If you think you’re good at rhythm, here’s a chance to put it to the test.
Steve Reich is a pioneer of minimal music, and it doesn’t get much more minimal than his piece “Clapping Music.” The aptly-named work was written in part as a response to the composer’s ambitious stage plot from playing music around the world.
“Starting in 1971, my ensemble began touring Europe. We would carry 2000 pounds of loudspeakers, amplifiers, drums, marimbas, glockenspiels, electric organs, microphones, and so on,” he writes on his website. “In 1972, I composed ‘Clapping Music’ to create a piece of music that would need no instruments beyond the human body.”
This, of course, is no ordinary hand clapping. Reich’s early work focused on phasing, a compositional technique in which the same part is repeated by two musicians at a steady, though not identical, tempo. The parts slowly drift out of unison, creating a slight echo effect that becomes more complex and unique the further apart they go.
He took a slightly different approach to “Clapping Music.”
“At first I thought it would be a phase piece, but this proved inappropriate since it introduced a difficulty (phasing) that seemed inconsistent with such a simple way of producing sound,” he explains. “The solution was to have one part remain fixed, repeating the pattern throughout, while the second moves abruptly, after a number of repeats, from unison to one beat ahead, and so on, until it is back in unison with the first. It can thus be difficult to hear that the second performer is in fact always playing the same pattern as the first, though starting in a different place.”
Written in 12/8, each bar has four beats with subdivisions of three. The first part’s unwavering rhythm gives an anchor to the listener, but each time the second part shifts by an eighth note, it completely resets your sense of the phrase.
This YouTube video by Gerubach provides a visual cue of what’s happening in the music with scrolling rhythmic notation:
More than just a performance piece, Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music” is a feat of rhythmic awareness. It’s fun to try with a friend, and you can even get creative by adding pitched instruments to play the rhythms.
Check out the sheet music and give it a go!
