Music for a Large Ensemble

Program notes

About the Work

Music for a Large Ensemble (1978) grew out of two earlier pieces, Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ and Reich’s masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians, and expands their sound-world for bigger forces: strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion and two wordless female voices. Commissioned by the Holland Festival, it belongs to the period when Reich was moving from the stripped-back process pieces of the 1960s toward a warmer, fuller, more sensuous minimalism, and it glories in the new colours a larger group made possible, especially the bright brass chords that ride above the pulsing texture.

What to Listen For

Listen for the steady, unbroken pulse that underpins everything, and for the interlocking patterns in the pianos and mallet instruments that create Reich’s characteristic shimmering web of sound. Above this, listen for the long-held wind and brass chords and the wordless voices, which trace slow melodic arcs. Reich was experimenting here with the human breath as a measure of musical time: the trumpet chords are written to take one comfortable breath to play. The effect is bright, buoyant and hypnotic, a steady stream of pulsing energy out of which melodies and harmonies seem to rise and dissolve.