Steve Reich is an American minimalist composer who sites Debussy as an influence on his work. Reich was born in New York and had parents that worked as lyricist on Broadway. He took piano lessons as a kid and took more interest in he music when he was a young teen where he began to learn drums so he could play jazz. He studied music at three different colleges Mills, Julliard, and Cornell. He then began composing his own music. He found influence for his music from his trip to Ghana as well as in history. He has composed a lot of music in his time each piece being unique and varying degrees of experimental.
The piece consist of chordiphones being made up with a series of electric guitars. The piece is compound in 3/2 time and moves at a moderator tempo. This is seen in the time signature that appears at the begging. The piece is in G major as indicated by the one sharp marked at the begging as well as the fact that the first three notes of the piece build a G chord in the first guitar. At 0:17 when guitar to joins in it begging playing a two notes behind guitar one creating a sort of round. This together creates a harmony which is added apron with the addition of more guitars. As seen at 0:37 each guitar is playing either the same thing as guitar 1 but several notes behind or the same thing as guitar live but several notes behind to create the layered harmony. At 0:45 the two base guitas join in and each have the same melody with in their repeated measure but they have extra notes before or after it so they are not playing at the sane time, ounce again creating the effect of a round except for the fact that besides the short 4 note rhythm with the two connected 8th notes the entire measure is not the same for the two bass guitars.
Stravinsky:
Igor Stravinsky was a Russian born composer who had a large impact on music in the earlier 20th century. His father was a bass singer in a theater in St. Petersburg. He began to practice piano and study music theory while he was young. Stravinsky was skilled at music but his parents wanted him to study law. When he got into college he only attended a few classes before going to study under the composer Rimsky-Korsakov. After premiering firebird in Paris he gained fame.
The piece is a piano solo played in 3/4 at an allegro tempo. In the beginning it's is written as being in C major, but there are several written accidental including an f# in the top part first measure. The melody is played in the top part with the same repeated ryt being played in the bottom part to make the harmony. There are dynamic changes throughout ranging from piano to forge and including crucendoes and decrecendoes. There are several flat accidental which leads to a key change into A flat.
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