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In C

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For the album by Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., see In C (album).

In C
by Terry Riley
Incipit of In C
Incipit of In C
KeyC major
Genreminimalism
Formopen
ComposedMarch 1964
Performed4 November 1964 (1964-11-04): San Francisco Tape Music Center
Scoringopen

In C is a composition by Terry Riley in 1964. It is one of the seminal works of minimalism. The score directs any number of musicians to repeat a series of 53 melodic fragments in a guided improvisation.

Terry Riley's recording of In C was added to the National Recording Registry in 2022. The piece inspired many other composers like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, and Julius Eastman.

Composition

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Alongside fellow students Loren Rush and Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley had been involved with group improvisation since 1957–8.[1] The immediate forerunner for the piece was the incidental music Riley wrote for Ken Dewey's play The Gift. It was being performed in Paris in 1963 when Riley was asked to provide music for it. He ran into Chet Baker and recorded his quartet performing songs that included Miles Davis' "So What". A technician from ORTF set up a tape loop system for the composer. Music From The Gift inspired Riley to work with loops for years to come.[2]

When he was back in San Francisco, Riley was playing piano nightly at the Gold Street Saloon. On the way to work one night, he heard In C in his head and wrote it down after the show that night. Soon after, Morton Subotnick asked Riley to perform solo at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. He prepared the work to be performed with an ensemble on that concert.[3]: 277f 

Riley saw In C as way a for instrumentalists to play in the style he had developed with tape loops.[4]: 7  His artistic goal was shamanistic. He wanted to write music that created a satori for the listener:

I was never concerned with minimalism, but I was very concerned with psychedelia and the psychedelic movement of the sixties as an opening toward consciousness. For my generation that was a first look towards the East, that is, peyote, mescaline, and the psychedelic drugs which were opening up people's attention towards higher consciousness. So I think what I was experiencing in music at that time was another world...music was also able to transport us suddenly out of one reality into another. Transport us so that we would almost be having visions as we were playing. So that's what I was thinking about before I wrote In C. I believe music, shamanism, and magic are all connected, and when it's used that way it creates the most beautiful use of music.[3]: 269 

Performances

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Terry Riley and a small group of players began trying out In C at house concerts around San Francisco in the fall of 1964. One of the issues that quickly emerged was coordinating the players. Steve Reich suggested using an 8th note pulsing rhythm to keep the ensemble together. Though Riley envisioned the piece without a prevailing rhythm, he agreed to the utility of Reich's solution.[5]: 43–4 

The piece was premiered on November 4, 1964 during "An Evening of Music by Terry Riley" at the San Francisco Tape Music Center.[6][7] Music from the Gift was played as the audience arrived. The first half included Riley's I, Shoeshine, In B♭ or Is It A♭?, and COULE.[5]: 49 

There was a break to set up In C. In addition to the musicians, Tony Martin projected a light show on the ceiling. Jeanie Brechan played the pulse above Terry Riley at one piano. Warner Jepsen and James Lowe shared another piano. Steve Reich performed on the Wurlitzer electronic piano, Pauline Oliveros on accordion, and Ramón Sender played the Chamberlin organ in the upstairs studio. Audio from the performance was sent up to Sender in order to coordinate. Mel Weitsman played sopranino recorder, Morton Subotnick clarinet, Jon Gibson soprano saxophone, Sonny Lewis tenor saxophone, and Stan Shaff and Phil Winsor performed on trumpets.[5]: 43–6 

The concert was repeated two days later. Alfred Frankenstein reviewed the November 6th performance for the San Francisco Chronicle. He raved, "'On C' was the evening's masterpiece, and I hope the same group does it again." He wrote:

"At times you feel you have never done anything all your life long but listen to this music and as if that is all there is or ever will be, but it is altogether absorbing, exciting, and moving, too. One is reminded of the efforts of Carlos Chavez to reconstitute the ceremonial music of pre-Columbian Mexico. Terry Riley may have captured more of its spirit than Chavez did."[8]

The New York City premiere took place at Carnegie Recital Hall on December 19, 1967 on a program with Igor Stravinsky's Octet and works by Harley Gaber and Dorrit Licht. The performance reminded New York Times critic Donal Henahan of Alban Berg's Invention on One Note in Wozzeck, and he admired the ensemble's "gamenlanlike sonorities". He continued, "Mr. Riley's effort produced a happy din, which was at worst hypnotic and often fascinating in its multilayered rhythms and sound patterns. One observed with compassion that the woman pianist, whose duty was to pound one note throughout, wore gloves. It put one in mind of Hildegarde."[9]

The pianist was Margaret Hassell, and she wore bandages on her fingers underneath the gloves to pad them for the exertion of the part.[5]: 81  Lukas Foss had arranged speakers throughout the venue so that the music could be heard from multiple vantage points, and the audience was encouraged to circulate during the piece.[9]

Program from first UK performance, May 1968

The first UK performance of In C was on 18 May 1968 at Royal Institute Galleries by the Music Now Ensemble directed by Cornelius Cardew as part of a series of four Music Now, Sounds of Discovery Concerts.[10][11]

Form

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The score of In C includes several paragraphs of instructions and one page of music with 53 modules. Each module is a short musical phrase notated in treble clef without a time signature and bracketed by repeat signs. Riley uses nine different pitches, only omitting C♯ and E♭ from the chromatic scale.[12]: 49 

The total duration of the written score is only 521 eighth notes. The shortest module lasts one 8th note, and the longest lasts 64. The material varies widely in character, from drones to running 16th note figures.

Each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times at the discretion of each musician in the ensemble. Each musician is expected to use the same tempo, as led by "the pulse" on piano or pitched percussion (such as xylophone or marimba) but otherwise the performers have control over which phrase they play and how many times it is repeated. Performers are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase. In this way, although the melodic content of each part is predetermined, In C has elements of aleatoric music to it and each performance will be different from others.[13] The performance directions state that the musical ensemble should try to stay within two to three phrases of each other. The phrases must be played in order, although some may be skipped. The first musician to reach the final numbered phrase repeats it indefinitely until all other musicians reach the same phrase, at which point they all crescendo and gradually stop playing until only "the pulse" remains and then goes silent. Riley suggests "a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work".[14]

The score has gone through many iterations. Riley's handwritten instructions for the original score explain, "The pulse is traditionally played by a beautiful girl on the top two octaves of a grand piano. She must play loudly and keep a strict tempo for the entire ensemble to follow."[15][16]

In C has no set duration; performances can last as little as fifteen minutes or as long as several hours, although Riley indicates "performances normally average between 45 minutes and an hour and a half." The number of performers may also vary between any two performances. The original recording of the piece was created by 11 musicians (although, through overdubbing, several dozen instruments were utilized), while a performance in 2006 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall featured 124 musicians.

The piece begins on a C major chord (patterns one through seven) with a strong emphasis on the mediant E and the entrance of the note F which begins a series of slow progressions to other chords suggesting a few subtle and ambiguous changes of key, the last pattern being an alternation between B♭ and G. Though the polyphonic interplay of the various patterns against each other and themselves at different rhythmic displacements is of primary interest, the piece may be considered heterophonic.

Recording

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In C
Studio album by
Terry Riley
Released1968
RecordedMarch 27–8, 1968
StudioCBS 30th Street Studio
Genreminimalism
Length43:00
LabelColumbia Records
ProducerDavid Behrman
Terry Riley chronology
Reed Streems
(1966) 		In C
(1968) 		A Rainbow in Curved Air
(1969)

In late 1965, Terry Riley moved to New York City and started performing on soprano saxophone in his apartment on Grand Street in the Bowery. He would use Revox machines to create tape delays and loop his improvisations. One of the people who loved the shows was David Behrman, the producer for Columbia Records' Music of Our Time series.[5]: 76–8 

When Columbia was ready to record the piece, Riley performed it once more at Carnegie Recital Hall on March 26, 1968. The musicians then recorded the piece on the following two days, along with works by Carlos Alcina, David Rosenboom, and Yuji Takahashi. The sessions were engineered by Fred Plaut and Russ Payne. David Behrman conducted the ensemble by holding up cue cards for each module. His job was to keep the ensemble on pace for a recording that would fit on the two sides of an LP record.[5]: 80–2 

Riley knew that the texture would be more captivating if it were thicker. With only eleven musicians, he decided to record the piece three times and overdub the takes.[17]

The album's cover was designed by Billy Bryant, and it incorporates a blurb from Alfred Frankenstein's review of the premiere. The liner includes a copy of the score. The founder of Crawdaddy!, Paul Williams, also wrote an enthusiastic essay for the package. He writes:

"I'm not here to justify this record, or explain it...Allright, so let’s say that what we have here is a 'trip,' a voluntary, unpredictable, absorbing experience, one which brings together parts of one’s self perhaps previously unknown to each other...Playing this record for a small group of people is like watching a web being spun. Playing it for a friend means watching a Pilgrim’s Progress of reactions."[18]

In 2022, the 1968 LP recording of In C was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[19]

Personnel

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Track Listing

All tracks are written by Terry Riley

Side One
No.TitleLength
1."In C"23:50
Side Two
No.TitleLength
1."In C"19:10
  • Terry Riley - Leader and Saxophone
  • Jon Hassell - Trumpet
  • Edward Burnham - Vibraphone
  • David Rosenboom - Viola
  • Darlene Reynard - Bassoon
  • Jerry Kirkbride - Clarinet
  • David Shostac - Flute
  • Jan Williams - Marimbaphone
  • Lawrence Singer - Oboe
  • Stuart Dempster - Trombone
  • Margaret Hassell - The Pulse

Legacy

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Upon hearing the premiere of In C, Alfred Frankenstein remarked that Riley had developed "a style like that of no one else on earth", and the critic accurately predicted, "he is bound to make a profound impression with it."[8] Indeed, Riley's composition is often cited as the first minimalist composition to make a significant impact on the public consciousness and inspire a new movement.[20]

Discography

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Robert Carl published extensive analyses of several commercial recordings. He found tempi ranging 92–132 beats per minute:[5]: 111–23 

With Terry Riley's Involvement
  • Terry Riley, ‘’In C’’ (Columbia, 1971) – Re-mastered for CD release by Sony Classical in 2009
  • Shanghai Film Orchestra, In C (Celestial Harmonies, 1989) – Performed on traditional Chinese instruments. Mixed by Riley, Brian Eno, and Jon Hassell.[21]
  • Terry Riley, In C - 25th Anniversary Concert (New Albion, 1995) – With Riley singing and directing the ensemble.
  • The Repetitition Orchestra, Terry Riley (Long Arms Records, 2001) – With Riley on piano
Independent of Riley
Adaptations

References

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  1. ^ "In C Forever: The eternal evolution of Terry Riley's minimalist masterpiece". NPR. NPR.
  2. ^ Strickland, Edward. American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. 112.
  3. ^ a b Duckworth, William. Talking Music. Schirmer Books, 1995.
  4. ^ Alburger, Mark. "Shri Terry: Enlightenment at Riley's Moonshine Ranch." Twentieth‐Century Music 4, no. 3. March, 1997. 1–20.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Carl, Robert. Terry Riley's in C. Oxford University Press, 2009.
  6. ^ "A guide to Terry Riley's music" by Tom Service, The Guardian, 29 January 2013
  7. ^ "Radio Eclectus: Stuart Dempster interviewed by Michael Schell", April 9, 2020
  8. ^ a b Frankenstein, Alfred. "Music Like None Other on Earth", San Francisco Chronicle. November 8, 1964. 28.
  9. ^ a b Henahan, Donal. "NEW-MUSIC SERIES PUTS TOES TO TEST: Audience Exhorted to Walk Around—Some Don't Stop", The New York Times. December 20, 1967. 55.
  10. ^ Programme for the Cornelius Cardew Ensemble, Royal Institute Galleries. (1968)
  11. ^ Anderson, Virginia (2013). "4. Systems and Other Minimalism in Britain". In Keith Potter; Kyle Gann; Pwyll ap Siôn (eds.). The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. ISBN 9781472402783.
  12. ^ Reed, S. Alexander. 2011. "In C on Its Own Terms: A Statistical and Historical View". Perspectives of New Music 49, no. 1 (Winter): 47–78. doi:10.7757/persnewmusi.49.1.0047
  13. ^ Honigmann, David. "In C, Barbican, London – review". Financial Times, October 7, 2013.
  14. ^ Riley, Terry. "In C: Score and performing directions", – via Brooklyn College, CUNY; "Performing instructions and score", Associated Music Publishers – via issuu
  15. ^ Riley, Terry. In C in Analytical Anthology of Music. Edited by Ralph Turek. 2nd ed, McGraw-Hill, 1992. 540.
  16. ^ "Terry Riley" In C" (PDF). Williams College, Department of Music. July 27, 2007. Retrieved February 26, 2025.
  17. ^ Carl, Robert. "'In C'—Terry Riley (1968)", Library of Congress, National Recording Preservation Board (2022).
  18. ^ Riley, Terry. In C. Columbia Records (MS 7178), 1968.
  19. ^ "National Recording Registry Inducts Music from Alicia Keys, Ricky Martin, Journey and More in 2022". Library of Congress. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
  20. ^ Christopher Bonds, The Musical Impulse, second, revised edition (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company, 1994): 345. ISBN 9780840398024
  21. ^ "In C", harmonies.com. Accessed March 17, 2025.
  22. ^ "In C". move.com.au. Accessed March 17, 2025.
  23. ^ CD Recording, minimalistensemble.co.uk. Archived December 30, 2007. Accessed March 17, 2025.
  24. ^ Radiolab, "In C", December 14, 2009
  25. ^ "In C Remixed". GVSU New Music Ensemble. Retrieved February 26, 2014.

Further reading

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