Steve Reich's Music for Mallet Instruments, or: Tubular Bells, Part Zero

Even though Steve Reich is commonly associated with the minimalist movement within avantgarde music - the genre I looked forward to the most in the seminar, as two of its most prominent representatives, Brian Eno and Philip Glass, had a significant influence on my own musical taste, - his “Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ” is not what one might expect when thinking about ‘minimalist’ music. It is an intriguing composition for ‘light’ mallet instruments such as glockenspiel and marimba, which duplicate an ever-repeating pattern, first “within” instruments (so, marimba over marimba), then by doubling and prolonging single notes of the melody through voices and organ. What struck me most about it was the total absence of low notes – no bass instruments, no deep voices – and how this high pitch keeps the music energetic and light at the same time. 

When we listened to the piece in class, the first association that formed in my head was Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells, Part One.” Interestingly, both were recorded and released at roughly the same time, as Oldfield’s album was recorded in late 1972 and came out in May 1973, whereas Reich’s piece was composed over a longer period of time, but saw its public debut in the same month, premiering in a New York art gallery on May 16th, 1973. Intrigued by this coincidence, I looked up details of Oldfield’s composition process and found out that he often mentions Reich as one of his major influences.

In fact, with this link in mind, other inspirational crossovers from minimalism to pop music such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon become obvious. Apart from layered patterns, most of early 1970s progressive rock seems to have borrowed some of Reich’s rhythmic ideas. The arpeggiated keyboard that opens The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” seems very Reichian to me. I expected to find several references to Philip Glass’s work within pop music, but also seeing them in Reich was a real eye opener of how closely related the minimalist avantgarde and the mainstream were half a century ago.