![Holland Festival componist Steve Reich kop, Bestanddeelnr 928-6490](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Holland_Festival_componist_Steve_Reich_kop%2C_Bestanddeelnr_928-6490.jpg)
''Six Pianos'' is a
minimalist
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
piece for six
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
s by the American composer
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, a ...
. It was completed in March 1973. He also composed a variation for six
marimba
The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...
s, called ''Six Marimbas'', in 1986.
The world première performance of ''Six Pianos'' was in May 1973 at the John Weber Gallery in New York City. The European première took place in January the next year in
Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...
, Germany.
Reich's idea was originally for a piece titled ''Piano Store'' that could be played on all the pianos in a piano store. A friend in New York gave him and his fellow musicians access to the
Baldwin Piano and Organ Company's premises during evenings, where they could try out ideas.
Reich eventually settled on an ensemble of six
upright piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
s in close proximity, which would allow very precise timing without being masked by the resonance of grand pianos.
Structure
The piece begins with four pianists playing different notes to the same 8-beat rhythmic pattern. Then two more pianists begin to play the same pattern shifted two beats out of phase. (
Phasing
A phaser is an electronic sound processor used to filter a signal, and it has a series of troughs in its frequency-attenutation graph. The position (in Hz) of the peaks and troughs are typically modulated by an internal low-frequency oscillat ...
is a prominent technique in most of Steve Reich's work.) Different phase shifts of the same
motifs fade in and out of the ever-changing
musical texture
In music, texture is how the tempo, melodic, and harmonic materials are combined in a musical composition, determining the overall quality of the sound in a piece. The texture is often described in regard to the density, or thickness, and range ...
for the duration of the piece. The piece also uses the additive technique of gradually building up parts by substituting notes for rests, and the opposite.
[Reich, Steve (2002). ''Writings on Music, 1965–2000'', p. 73. .] ''Six Pianos'' is also notable by being one of Reich's only pieces in duple time.
![Steve Reich six marimbas](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Steve_Reich_six_marimbas.jpg)
''Six Pianos'' has three sections, separated by relatively sudden changes of
tonal center
In music, the tonic is the first scale degree () of the diatonic scale (the first note of a scale) and the tonal center or final resolution tone that is commonly used in the final cadence in tonal (musical key-based) classical music, popular ...
, though they all use the same seven
pitch class
In music, a pitch class (p.c. or pc) is a set of all pitches that are a whole number of octaves apart; for example, the pitch class C consists of the Cs in all octaves. "The pitch class C stands for all possible Cs, in whatever octave positio ...
es of the D major
diatonic scale
In music theory, a diatonic scale is any heptatonic scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps, ...
. The first section is in D major, with the tonality anchored in place by a persistent pattern of D and A in the bass. Then that pattern slowly fades out, leaving a B minor tonality which serves as a short transition to the second section in E
Dorian. A sudden transition leads to the third section in B
natural minor
In music theory, the minor scale is three scale patterns – the natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode), the harmonic minor scale, and the melodic minor scale (ascending or descending) – rather than just two as with the major scale, which also ...
. ''Six Marimbas'' follows the same structure, but is transposed down by one semitone so that the piece opens in D flat major and concludes in B flat natural minor.
Adapted versions
''Six Marimbas Counterpoint'' is a version of ''Six Marimbas'' arranged by the Japanese percussionist Kuniko Kato in which one live marimba plays against five pre-recorded marimbas. A recorded version was included in her 2010 album of Reich pieces, ''Kuniko Plays Reich''.
''Piano Counterpoint'' is an arrangement of ''Six Pianos'' by the pianist Vincent Corver, following the format of Reich's ''Counterpoint'' series in which one live instrument plays against pre-recorded versions of the same instrument. This arrangement has four pre-recorded parts and one solo part, combining the two foreground melodic parts of ''Six Pianos''. ''Piano Counterpoints sonic difference from the original comes from the use of amplification and from the solo part in which some of the melodic phrases are an octave higher. Corver created this arrangement in 2011. ''Piano Counterpoint'' is performed by Corver himself on an album released by the London Steve Reich Ensemble in 2011 and by Vicky Chow (known as pianist in the
Bang on a Can All Stars
The Bang on a Can All-Stars is an amplified ensemble that was formed in 1992 by parent organization Bang on a Can.
Called "a flexible and expert sextet" by ''The New York Times'', ) in an album released in 2014. Chow played the piece at a somewhat slower tempo to give a different feel to Corver's version.
Folkwang University of the Arts
The Folkwang University of the Arts is a university for music, theater, dance, design, and academic studies, located in four German cities of North Rhine-Westphalia. Since 1927, its traditional main location has been in the former Werden Abbey in E ...
professor
Mie Miki
Mie Miki is a classical accordion musician. She took up the accordion at age 4 and has been dubbed "Queen of the Classical Accordion". She is a professor of accordion as well as Vice President at Folkwang University of the Arts
The Folkwang Uni ...
adapted the piece for
accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...
s: the resulting ''Six Accordions'' premièred in Tokyo in 2010.
American DJ
Kerri Chandler
Kerri Camar Chandler (born 28 September 1969) is an American house DJ and record producer.
Biography
Chandler's influences go back to New Jersey, growing up in a family of jazz musicians. His father, Joseph Chandler, was a DJ and provided him wi ...
released a
house-music track called ''Six Pianos'' that
interpolates the Reich piece.
Recordings
The original version of the piece was recorded in Hamburg (Rahlstedt), Musikstudio 1, in January 1974. It was issued on LP in a box set with Drumming and Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ. It was later reissued as a single LP with Drumming (which occupies 4 sides of LPs) omitted.
Both releases were on the
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon (; DGG) is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of ...
label.
A sixteen-minute recording of ''Six Marimbas'' is included in Reich's box set ''
Works 1965–1995''.
References
Further reading
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{{Authority control
Compositions by Steve Reich
1973 compositions
Compositions for piano
Compositions for marimba