NPR shared a retrospective of Terry Riley’s In C, arguably THE seminal work in the rise of minimalism in classical music, and a hugely influential work on electronic musicians.
In C was a unique work when it was introduced – an avant garde classical music work that immediately embraced by listeners. It debuted Nov. 4, 1964 at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, with composers Steve Reich, Morton Subotnick and Pauline Oliveros participating.
The composition is built around 53 short musical phrases that each musician plays, repeating the phrases an undetermined number of times before moving on to the next. Instrumentation is up to the performers. Because of the way the phrases can be repeated a different number of times by each performer, and the open instrumentation, the piece can vary in texture, shape and length.
In C was a direct influence on minimalists Steve Reich and Philip Glass, who were soon creating their own styles of minimal music. And you can hear the influence of In C and Terry Riley’s music in popular works, ranging from The Who‘s Baba O’Riley from 1971, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells from 1973, and the work of Tangerine Dream and other electronic music groups.
Terry Riley’s In C: The eternal evolution of Terry Riley’s minimalist masterpiece
Coincidentally my recent experiment involving covert contact microphones in public lavatories (prior to being closed down by Miami Dade PD) was inspired by ‘In C’ – mine was called ‘In Wee’ .
Really important work
That, friends and foes alike, is what’s called comedy. Smashing go at it too!
Yeah, sorry about that police intervention. I had no problem with it, until you developed the piece into “In me”, which was quite unexpected, unhygienic and painful.
No worries. Insertions and expulsions are all part of the artistic experience, though the lack of hygiene was indeed palpable. I used Collide4 to process the wonderful timbres captured in the lavatory, ranging from deep guttural flappy basses to fizzy sprays reminding me of the work of Jackson Pollock. Of course I also used several of my 13x Make Noise Maths (not a clone!) modules to aimlessly modulate whatever I could on the Collide4 and the obligatory Clouds (it is iambent after all). Due to the MDPD intervention I will no longer be running such art projects in Florida. I am thinking California next? I hear such nonsense is not only tolerated, but actively encouraged there? Sounds a wonderful place to live. My next installation will feature the Playtronica ‘Dog Turd’ device recently featured on this site to connect directly with effluent to generate more CV to help process the audio. I have also had great success with Beep Boop Modules (UK) who sell waterproof contact microphones which float nicely alongside urinal cakes for bubbly textures. 🙂
An Eli5 perhaps?
Among the musicians who played on the original 1968 release were David Rosenboom and Jon Hassell.
Discovered Terry Riley ages ago while searching for weird music on Soulseek. My favourite is still Church of Anthrax, but “in C” was the earlier and more seminal piece. Well worth checking out for anyone interested in electronic music.
In terms of inspiring electronic music, I’d also recommend checking out Edgar Varèse, pioneer of musique concrète, which was hugely influential on sampling, and the incorporation of found, non-musical sounds and sound processing in composition. Both Riley’s and Varèse’s influence on contemporary popular and electronic music is hard to overstate.
Church Of Anthrax contains the track “The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles,” which features John Cale on piano and Terry Riley on soprano. It is incredible; it actually perfectly captures the essence of walking through the actual hall in Versailles. Totally incredible.
You will want to read and play with Teropa’s page on In C:
https://teropa.info/blog/2017/01/23/terry-rileys-in-c
and the rest of his site as well.
more into Human Music personally.