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Sextet is a composition by American composer Steve Reich. The piece was written and first performed in 1984, and slightly revised in 1985.
As the title indicates, it is written for an ensemble of six: four percussionists and two keyboardists. The percussionists play (at various times) three marimbas, two vibraphones, two bass drums, crotales, sticks, and tam-tam. Two percussionists double on piano during the opening "Pulse" section. The keyboardists play both pianos and synthesizers set to an electric organ sound.
The piece is broken into five movements and, like many other Reich compositions, Sextet has an arch form: A-B-C-B-A. The paired movements share a tempo and a particular cycle of chords. These cycles use dominant chords with added tones to give it a darker, more chromatic sound, much like Reich's previous piece, The Desert Music .
A typical performance lasts about 26 minutes.
Sextet plays with two aspects of music. First, it tries to overcome natural acoustic limitations of percussion instruments. Vibraphones are normally incapable of sustaining pitches at the same volume like wind or string instruments; they act much like a piano, where notes are struck and then allowed to ring, eventually decaying. To counter this limitation, Reich employs the extended technique of bowing of the bars with a bass bow. A similar limitation in the percussion section is countered by the use of the synthesizers. At the time Sextet was written, keyboard percussion instruments capable of reaching into the bass range (5-octave marimbas or bass marimbas) were not widely available. To give the work more depth in the lower pitch ranges, the bass drum is employed with doubling from the pianos or synthesizers.
Second, the piece plays with ambiguity. In the third movement, a basic 12-beat pattern is ambiguous between a division into three and into four. In other parts of the piece, the line that was the melody becomes the accompaniment, even though the actual notes do not change.
The piece was co-commissioned by the Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians and the French government. An incomplete version premiered in December 1984, in Paris. It was reworked in early 1985 and received its American premiere in New York on October 31, 1985 during the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as the stage music for Laura Dean's Impact. [1] It then was recorded by Steve Reich's ensemble on Nonesuch Records in 1986.[ citation needed ]
Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer best known as a pioneer of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go "out of phase." This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow.
Music for a Large Ensemble is a piece of music written by Steve Reich in 1978. It is scored for violin 1, violin 2, cellos, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, 2 soprano saxophones, 4 trumpets, 4 pianos, 2 marimbas, vibraphone, 2 xylophones and two female voices.
Music for 18 Musicians is a work of minimalist music composed by Steve Reich during 1974–1976. Its world premiere was on April 24, 1976, at The Town Hall in the Midtown Manhattan Theater District. Following this, a recording of the piece was released on the ECM New Series in 1978. The 1998 recording for Nonesuch Records won the Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance.
The Desert Music is a work of music for voices and orchestra composed by the minimalist composer Steve Reich. It is based on texts by William Carlos Williams and takes its title from the poetry anthology The Desert Music and Other Poems. The composition consists of five movements, with a duration of about 46 minutes. In both its arrangement of thematic material and use of tempi, the piece is in a characteristic arch form (ABCBA). The piece was composed in 1983 and had its world premiere on 17 March 1984 in Cologne, Germany.
A sextet is a formation containing exactly six members. The former term is commonly associated with vocal ensembles or musical instrument groups, but can be applied to any situation where six similar or related objects are considered a single unit.
The Universe Symphony is an unfinished work by American classical music composer Charles Ives.
A percussion ensemble is a musical ensemble consisting of only percussion instruments. Although the term can be used to describe any such group, it commonly refers to groups of classically trained percussionists performing primarily classical music. In America, percussion ensembles are most commonly found at conservatories, though some professional groups, such as Nexus and So Percussion exist. Drumlines and groups who regularly meet for drum circles are two other forms of the percussion ensemble.
City Life is a minimalist composition by Steve Reich written in 1995. The work was commissioned by Ensemble Modern, the London Sinfonietta, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. It premiered in March 1995 and was recorded on the Nonesuch label in 1996.
Steve Reich and Musicians, sometimes credited as the Steve Reich Ensemble, is a musical ensemble founded and led by the American composer Steve Reich. The group has premiered and performed many of Reich's works both nationally and internationally. In 1999, Reich received a Grammy Award for "Best Small Ensemble Performance " for the ensemble's performance of Music for 18 Musicians.
Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedűvel (2000) is a song cycle in seven movements by the composer György Ligeti based on poetry by Sándor Weöres. The work is scored for mezzo-soprano and an unusual ensemble of percussion and wind instruments. The lyrics are whimsical and often nonsensical, sometimes combining random Hungarian words or parts of words into a nonsense language.
Stuart Saunders Smith was an American composer and percussionist. After having studied composition and music theory at three music institutions, Smith was currently based in Vermont, United States, with his wife Sylvia. He produced almost 200 compositions, half of which were written for percussion instruments with a focus on the vibraphone.
Drumming is a piece by minimalist composer Steve Reich, dating from 1970–1971. Reich began composition of the work after a short visit to Ghana and observing music and musical ensembles there, especially under the Anlo Ewe master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. His visit was cut short after contracting malaria. Classical music critic K. Robert Schwarz describes the work as "minimalism's first masterpiece".
Luigi Morleo is an Italian percussionist and composer of contemporary music, who lives in Bari and teaches at the Niccolò Piccinni Conservatory.
A Pierrot ensemble is a musical ensemble comprising flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. This ensemble is named after 20th-century composer Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal work Pierrot lunaire, which includes the quintet of instruments above with a narrator.
Naive and Sentimental Music is a symphonic work by American composer John Adams. The title of the work alludes to an essay by Friedrich Schiller, On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, that contrasts a creative personality that creates art for its own sake versus one conscious of other purposes, such as art’s place in history. The composer cites both the slowly developing harmonies of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony and the atmosphere of the Sonoma coastline as inspirations for the work. The piece was co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Ensemble Modern, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It received its first public performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen on February 19, 1999. A recording by Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic was subsequently released by Nonesuch Records.
Pléïades is a composition for six percussionists composed in 1978 by Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, originally commissioned by the percussion ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg. It is notable for its use of the sixxen, an instrument Xenakis had constructed specifically for the piece.
Bob Becker is an American percussionist and composer known primarily as a founding member of the Nexus percussion ensemble, as well as a performer in the Steve Reich and Musicians ensemble. He primarily performs as a keyboard percussionist, but is also skilled in tabla and concert snare drumming. As a composer, Becker employs a multicultural approach by mixing the style of western military drumming with North Indian Hindustani idioms, such as raga scale patterns and tabla drumming. This fusion of compositional practices is the main focus of works like Lahara and Mudra. There are also traces of influence from the music of minimalists like Steve Reich, which can be attributed to Becker's experience with that composer's music.
Radio Rewrite is a 2012 musical composition by the American composer Steve Reich, inspired by two songs by the British rock band Radiohead: "Jigsaw Falling into Place" and "Everything in Its Right Place". It is the first time that Reich has reworked material from western pop or rock music.
Emmanuel Séjourné is a French composer and percussionist, and head of percussion at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. His music is influenced by Western classical music and by popular music.
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