Steve Reich: It’s Gonna Rain Pt. I – But When?

Steve Reich is another composer known for his minimalistic music. In his piece “It’s Gonna Rain, Pt I” the typical features of minimalist music such as repeated patterns with only small variations as well as the extensive usage of loops are demonstrated. 

The beginning of the piece aroused my interest because one can hear an African American sounding voice speaking and I was interested in what this man was going to say. However, my initial interest did not last long since the typical loop structure of minimal music immediately took over. Instead of the speech going on, the phrase “It’s gonna rain” was repeated over and over in different variations. First, I was just listening for the piece without really thinking about it much. I was still irritated by the phrase or parts of the phrase being repeated over and over. For me, the voice sounded quite aggressive, and I would define his way of speaking as shouting. This is why I felt quite uncomfortable listening to it. Moreover, the constant loop structure in combination with the shouting stressed me out a lot which was intensified by the permanent change of the shouted parts. It went from “It’s gonna” to just “rain” and other different variations of the phrase. Additionally, the voice was rather loud which made me feel like I was in an interrogation in which I could not do anything to please the speaker. After a while of listening to the piece, I got quite annoyed since the loops went on and I could not escape the situation.

In the middle of the piece, the loops were overlapping quite a lot which reminds me of the sound of an alarm clock. Sometimes, the phrases are still understandable, but there also parts in which the understandable words are looped in a way that they result in just sounds without any context of language. The middle part of the piece is rather not understandable, but towards the end, the phrases become clearer again.

I also started to think about the intentions of the composer. First of all, I thought about the phrase the composer decided to use for his piece. During the whole listening experience, I felt like I was waiting for something to happen similar to when one knows that it is going to rain but the rain does not start. I asked myself if the composer might have chosen this phrase because of this feeling which is created while listening. Consequently, I was waiting for the rain to come during listening to the piece in terms of any changes within the piece, but it did not come. 

This realization was quite frustrating for me and led me to the conclusion that listening to the piece was rather disappointing for me than beneficial. I expected anything unexpected to happen, but the piece had already ended when the whole phrase “it’s gonna rain after all” was repeated again at the end. However, even though I was disappointed, I liked the ending since it complemented the piece well and marked a clear ending.