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!!Piano Phase (1967) ---- \|t Durée approximative \|t \|t — 15-20 minutes \| \|t Dates de composition \|t \|t — 1967\| \|t Création \|t \|t — '''1967''' - ''Madison/Teaneck, N. J., Farleigh Dickinson College'' - ''(Art Murphy, Steve Reich, pianos)''\| \|t Dispositif : \|t \|t — pour deux pianos ou deux marimbas{br}—— ''for 2 pianos or marimbas''\| \|t Éditeur : \|t \|t Universal Edition\| {br}{br} ---- {html} <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i0345c6zNfM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <br><small>Tinnitus Piano Duo (Tine Allegaert & Lukas Huisman). Recorded in the Miryhall of the Ghent Music Faculty, 2012<i>. — (<A HREF="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0345c6zNfM" target="_blank">Source</A>)</i></small> {/html} [../files/articles/reich/1967_pianophase_score2.jpg\|../files/articles/reich/1967_pianophase_score.pdf] {br}{br}— '''^[[Download the full score (pdf)\|https://jeromejoy.org/files/articles/reich/1967_pianophase_score.pdf]^]''' {br} \|t \|t \|t ''« Late in 1966, I recorded a short repeating melodic pattern played on the piano, made a loop of that pattern, and then tried to play against the loop myself, exactly as if I were a second tape recorder. I found, to my surprise, that while I lacked the perfection of the machine, I could give a fair approximation of it while enjoying a new and extremely satisfying way of playing. » — (Steve Reich){br}Piano Phase seems to have undergone several revisions, or at least existed in a number of different states before it crystallised into the version in general circulation today. Reich mentions that the pattern he looped and played along to on his tape recorder later became one of the basic units. He describes the collaborative development of the piece as follows : {br}Arthur Murphy and I, both working in our homes, experimented with the performance of this phase shifting process using piano and tape loops. The next step, which happened in late ’66 or early ’67, was that Arthur (who was the first member of my ensemble and a friend from Julliard) and I went out to Fairleigh Dickinson College to do a concert. The night before we went over and did it live, and it was ‘look, Ma, no tape!’ — (Steve Reich){br}{br}This first performance of the two-piano version was at Fairleigh Dickinson, New Jersey, in January 1967 with Reich and Murphy on pianos. The piece, however, was programmed as Four Pianos in its appearance at the Park Place Gallery two months later and involved four performers on electronic keyboards: Reich, Murphy, Phillip Corner, and James Tenney. Interestingly, in the exhibition catalogue to the 1969 Whitney Museum show ‘Anti-Illusion: Procedures / Materials’, Reich was still describing the piece as ‘a work in progress’.{br}One of the reasons why the score was not completed until after the initial performances was that for Reich and his ensemble the new method of performing by repeating melodic units in different phased relationships meant that it was not necessary to read any notation while they played. In order to perform the piece, Reich suggests, ‘one learns the musical material and puts the score aside’; once the melodic fragments and the basic structure is learnt, the only things contingent upon performance are the total number of repetitions and the speed of the individual transitions. In this sense, Reich advocated an anti-expressive approach to performance and submission to the process as an almost religious act of self- discipline: ‘the pleasure I get from playing is not the pleasure of expressing myself, but of subjugating myself to the music’. Although reminiscent of the ‘machine aesthetic’, Reich saw this as ‘simply controlling your mind and body very carefully as in yoga breathing exercises’ which serve to ‘focus the mind to a fine point’.{br}In a 1970 interview with Michael Nyman, Reich argued that this kind of performance ‘is something we could do with more of, and the “human expressive activity” which is assumed to be innately human is what we could do with less of right now’. Such an attitude can be found in both Reich’s idea that participating in strict musical processes enacts a liberating shift of attention outwards toward ‘it’, as well as his interest in non-Western musical traditions (such as those of Africa and Bali) which, he argues, also ‘have an ^[aspect of^] impersonality to them’. {br}Rather than being a singular process which progresses and concludes ‘on its own terms’, the piece consists of three distinct and clearly ‘composed’ sections. Piano Phase also has the potential to be analysed harmonically, especially as Reich is quite clear that it has an intentional harmonic structure: ‘the piece is divided into three sections...the first is twelve beats in B minor, the second eight beats forming an apparent E dominant chord, and the last is four beats in A (probably major but lacking a stated third degree)’.{br}By far the most comprehensive analytical account of Piano Phase’s long first cycle can be found in Paul Epstein’s 1986 article for the Musical Quarterly (Paul Epstein, ‘Pattern Structure and Process in Steve Reich’s Piano Phase’, The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 72/4 (1986), 495). In it, he provides a neat description of Reich’s phasing process during this section: ‘we have in effect a series of canons, at distances of from 0 to 11 sixteenth notes, alternating with transitions in which the two voices are out of phase with each other’ where (in the middle) a doubling of tempo is perceived. Epstein notes that as a natural outcome of the phasing process ‘the second half of the cycle is a retrograde of the first, with the relationship between the two players reversed’. The remarkable effects produced by the simple phasing process give Piano Phase its momentum, diversity, and character. Epstein argues that ‘the listener is presented with a rich array of possibilities out of which he/she may construct an experience of the piece’.{br}{br}We might therefore argue that this represents a confluence of the ‘impersonal’ (the seeming autonomy of the process) and the ‘personal’ (perceptual discovery). The listener is given freedom, within the apparently restrictive musical structure, to cultivate his or her own perceptual response to, and even path through, the sound world. This, surely, is the strongest riposte to an Adornian reading of Reich’s repetition. Rather than being an ‘objective’ entity forcing our attention and (political) submission to the collective, the original pattern effectively becomes submerged in its own reflections, allowing individuals to reconstruct it as they wish. Instead of being relentless and unchanging, the phase-shifting process actually serves to produce continual variations of the repeated melodic fragment in an essentially non-developmental way. Furthermore, there is even the possibility of overcoming the rigorous nature of the process through repetitive listening: by adopting different strategies as a listener, ranging in levels of engagement, it is possible to gradually seek more interesting or remote possibilities within the unfolding of the music. — (Ross Cole)'' — {small}^[[Source (Ross Cole)\|https://core.ac.uk/download/files/139/1145668.pdf]^]{/small}\|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t Dans ''Piano Phase'', les deux bandes de ''It’s Gonna Rain'' sont remplacées ici par deux pianos, et l’astuce de Reich est de faire se succéder trois cycles de déphasage complets, utilisant des motifs mélodiques de plus en plus courts, contenant respectivement 12, 8 et 4 doubles. Ceci a pour double effet de rendre la longueur du cycle complet de plus en plus courte, et d’accélérer la périodicité du motif, ce qui augmente la tension née de sa répétition. De plus, un processus global gère la longueur des trois motifs, chaque nouveau motif étant diminué de quatre doubles par rapport au précédent : le silence final de l’œuvre peut ainsi être considéré comme un motif de zéro double.{br}Le principe de déphasage progressif et imperceptible n’est pas en soi le moteur fondamental des processus de Steve Reich. Plus importants sont en particulier les moments de superpositions synchrones des doubles croches (ou croches selon la valeur de la pulsation), qui seules engendrent les motifs résultants. À partir de ''Violin Phase'' (1967), le processus de déphasage peut être momentanément interrompu lors de ces rencontres rythmiques, ce qui donne lieu à de vastes épisodes musicaux formés uniquement de motifs résultants. Et si seule la superposition synchrone entre doubles croches est déterminante, le déphasage progressif qui fait accélérer une voix jusqu’à avoir une double d’avance, peut devenir superflu. À partir de ''Clapping music'' (1971) et ''Six pianos'' (1973) le « déphasage » peut se faire de manière abrupte, en prenant directement une double d’avance. Il vaut peut-être alors mieux parler de décalage.{br}Mais plus importante encore est la capacité du déphasage à mener à l’état de saturation rythmique qui conditionne en général la fin d’une partie ou d’une œuvre. Les motifs rythmiques de Reich sont souvent choisis (intuitivement sans doute) pour pouvoir se compléter eux-mêmes après plusieurs décalages. Dans ''Phase patterns'' par exemple, quatre décalages sont nécessaires pour mener au remplissage total et uniforme des croches.{br}Comme le processus de saturation n’est pas la source de l’écriture musicale, mais une conséquence du processus de déphasage, il n’est pas forcément linéaire : dans ce cas précis le « degré de saturation » des huit croches observe la progression 4 7 6 5 8. À partir de ''Six pianos'' (1973), Steve Reich imagine de créer directement ce processus de saturation sans déphasage ou décalage progressifs. Ce principe a pour caractéristique de rendre plus linéaire l’augmentation du degré de saturation. — (Jérôme Baillet) \| {br}{br} [../files/articles/reich/1967_pianophase_scorenotations_744.jpg\|../files/articles/reich/1967_pianophase_scorenotations.pdf] {br}(published in John Cage / Alison Knowles, "Notations", 1969) — ^[[Download pdf\|https://monoskop.org/images/9/92/Cage_John_Notations.pdf]^] ---- {br}{br} !!!Piano Phase - first performance ---- {small}Click to enlarge{/small} [../files/articles/reich/1967_reichfdu_400.jpg\|../files/articles/reich/1967_reichfdu.jpg] {small}{cap}January 5, 1967 — Concert programme — Fairleigh Dickinson University, Art Gallery — Teaneck, New Jersey{/cap}{/small} {br}{br} {br}{br} ---- ----
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