1–6, edited by Charles Hartshorne, and Paul Weiss. Harvard University Press, 1931–1935.
Perman, Tony. “Musical meaning and indexicality in the analysis of ceremonial mbira music.” Semiotica, no. 236/237, 2020, pp. 55–83.
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Scherzinger, Martin. “Curious Intersections, Uncommon Magic: Steve Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain.” Current Musicology, no. 79/80, 2005, pp. 207–244.
Scherzinger, Martin. “Afro-Electric Counterpoint.” Rethinking Reich, edited by Sumanth Gopinath and Pwyll ap Siôn. Oxford University Press, 2019.
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The author would like to thank Robert Hatten and Tony Perman for their insight, and the editors (especially Carolien van Nerom) for their invaluable assistance.
Henceforth Pieces of Wood.
See Agawu esp. ch. 4, or Gopinath for further insight.
See also Scherzinger, “Curious Intersections” for more information on African music’s impact on Reich’s process music.
Cf. Yust for further discussion on Reich’s signature rhythm, and Ross, Gesture in Steve Reich’s Music on signature pattern.
Scherzinger shows one makwa pattern as a rotation of the gankogui pattern: instead of 1+1+2+1+1+1, it is 1+1+1+2+1+1 (“Afro-Electric Counterpoint” 287).
Composite patterns, which consist of the fixed pattern and its transpositionally related (shifted) patterns, are commonly mistaken as resulting patterns.
When describing African claps, Jones says, “[t]hey remain constant and they do not impart any rhythm on the melody itself” (Jones 21).
This also can extend to metric interpretations, as is shown in Horlacher.
These labels are capitalized in the context of the triad, but they can also be lowercase.
Following the standard scholarly citations of Peirce’s work, in-text reference of Collected Papers is by CP volume and paragraph.
Also known as the “basic” pattern. Whomever plays this is the “steady” or “static” part (Hartenberger 95).
The 6/4 pattern is symmetrical when accounting for the repeat: 3+2+1+2(+3). This subsequently creates a type of elided symmetry.
See Cohn for more discussion on transpositionally related patterns in Reich’s music.
The location of each amalgamation to the composite pattern is the measure following the completion of the build-up pattern. This allows for the build-up pattern to end in one measure and join the composite pattern in the following measure. For Clave 2, this means the measure following its initial presentation.
However, I take issue with Danielsen’s claim that the “repetitive texture” in Reich’s music “becomes a curtain of sound while our attention wanders in other directions” (161). Textural repetition indexes a listener to something specific (e.g., the build-up pattern) rather than letting one’s mind wander. I believe the difference between minimalist music and groove-based music she covers in her book is that minimalist music’s repetition is unavoidable.
Clave 5 also begins fortissimo but, again, it is not applicable to the work’s textural repetition.
By “retrograded onset counterpart”, I mean that it is implied that the 2+1+2+3 would start with an onset. If it were a true retrograde of the signature pattern, then it would begin with an eighth-note rest.
This connection leads to third indexical process: replica indexing. “When a sign’s deictic and metonymic attributes bring its type (a legisign) into the immediate present with the purpose to replicate, it becomes indexical” (Perman 73). Replicating this type of indexing in Pieces of Wood would require an agreement upon the lead/accompaniment type of performing.
Harmony is irrelevant – the pitched claves serve to differentiate parts from one another rather than provide, for example, a sense of pitch centricity.