"No one had done anything like this before-- where you just had a piece built all out of patterns, and the first concerts of 'In C' were kind of big communal events where a lot of people would come out and sometimes listen or dance to the music because the music would get quite ecstatic with all these repeated patterns."
-Terry Riley
As one of the "founding fathers" of minimalist composition, Terry Riley has spent much of his career demonstrating the ways simple, repetitive musical figures can be arranged to create sophisticated, dizzyingly complex, and wonderfully disorienting compositions. One of the most famous of these (in fact, arguably the first) is In C, originally recorded in 1968 and to this day a popular performance piece for progressive-leaning musical ensembles.
In C is in some ways an aleatoric piece, meaning that some elements of the composition are left to chance, i.e. the discretion of the performer. The sheet music for In C is accompanied by two pages of instructions from Riley which outline a few essential performance rules, as well as the portions of the composition in which the musician is permitted to vary their approach based on the developing mechanics of the music as the ensemble moves through the piece. In C is composed of 53 short musical patterns, to be played at any tempo and usually over a steady, eighth-note pulse of C notes (many times produced by a piano or a mallet instrument, though I've seen at least one classical ensemble employ an iBook). The piece can be played with any combination of instruments. Riley suggests a group of 35, though more or less performers can still render it effectively. (The original had 11 musicians, while one performance featured 124!)
Now, what makes In C such a landmark composition is its central rule, or lack thereof: though each instrument moves through the same 53 patterns, the duration a musician spends on each is not set. Each pattern is designed to not only be played in unison or canonically (think singing rounds) with itself, but also with the several patterns that surround it. It is here that In C dramatically comes to life: the polyrhythms and hypnotic shapes that emerge as patterns clash and merge and intertwine are fascinating. Generally, players are supposed to stay within three patterns of each other, a restriction that does little to hinder the variable nature of the results and lends an air of slowly transforming, over-arching development to the entire performance.
At least 20 recordings of In C exist, of which I've heard three. The best of the three is a 1998 live performance by the ensemble Bang on a Can, followed by Riley's original recording, and then Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.'s 2003 attempt, which is very much in the spirit of the piece, but seems to spend a large part of the time disregarding some pretty essential elements (e.g., failing to have multiple instruments functioning polyphonically by varying patterns; much of the time it sounds like two guys playing the patterns in unison, in order, though admittedly it's difficult to tell underneath the several layers of shrieking, swooping synth drones). Still, AMT do sort of incorporate a few variations that I would be interested to try when performing In C. The first is abandoning a steady, time-keeping pulse of C notes in favor of a sustained drone (or even a very slow, droning "pulse" independent of keeping time). I envision a slightly distorted, noise-style drone in the neighborhood of C rather than a clear, sustained note using something like an organ, for example. Time keeping duties are then handed over to a drummer or percussionist, something permitted by Riley in his original instructions. With steady established rhythm and a drone acting as a pedal point to anchor the rest of the instruments, an ensemble comprised of typical jazz instrumentation (maybe an alto and tenor sax, clarinet, Fender Rhodes, guitar, bass, etc.) could churn out a pretty impressive reading of In C. Many ensembles seem hesitant to stray too far from the basic sound of Riley's first recording, which in my opinion leads to an occasionally dominating vibraphone or piano that draws undue attention to the eighth-note pulse instead of the evolving patterns.But discussing In C can only take you so far. In many respects it's fairly simple, but it's also high-concept in its own unique and history-of-music-changing way. It's difficult to imagine via mere description, so take a few minutes to listen to some of the clips below.
Here's an excerpt from the performance of In C in Los Angeles with 124 musicians. It's just audio, and you should stick with it at least until the two minute mark, as it takes a little while for some of the patterns to really pick up. (In situations with an extremely large ensemble like this, a lot of the patterning decisions are made by a conductor, lest the whole thing devolve into a buzzing mess).
This is a brief excerpt from a performance by the Liminal group, showcasing a slower tempo:
And for those interested/intrigued/excited, you can download a .pdf file of the score to In C, complete with Riley's instructions, as well as listen to an excerpt of Riley's original 1968 recording at Other Minds:
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