Dancing about Architecture

“Clapping Music” (1972), performed by Russ Hartenberger and Steve Reich.

This is a piece for two people clapping. The clapping goes out of phase, but by discrete time units, rather than gradually, as with “Piano Phase”.

I think this is the weakest of the four Early Works. I’m not exactly sure why—maybe it’s because the timbre of clapping is not that interesting; it doesn’t have the richness of the human voice that makes “Come Out” and “It’s Gonna Rain” so good. Also, it doesn’t have the rich interplay between the parts that arises from gradual phase shifting, such as in “Piano Phase”.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 3:13 pm and is filed under CD review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.