Canons, Augmentations, and Their Meaning in Two Works by Steve Reich

[1] Many scholars have attempted to pinpoint exactly what constitutes minimalist music. Timothy Johnson (1994) identifies five aspects of minimalist music: continuous formal structure, an even rhythmic texture and bright tone, a simple harmonic plan, a lack of extended melodic lines, and repetitive rhythmic patterns.(1) Canons come to mind as a compositional technique that achieves a few of these aspects, as they lend themselves to even and repetitive rhythmic textures, and, if allowed to continue over the span of an entire piece or movement, would generate a continuous form. Traditionally, canons are rather strict in their contrapuntal usage. A single voice begins, and at some interval of time later another voice will enter, imitating what the first voice has performed. Any number of additional voices can be added, and the imitated material can continue as long as a composer's counterpoint skills allow. Augmentation is one of several methods used to alter a typical canon. In these situations, the first voice remains constant, but the imitative voice or voices elongate the melody, usually doubled in duration.[2] The music of Steve Reich reveals a penchant for canons; his use of them, especially augmented canons, is unique and remarkably consistent. A reexamination of canonic technique in Reich's music will reveal these consistencies across a large span of his compositional output. Additionally, the manner in which Reich composes with augmentation lends itself to certain extra-musical associations, helping to uncover larger meanings for the works in which they are present. This article consists of two parts; to begin, I examine the methods in which Reich composes with canons and augmentation in two compositions that involve the human voice, Tehillim (1981) and Three Tales (2003), highlighting the unique technical features of Reich's canons and the consistency of their usage across both works. In part two, I explore the possible meaning of canons and augmentation in these works, examining how they interact with the text of Tehillim and the text and video of Three Tales to influence their overall affect.Canons and Augmentations[3] Tehillim is Reich's first major composition utilizing the human voice in live performance. Divided into four parts, the work sets various Psalm texts from both Latin and Hebrew versions of the Bible. Example 1 presents the melodic line that begins Part IV. When first heard, the melody is a solo, but it quickly develops into a three-voice canon with an interval of imitation of a quarter note. This fast-paced canon continues for several measures until a small break in the texture arrives, preceding the augmentation of the melody. The augmentation, however, replaces the imitative texture with a new homophonic setting. As can be seen in Example 1, the melody is slightly stretched on each subsequent entrance, and, during the final presentation, the pitch content is also transposed.Example 1. Augmentation of melody in Tehillim, Part IV(click to enlarge and listen)[4] The numbers above each staff indicate a diatonic contour analysis consisting of ordered pitch intervals in diatonic, rather than chromatic space. The pitch content from the original to the first augmented melody remains unchanged, thereby creating the same contour as the original melody; only the durational values for some of the pitches have been elongated. In the second augmented melody, the pitch collections shifts up a perfect fifth, and even with the addition of extra notes on some syllables, the overall contour between syllables remains largely unchanged. The only discrepancy comes with the last four intervals; these have changed to . However, this slight deviation in contour does not change the ending pitch of the melody; in other words, the original contour, , yields the same ending pitch as the new, deviant contour.(2) This is similar to, though not exactly like, a tonal answer in a fugue. …