Customer Reviews

Terry Riley: In C

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This is one of the works and recodings that put minimalism on the map. Riley's "In C" has been called the "The Rite of Spring" of our time. This first recording led the way to the many other versions that appeared but this is the first and the best (The more recent Innova CD is worth hearing). Fans of minimalism either have the original CBS recording or should add this reisssue to their collection. A must-have.

This recording has some incredible historical significance to it. Forget about minimalism -- I first started wondering about Terry Riley's "In C" because Pete Townshend of The Who said it was the inspiration for his synthesizer riff on the classic rock anthem "Baba O'Riley". It was only later that I started to understand things like Philip Glass or Steve Reich and to realize that Terry Riley fit into that tradition as well, and how significant it really was that "In C" is recognized by many as either the first or one of the first minimalist compositions.

Listening to the piece on this recording -- the first ever made of "In C" and featuring Terry Riley himself on saxophone -- I could definitely hear the connection to music in the more popular minimalist vein. There are brief sections -- perhaps no more than half a minute or so at a stretch -- where I felt the music could actually have been written by Philip Glass if it weren't for the more rambunctious instrumentation. Of course, after a while something uncontrolled breaks out in the structured chaos of this piece that reminds you firmly that this is something else, something less refined and domesticated than mainstream minimalism.

The instrumentation really is something. I listened to the piece before reading about it, and I really thought there must be a gamelan in there, but sadly there is not. In addition to a piano pulse, the instruments are saxophone, oboe, bassoon, trumpet, clarinet, flute, viola, trombone, vibraphone, marimbaphone. But there is definitely a gamelan-like effect that for me recalled Balinese/Javanese music.

This is not music I'd listen to every week, but still I highly recommend it. Yes, in part the recommendation is due simply to the historical significance -- but I also found myself enjoying it much more the second and third time around than the first. It definitely makes me want to seek out more performances of the work. Good stuff, especially for intellectualizing types. For pure emotional content and a more visceral satisfaction, or for beauty as traditionally conceived, you should probably look elsewhere.

Many versions of Terry Riley's "In C" are now available, but this recording of 1968 began it all. The premiere was in 1964 in San Francisco with different instrumentation and number of players. The key problem for Riley in New York was that the recording would be an LP with two sides and about 45 minutes total time. The piece has no breaks and Riley envisioned it longer, over an hour. This CD edition eliminates the artifical break. The tone is more treble than the premiere and subsequent recordings, heavy on woodwinds and tinkling percussion. However, as Riley did not specify any instrumention and number of players, no length of perfomance, nor tempo, every version is valid; they just vary in mood and style.

Historically, the musical world changed with this recording. This piece was conceived in experimental jazz and Eastern musical influences and was regarded as classical because the premiere was covered by the classical music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle. This album was released during the Cultural Revolution and marketed toward the youth, who were listening to Indian ragas and were more receptive to the work's time-expansive and meditative aspects. Steve Reich, who performed at the premiere on Würlizer organ, would go on his own path of minimalism. Thus, with this recording, musicians, composers, and the listening audience expanded their sensitivity, took on a broader, consciousness-directed interest in music. It indeed was a dawn of a new age.

I first heard this about 35 years ago and found it boring and inpenetrable. Yes I found it repetitive - but the piece does evolve and I could not hear any of that. I just heard a carpet of mud.

It was the first "minimalist" piece I heard, but I went on to become a big fan of Reich, Glass, Adams and others. But I never had a fondness for In C.

A few years ago I heard the recording by Bang On A Can and my ears opened up. They created music out of it. Instruments came in and out, emphasised different things, and finally I could follow the piece.

Had the years and exposure to minimalism changed my point of view, or was it the new recording that made the difference? So I went back and got a copy of this original recording. It still sounded like mud. In fairness, I think it was performed by students and probably no one, not the performers, nor the composer really understood what they had there. It took years - decades - for the style to be explored and appreciated so that a good recording could be made.

Riley needs no introduction, and "In C" needs neither introduction nor advocacy. Composed in 1964, it is the composition that invented - or so many say, but not Riley, who has always paid tribute to LaMonte Young for being the mastermind of all of it - what has come to be known as "minimalism", but what I prefer to call "repetitive music", or "repetitive minimalism": it may be based on the repetition of minimal cells, but the result can be all but "minimal", as illustrated by In C.

The score - reproduced on the original LP and here again, although the choice of white print on black surface and the CD-booklet size make it more an image to contemplate than a score to read - is little more than a canvass, consisting indeed of 53 small melodic cells, some limited to three notes/two pitches. There is an additional pitch not represented in the score, called "the pulse": a piano playing a constant 8th-notes, fast tempo ostinato toll of two octave high-Cs. It starts and ends the piece, bare. The principle of the composition is to have any number of any instruments, each playing each of the 53 cells in succession (but some may be omitted), each moving to the next ad lib, though with relative synchronisation with all the rest: the rule here is that there should be no more than five cells distance between any player. The effect, in Riley's own words, is like "lying in a field, and there are cloud formations just passing over, and you're just watching them form and reform".

As many have remarked, though the harmonic basis in C, in moves through various related tonalities.

This recording premiere was made in 1968, following shortly the New York Premiere at Carnegie Hall on December 19,1967 (concert poster nicely reproduced in the booklet), and three years after the premiere in San Francisco, an event which seems to have had no immediate consequence. In C can and has subsequently been played by a vast array of different ensembles, including percussion (In C), voices (Riley: In C) and traditional Chinese instruments (Terry Riley: In C; Liang: Music of a Thousand Springs; Zen (Ch'an) of Water). Here, Riley used an ensemble of 11 players (including himself) from the Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo's New York State University, strongly slanted in the direction of winds and brass: flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone (played by Riley), bassoon, trumpet, trombone, viola, vibraphone, marimbaphone and, of course, piano/pulse. Two overdubs were added (the second sparingly), first using ten musicians and seven in the second, so that the maximum instrumental layout on the reording consists of 28 instruments. Performance duration is aleatoric, of course; here, the performance was made long enough and kept short enough to fit on an LP - which is short for a CD: 42 minutes. Other recorded performances range from 20 minutes to 76 - the longest being two recordings again conducted by Riley himself, Riley: In C (25th Anniversary Concert) and Terry Riley Repititition Orchestra, recorded live in Moscow in 2000 by the... well, why don't you look for yourselves, there is a typo in the disc's listing, but not the one you think (and I think the Terri Rajli given as "author" is a hilarious phonetic transcription of Terry Riley with a Russian accent; I will NOT try and update the product info on these two).

For a number of decades of music listening I managed to escape "in C" - probably on account of my feeling of deception upon hearing Reich's "Music for 18 musicians". I've never had the original LP, nor the earlier CD reissues, so I can't assess the merits of this new remastering, but it was done by "perhaps the finest of all mastering engineers, Bob Ludwig", and it sounds as if it had been recorded yesterday. So this is now obviously the version to start with.

Whether you enjoy the music or not is going to be a matter of taste - I can't say I am entirely bowled over: I must confess that I find it somewhat grey and dry in tone color and melodic outlook, and I've found the music of Dutch composer Simeon Ten Holt significantly more colorful (even though it is scored for piano ensemble only) and entertaining, with more catching and hypnotic tunes (Simeon ten Holt: Complete Multiple Piano Works [Box Set]), although I recognize that it is derivative of what Riley invented. But my reaction to this particular recording also has to do with the instrumental ensemble chosen by Reich. I've just heard the version played on seven keyboards (including Rhodes piano, two harpsichords and vibraphone) by Piano Circus, Steve Reich: Six Pianos; Terry Riley: In C, and I find that it has more sparkle and joy, thanks to the keyboards' sharper edges. But the historical importance and seminal nature of In C, and of this particular recording, cannot be under-estimated. This is where it all started, so this is where anybody should start. This is not just entertaining, it is history. And the good thing is: it is not just history, it is also entertaining.

Excellent and thorough liner notes. We get both those of the original LP and new ones, with reminiscences from the original performers.

I'm an adventurous music lover: will listen to almost anything. "In C" is a work that dilutes the emotional connection that music provides and renders it to an intellectual exercise in monotony. Even minimalism should have some harmonic narrative. If you enjoy listening to people pound on various instruments in the key of C, then this is your cup of tea.