Inspiration can spark even in the most mundane situations. In 1964, a young composer named Terry Riley was on his way to work playing ragtime piano at San Francisco’s Gold Street Saloon when he had a lightbulb moment that would change the American musical landscape. Unexpectedly, a tiny, sobbing, 2-note seed came to his mind.

“I was on the bus on my way to work when I heard this first line come into my consciousness as if someone were playing it to me,” Riley recalls. “And I was pretty excited, so as soon as I got off work that night, I went home and wrote the first line.”

That seed blossomed in CA track that started the musical movement later known as minimalism.

In the early ’60s, Riley was among a group of freethinking West Coast musicians who were experimenting with music, especially tape loops and psychedelic drugs. the rest in C It came to him quickly, but even after gathering all the musical material, the track wasn’t quite ready for prime time.

“When we first started rehearsing, no one knew how to play, including me,” says Riley. “I had an idea of ​​what it should sound like, but it took a while to rehearse it and actually turn it into music.”

It took some doing because one of the things that made it in C Its innovation is that it carries very few instructions. And that’s the idea; The composer leaves control to the performers. The music consists of a single page containing 53 short musical “riffs” that any number of musicians can play in sequence but at their own discretion. By design, each performance will sound completely different.

One of the difficulties the actors faced in these early rehearsals was the lack of a solid pulse, a kind of click track that would hold the actors together. Enter Steve Reich. He, along with fellow soon-to-be legendary composers Morton Subotnick and Pauline Oliveros, were among the musicians who helped Riley promote the piece.

University of Maryland music professor William Robin wrote the history of music in his book. On Minimalism — Documenting a Musical MovementWritten with Kerry O’Brien. believes in Reich’s contribution in C It cannot be exaggerated. “Reich makes a simple but profound suggestion: What if a pianist played two Cs, octaves high, on the keyboard to start the piece and continue it continuously?” Robin notes. “It basically functions like a human metronome.” This pulse, he adds, is the basis of the voice. in CIt gives it an infectious air.

Finally, on November 4, 1964, Riley and his band of like-minded musicians debuted. in C At San Francisco’s Tape Music Center, the mecca of electronic and new music. Four days later, the headline of a review of the concert in the San Francisco Chronicle read: “Music Like Nothing on Earth.” Critic Alfred Frankenstein concluded his words as follows: in C “masterpiece of the evening.”

Cellist Maya Beiser agrees. Heard it for the first time in C He came across the LP by chance in a record store when he was a 17-year-old high school student. “I immediately felt like this was something very ingenious, similar to E=mc²“The open score idea was beautiful and revolutionary. I was blown away by this simple idea and the concept of freedom it offered.”

Beiser released its own unique version in C earlier this year. His experiment started as an impromptu gift for Riley, then turned into a recording after his approval.

In keeping with Riley’s improvisational way of thinking, Beiser and the recording engineer started with a mostly blank slate, Riley’s stripped-down music. “We started sort of looping all these melodic modules, and I literally just found my way around because I didn’t want to deliberately decide on anything,” he recalls. Armed with only the cello, a loop machine, and a pair of percussionists, Beiser emphasizes the deep, sometimes head-bobbing rhythms inherent in the music.

“He broke it down into sections and integrated each section in a very specific way,” Riley says. “It’s something I wouldn’t consider doing myself. There’s always someone finding new ways to use these materials.” Beiser’s rendition includes an early section with hints of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”, a vocal passage in which the voice and cello intertwine as a nod to the medieval hocket-style singing style, and plenty of sweet sounds with the low C string of Beiser’s treated cello. There is humming. bouncing off the drummers.

Unlike Beiser’s mostly solo approach, in C it is usually played by at least a dozen or more musicians, emphasizing its social powers. “One of those things in C Over the years it has helped connect people from different backgrounds,” says Riley.

This connection mushroomed in 1968 when Riley recorded it. in C for Columbia Records. Suddenly, this strange new music was catapulted directly into the mainstream while taking aim at the new, youthful counterculture. in C actually was on the map with an album contains a map of the piece itself.

“This was an incredibly popular record,” says Robin. “Unlike many other avant-garde records, it remained in Columbia’s catalogue. And one of the cool things is that the exact score of the piece is printed on the cover of the record. “So they were potentially empowering people to organize their own performances of this piece.”

As Robin puts it, this was “a period when most American compositions were so inaccessible in terms of musical language that composers were writing very atonal, cerebral scientific music.” in CHe turned his nose up at academia in his own unique way.

“Terry came to this from a completely different place,” Beiser says. “Since he studied in India, he was influenced by Indian classical music, African music, all non-Western traditions and, of course, free jazz improvisation.”

Improvisation is at the heart of much of Riley’s music. And there’s a way in C An example taken from Indian classical music is that there is room for the performer to make his or her own decisions within strict parameters.

“What does in C “Such groundbreaking work is at the heart of pushing the boundaries of music,” says Robin. “It also has an incredibly rich and compelling soundscape that’s as great as pop music is great.” Mid 60s.”

in C It’s been great enough to appeal to a surprisingly wide range of musicians. A brief review of the records includes: chinese instruments orchestra from Shanghai, musicians A West African Swiss industrial tape, indian musicians From Brooklyn, Japanese acid rocka group 10 harpers In the Netherlands and an orchestra electric guitars.

Riley’s work also works perfectly in amateur settings. Robin organizes annual performances with her students. in C. “This is just one of the many enjoyable experiences I have had as a musician,” he says. “The nature of the music; it’s completely notated at the same time, but it has the sound, the spirit, of these kinds of collaborative jam sessions where musicians are repeating these little riffs over and over again.” Robin’s last performance in May featured a dozen players trading riffs with bassoon, tuba and piano, banjo, vibraphones and Robin’s own alto saxophone.

Even at the beginning, Riley understood how this happened. in C It was effective. “Other composers were interested in what I was doing,” he recalls. “So I knew it would matter.”

It turned out to be a game changer. Both Philip Glass and Steve Reich quickly embraced Riley’s evolving iteration. It’s hard to imagine minimalist classics like Glass Einstein on the Beach from 1976 or the Reich 18 Music for MusiciansIt was completed the same year, but in C. And today, Taylor Swift’s “Peaceimpersonator Riley with his pulse, for television, film and music ads.

Although we’re not living in the same counterculture-fueled time period when Riley wrote his most famous work, there’s a strong appetite for ambient and electronic music and performances you can enjoy today. in C itself. “People want to listen to an hour of transcendent music,” Robin said. “And it’s a tribute to this lightning rod moment from Riley; here it all boils down to the durability of minimalism as an artistic movement that has had a profound impact on popular culture.”

At 89, Riley still composes music every day with views of Mount Fuji from his home in Japan. And he doesn’t shy away from looking back at that long-ago bus journey and the spark of inspiration that helped ignite a musical movement with a piece of music that continues to captivate new audiences and thrive in everyone’s hands 60 years later. Who’s playing.

“in C like one of your kids,” he says with a wry chuckle. “They went out, became famous, did cool things, met other people. “And it turned out to be something different than what you had originally imagined.”

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