Terry Riley – In C
By thatch • May 18th, 2008 • Category: Chill, Electronica, Music
The things you find on the Internet… Terry Riley has a Myspace site, well actually it’s the Italian Terry Riley Fan Club’s page but you what I mean, besides Terry is still busy writing music.
So who is Terry Riley I hear you ask. Well for me he is one of the first experimental musicians I heard and “In C” is the piece that started me off down a path of wonder. From here I found Stockhausen, La Monte Young, and ended up totally fascinated with the possibilities of music that wasn’t 12 bar rock and roll… nothing much has changed really. If you type his name into Google you can get his Bio and if you head to Last.fm you can downlaod the very album I heard all those years ago. I mean how often do you get to hear a music that changed the way western music was written and performed.
“In C” consists of 53 short, numbered musical phrases (you can download the score here) ; each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times. Each musician has control over which phrase he or she plays: players are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase. The performance directions state that the musical ensemble should try to stay within two to three phrases of each other. The phrases must be played in order, although some may be skipped. As detailed in some editions of the score, it is customary for one musician to play the note C (in octaves) in repeated eighth notes. This functions as a metronome and is referred to as “The Pulse”.
OK that’s way more info than you ever wanted to know but he is an important composer, in the album notes for “The Who: The Ultimate Collection” there is a mention that “A Rainbow In Curved Air” inspired Pete Townshend’s synth parts on The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Baba O’Riley”, the latter named in tribute to Riley as well as to Meher Baba and every time I hear “Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s “Music For Found Harmonium” I have to stop and go “did that riff come from “In C” or is it just coincidence”?
Highly Recommended and just perfect for a slow rainy Sunday.
Websites at http://www.terryriley.com/ and http://www.myspace.com/terryriley1935
thatch is fascinated by guitars, music, guitars, production, silly noises, guitars and used to be a musician. Did I mention the thing about the guitars?
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