IN C

Terry Riley

Prog Related

3.97 | 44 ratings

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octopus-4
Special Collaborator
RIO/Avant/Zeuhl,Neo & Post/Math Teams

This is where a lot of things in modern music began. When Terry Riley composed in C I was just two years old, so I have to admit that I have discovered it recently.

It's an unusual composition in classical sense. I have seen a print of the musical score: it's just a chord of C major. Eight notes repeated for a discretional amount of time by a discretional amount of instruments of a discretional type, starting each one from discretional moments. Of course the length of the notes is discretional.

The discretion is decided by the director.

Little variations over repetitions (Heterophony). Isn't this the same kind of "structure" that we can find in German psychedelics like Tangerine Dream, Edgar Froese and so on?

The fact of it being made of a major chord, makes it light. I'm reviewing the execution recorded in 1968, but with a score like this you can imaine how many very different versions of it can be found. Wikipedia mentions 24 official releases and one of them is the one made by Acid Mothers Temple (They did also "in D" and "in E" on the same album). Sooner or later I'll review that version, too.

It has been defined as "minimalistic" music. I don't know how to define it but I think it's where a lot of today's art music is from.

Is it progressive? I don't know, but it's a masterpiece.

octopus-4 | 5/5 | 2011-1-21

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