313
Seated at his keyboard, Terry Riley
accompanies the Lahore-born musician
Pandit Pran Nath—one of his earliest
mentors—in a concert at Le Palace
Theatre, Paris, in 1972.See also: 4 ́33 ̋ 302–305 ■ Six Pianos 320 ■ Einstein on the Beach 321CONTEMPORARY
can be played by any number of
instruments and ensembles of any
size, although Riley prefers a group
of between 25 and 30 musicians.
The performers play the phrases
in a set order but can repeat each
phrase as many times as they like,
creating a piece that can vary in
length from 20 minutes to several
hours. The musicians also start the
phrases at different times, so they
are not always synchronized.
The work is anchored by a
rhythmic pulse provided by one
musician who repeats the C note
throughout—acting as a kind of
metronome. This is usually played
on the piano or a percussion
instrument, such as a marimba.A lasting presence
Although In C has been called
the first truly minimalist work,
it followed a number of earlierexperiments from the late 1950s
and displays major differences
from many other works in the
genre. In most minimalist pieces,
the composer typically controls the
material much more tightly than
Riley, who leaves crucial decisions,
such as the instrumentation and
the number of repetitions, to the
performers. This is known as
“aleatory,” or chance-driven,
music (from the Latin alea,
meaning “game of dice”).Terry Riley Born in California in 1935, Terry
Riley met La Monte Young, with
whom he was to forge a new and
radical approach to music, while
studying composition at the
University of California. In the
1960s, as well as pioneering the
use of tape loops, Riley embraced
electronic overdubbing, especially
on the album A Rainbow in
Curved Air (1969), on which he
played all the instrumental parts
himself—a major influence on
Mike Oldfield’s similarly virtuosic
album Tubular Bells (1973). In
the 1970s, Riley studied Indian
classical music, which he hascontinued to combine with his
interest in avant-garde Western
music and jazz. In the same
decade, Riley began a long-
lasting collaboration with the
Kronos Quartet, producing
many works, including Sun
Rings, which features sounds
gathered from space.Other key works1969 A Rainbow in Curved Air
1971–1972 Persian Surgery
Dervishes
1989 Salome Dances for Peace
2002 Sun RingsRiley has rejected the “minimalist”
label—and resisted being limited
by any kind of “ism.” In spite of
this, his work has been hugely
influential on composers such as
Michael Nyman and Gavin Bryars
in Britain, Americans Steve Reich
and Philip Glass, and the Estonian
Arvo Pärt, who have all embraced
elements of minimalism in their
work. Riley’s hypnotic musical
approach also influenced the rise
of “ambient” music in the 1970s. ■US_312-313_Riley.indd 313 26/03/18 1:02 PM