Steve Reich In The Afternoon

It begins with a shimmer, a hopeful shifting and stirring. It was just what I needed today.

It was my son who hipped me to Steve Reich Electric Counterpoint when he studied it in school. My wife and I loved it immediately and I recognized how the Orb had sampled it on ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’.

Electric Counterpoint is constructed by, mostly, 10 guitars and 2 bass guitars. Pat Methany then plays the 11th guitar part live against the tape. The whole affect is gentler, less mechanistic and more humane than Reich’s 1973 piece Six Pianos; albeit at the expense of being much less impactful.

Across the three movements, ‘Fast’, ‘Slow’ and then ‘Fast’ the listener gets to watch* break away harmonic units, swirl, sing and swoop around each other, changing the course of the whole, or re-joining it. There is a skein of African melody woven throughout** and the whole is reminiscent of watching swallows wheel and fly across the grass on a sunny afternoon.

Even given the tretze of guitars the brilliance of the piece for me resides in the spaces in the music. At times in the first fast movement you have a continual sequence of notes, reminiscent of running water, while another group of foregrounded guitars play a further sequence; as a listener you can hear the gaps between, that each grouping is its own thing and never feel there are too many notes in play.

Sometimes I would criticise the end of Electric Counterpoint as it just finishes, without much build up other than a slight upwards reach. There are times when that leaves me unsatisfied and others when I think that is utterly reminiscent of life’s happier moments.

It seems utterly superfluous to say it but Pat Methany plays the piece beautifully, his tones always clear, ringing, measured. The production by Judith Sherman is superb also and a part of the piece not to be underestimated.

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There is a reason that Electric Counterpoint is the second side of this Steve Reich LP, the guitar necks leading you onwards like rails on the cover picture are a clue. Electric Counterpoint is the comparatively light relief to Steve Reich’s Different Trains which occupies both the A side of the record and a place as one of the most important cultural reactions to the Nazi holocaust.

More of that next time, for now enjoy this sunshine.

1272 (and a half) Down.

*I respond to it very visually.

**Reich references an African horn melody in his notes, as well as baffling my inadequate musical understanding with phrases like ‘the overall contrapuntal web’, which I can only imagine relates to Shelob on the river Cam.