PENDULUM6 - Jerome Joy website

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!!Pendulum Music (Steve Reich) {br}{br} \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t ---- '''STEVE REICH on "Pendulum Music" (April 2000)'''{br}{br}''I was spending the summer in New Mexico, living and working out there in '68. I went up to Boulder to collaborate with a friend of mine, William Wyley, who's a painter. We were trying to put together a 'happening' with sculpture, black light. While we were working on that, Bruce Nauman, who was a student of Wyley, stopped by. The three of us were in this room and I had one of these Wollensack tape recorders - they're these funky 1950's models with a cheap electric microphone. It was an old machine by then. I had holding the microphone, which was plugged into the back of the machine so it could record. The speaker was turned up. Being out West, I let it swing back and forth like a lasso. As it passed by the speaker of the machine, it went 'whoop!' and then it went away.{br}{br}We were all laughing at this and the idea popped into my mind that if you had two or three of these machines, you would have this audible sculpture phase piece.{br}{br}The event that Wyley and I did was the first use of this piece, done with two machines. When it was done as a concert piece at the Whitney Museum in 1969, during an event of my music, it was 'performed' by [Bruce Nauman\|AUDIAnauman], Michael Snow, Richard Serra, James Tenney and myself. They pulled back their measured microphones and I counted off 4-4 and on the downbeat, they all let it go and sat down, including me. Then the microphones begin to 'whoop!' as they pass in front of the speaker because the microphones had been preset to be loud enough to give feedback when it's in front of the speaker but not when it swings to the left and the right. Over a period of ten minutes, which was a little too long for my taste, and as the pendulums come to rest, you entered a pulsing drone. Once it hit the drone, I would pull the plug on the machine and the whole thing ended.{br}{br}It's the ultimate process piece. It's me making my peace with Cage. It's audible sculpture. If it's done right, it's kind of funny.{br}Conceptually, it fits hand-in-glove with my other work. It's a phase piece, a process piece. It's the idea of a piece that runs on its own once you set it up and load it and you can walk away. In terms of what I've done from '65 to the present, it's a totally oddball piece.{br}It's not a piece that needs to be done very often. I was not interested in recording (it). The Avant Garde Ensemble recording is very good - the pitch content becomes kind of a phase piece. They wisely did several versions and presented them all- it's the only piece of mine that doesn't have a sonic outcome. I never have been close to John Cage but this piece was a way of saying "OK, here it is but it isn't!"'' — (Steve Reich — ^[[Source\|http://www.furious.com/perfect/ohm/reich.html]^]){br}{br}{br}\| \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t ---- ''Performing and listening to a gradual musical process resembles:{br}pulling back a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually come to rest;{br}turning over an hour glass and watching the sand slowly run through to the bottom;{br} placing your feet in the sand by the ocean’s edge and watching, feeling, and listening to the waves gradually bury them.''{br} — {small}'''(Steve Reich, Writings on Music, p. 34; and in Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials, exhibition catalogue, New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1969, pp. 56-57)'''{/small}\|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t ---- ''A pendulum is not a musician. So of all my pieces that was the most impersonal, and was the most emblematic and the most didactic in terms of the process idea, and also most sculptural. In many ways you could describe ''Pendulum Music'' as '''audible sculpture''', with the objects being the swinging microphones and the loudspeakers. I always set them up quite clearly as sculpture. It was very important that the speakers be laid flat on the floor, which is obviously not usual in concerts.''{br} — {small}'''(Reich, “Steve Reich: Interview,” in Studio International (November/December 1976), p. 305; reprint, as “Second Interview with Michael Nyman,” in Writings on Music, p. 95.)'''{/small} \| {br}{br} {br}{br} -----
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