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Comment on the Technology, Structure, Harmony, Texture and Melody of Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint

In: Film and Music

Submitted By merwanator
Words 357
Pages 2
Electric Counterpoint, by an American composer named Steve Reich, is a Minimalist piece which was written in the 1980s. It is the last in a series of three compositions for soloists playing along with pre-recorded multi-track tape loops. These loops being repeated leaves the note addition and resultant melody to the performer and the performing of it has been compared to playing in an ensemble with yourself. The piece is in binary form (AB) with 4 sections within the A and B sections and it ends with a Coda. At the start of the piece there is tonal ambiguity with hints at the key of E minor but this does not become clear until the bass guitar is introduced in part two of the A section. The three chord progressions used in A-3 are C Bm E5, C D Em and C D Bm. These chords make it clearer that the piece’s tonality is modal, specifically the E aeolian mode, because there is no F# in Em (as in the D chord) but there is in the aeolian mode. The most obvious indicator that the B section has begun is the change in key from E minor to C minor- and the piece switches between these keys frequently as the B section develops. The texture of the piece begins monophonically with a single guitar which starts as a one bar ostinato and then is full by bar six by using the note addition technique. Then layers are added and it becomes a four part guitar canon where the live guitar plays the resultant melody and it becomes polyphonic overall. In A-2 the bass guitar is introduced using the same note addition technique as the guitar and it is unusually panned to both speakers. After that in A-3 when strummed chords are introduced, there is a homophonic feel but it remains polyphonic (seven guitar loops, a live guitar and two bass parts overall). A new bass ostinato is introduced in B-2 and then the texture thins during the Coda as the piece comes to an end with an E5

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