Steve Reich, born in New York in 1936, redefined musical composition in the latter years of the twentieth century. Having studied with such notable composers as Vincent Persichetti, Luciano Berio, and Darius Milhaud, Reich is well-versed in both serial and tonal techniques. This eclectic background led him to consider other elements for composition aside from the usual melody with harmony. While these elements exist in his music, Reich has focused some of his works entirely on rhythm (Clapping Music, 1972), phasing and timbre (Piano Phase, 1967), and specific harmonic and register considerations (Music for 18 Musicians, 1976). According to Reich,

What I’m interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one in the same thing.

His studies in philosophy and music, coupled with studies in African drumming, Gamelan music, and Hebrew cantillation have awarded him countless times. In addition to Reich and his formed ensemble of Musicians selling out Carnegie Hall, he has won two Grammy Awards, been selected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and awarded membership to the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest.

Reich’s works have been performed by the world’s top orchestras and ensembles. In Tokyo in 2007, he was awarded the prestigious Preamium Imperial Award in Music, an international award given in areas of the arts not covered by the Nobel Prize.

As for the certain je ne sais quoi, it is a testament to Reich’s ability to seamlessly blend the process, with the music.

Clapping Music, by Steve Reich

Other Notable Works:

Piano Phase (1967), for two pianos

Music for Pieces of Wood (1973), for pitched claves

Different Trains (1988), for string quartet and tape

Three Tales (2001), a three-act digital video opera, recalling three events of the twentieth century: the Hindenburg disaster (1937); Bikini Atoll atomic testing (1946-54); Cloning of Dolly the Sheep (1997)

Name:  Elliot Carter

Born:  1908, New York

Current post:  Full-time composer

Previous post:  N/A

Publisher:  Boosey & Hawkes | G. Schirmer

Suggested listening:  Eight Pieces for Four Timpani

Quote:

Talking about a materialistic thing, I get about 13 times more royalties from Europe than I do from America.

-Elliot Carter

Elliot Carter’s “Canaries” from Eight Pieces for Timpani

Name:  Michael Colgrass

Born:  1932, Chicago area

Current post:  Composer and lecturer

Previous post:  N/A

Publisher:  Carl Fischer

Suggested listening:  Winds of Nagual

Quote:

I’m not trying to pull any tricks or dazzle anybody. I’m trying to make a music which convinces me, and which is interesting to me. It’s as simple as that.

Michael Colgrass, in an interview with Joseph Horowitz

Michael Colgrass, working on Deju Vu

Photo credit:  Arnold Matthews

Name:  Christopher Rouse

Born:  1949, Baltimore, MD

Current post:  Professor of Composition, The Juilliard School

Previous post:  Professor of Music, Eastman School of Music

Publisher:  Boosey & Hawkes | Schott-Helicon

Suggested listening:  Flute Concerto

Quote:

I got the opportunity to know Mr. Bernstein only in the summer of 1989, although I had admired his work as composer, conductor, and musical evangelist for most of my life. He remains for me a figure of inestimable importance in the history of music, one whose passion for and commitment to his art was insurpassable, and his sudden death in October 1990 robbed us all of an almost superhuman musical giant.

-Christopher Rouse on Leonard Bernstein, discussing the third movement of Rouse’s Trombone Concerto

Name:  Tan Dun

Born:  1957, China

Current post:  Full-time composer

Previous post:  N/A

Publisher:  G. Schirmer

Suggested listening:  Symphony 1997

Quote:

“Organic music” concerns both matters of everyday life and matters of the heart.
These ideas find their origin in the animistic notion that material objects have spirits residing in them, an idea ever-present in the old village where I grew up in China. Paper can talk to the violin, the violin to water. Water can communicate with trees, and trees with the moon, and so on. In other words, every little thing in the totality of things, the entire universe, has a life and a soul.

-Tan Dun, describing his perception of the interconnections between music and the universe