Music for Mallet Instruments

Steve Reich and Amadinda Percussion Group - Music for Mallet Instruments

Performers:
Amadinda Percussion group: Karoly Bojtos, Zoltan Racz, Zsolt Sarkany, Zoltan Vaczi

Agnes Dobszay, Erzsebet Hajdu, Zsuzsanna Lukin - voices (track 1)
Aurel Hollo, Tibor Nemes, Balazs Papp, Benedek Toth - mallet instruments (track 1)
Bela Farago - electric organ (track 1)
Barnabas Dukay - claves (track 2)
Karoly Binder, Gyorgy Oravecz - pianos, synthesizers (track 3)

While working on Six Pianos I also began work on another piece that seemed to grow very spontaneously from one simple marimba pattern to many patterns played by different instruments. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ was completed in May of 1973, and deals with two simultaneous interrelated rhythmic processes. The first is that of constructing, beat by beat, a duplicate of a pre-existing pattern, with the second one or more beats out of phase with the first exactly as in Six Pianos. This then triggers the second process of augmentation or lengthening of another simultaneous, but different repeating pattern. Augmentation is the lengthening of duration of notes previously played in shorter note values creating the sense of slowing down the musical motion.
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The first process of rhythmic construction, or substitution of beats for rests, is performed by marimbas against marimbas, or glockenspiel against glockenspiel. These rhythmic constructions, which have the effect of creating more fast moving activity in the mallet parts then trigger two women's voices and electric organ into doubling, quadrupling, and further elongating the durations of the notes they sing and play.
When the marimbas and glockenspiels have built up to maximum activity, causing the coices and organ to elongate to maximum length and slowness, then a third woman's voice doubles some of the short melodic patterns resulting from the combination of the four marimba players, using her voice to precisely imitate the sound of these instruments (exactly as in part two of Drumming). During the rhythmic constructions in the marimbas and glockenspiels, the metallophone plays long ringing tones for the same duration as the voices and organ. When the voices and organ get longer, so do the tones of the metallophone.
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One of the most important aspects of this piece for me is the use of voices to double the electric organ and produce a new timbre which is both instrumental and vocal at the same time. The choice of two women's voices and electric organ took several months of experimentation to arrive at. My first impulse was not to use the electric organ because I wanted to avoid working with electronic instruments.
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Music for Pieces of Wood (1973) and Clapping Music (1972) are of the same breed: I intended to compose music employing the simplest instruments possible. My choice fell on the claves (or rather pipes made of hard wood, in this case) because of their different and exact pitches (A, B, C sharp, D sharp and another D sharp pitched an octave higher) and timbre. This happens to be one of the loudest pieces of music I have ever written though it uses no amplification whatsoever.
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Sextet (1985) is five movements played without pause. The relationship of the live movements is that of an arch form A-B-C-B-A. The first and last movements are fast, the second and fourth moderate, and the third is slow. Changes of tempo are made abruptly at the beginning of new movements by metric modulation to either get slower or faster. Movements are also organized harmonically with a chord cycle for the first and fifth, another for the second and fourth, and yet another for the third. The harmonies used are largely dominant chords with added tones creating a somewhat darker, chromatic, and more varied harmonic language than in my earlier works.
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Percussion instruments primarily produce sounds of relatively short duration. In Sextet I was interested in overcoming that limitation. In the second movement, the use of the bowed vibraphone, not merely as a passing effect but as a basic instrumental voice, was one means of getting long tones. The use of the synthesizer as electric organ supplied long continuous sounds not possible with piano. The mallet instruments (marimba, vibraphone, etc.) are basically instruments of high and middle register without a low range. To overcome this limit the bass drum was used, doubling piano or synthesizer played in their lower registers, particularly in the second, third, and fourth movements.
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Composed in 1984-85, Sextet was co-commissioned by Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians and by the French government for the Nexus ensemble. The scoring is for three marimbas, two vibraphones, two bass drums, crotales, sticks, tam-tam, two pianos, and two synthesizers. There are six performers: four percussionists and two keyboard players. (Steve Reich)

Tracklisting:

1. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ {15:59}

2. Music for Pieces of Wood {10:34}

3. Sextet {25:58}

(1) or (1) (2) or (2) [links coming back soon, maybe (1/24/2012)]