Tehillim
Steve Reich
Conducted by George Manahan
Released on ECM.

Steve Reich's 30 minute Tehillim is a buoyant celebration of his Judaism, but for anyone of any faith it is an uplifting spiritual experience as all good religious-based music should be. Tehillim is Hebrew for psalm and if anyone's following, they're 19:2-5, 34:13-15, 18:26-27 and 150:4-6.

After an eclectic musical education (jazz bands, Juillard and drumming in Ghana) Reich wrote this work in 1982 when he was about as far from hardcore minimalism and tape looping (Come Out and It's Gonna Rain being akin to Chinese Water Torture) as he was gonna get. Scored for four female voices and a batter of winds, string quartet, percussion and handclapping, it trundles along in two halves with each half comprising two sections.

It is these four quarters which perhaps add to making this Reich's most symphonic and Western work- with the four sections almost being symphonic in being fast-fast-slow-fast. Reich abandons his usual technique of using small, bite sized portions of sound and layering them forever for a more 'classical' approach. This was also required as it was Reich's first professional piece using a text, and his standard technique just wouldn't work with words. Also, Reich did not want to 'dishonour' religious texts by beating them into fitting his usual technique.

Analysis of this piece is complex and generally boring, but an understanding is undeniably helpful if you've never come across Reich or the more traditional forms of minimalism before.

The first section opens with just a voice, drum and hand clapping. It then repeats, with the clarinet exactly doubling the voice with Drum 2 and Handclappee 2 playing in canon to Drum 1 and Clap-Ye-Hands 1. It then repeats again, with another voice in canon to the first. On the fourth repeat Reich introduces the strings to provide the first hint of a harmonic basis. Hence, Reich builds up some kind of monster canon between melody (the voices), rhythm (drums and claps) and harmony (strings).

In the second section Reich changes tack and does something different. Instead of keeping his melodic ideas unchanged, as he used to do in earlier works, he augments the voices to create flowing melodic phrases but manages to keep them in synchronisation with the static harmony in the strings and rhythm plugging away in the percussion. This is very difficult to pull off, and is testament to Reich's immense talent. This second section also is the first place where Reich uses almost blatant word painting- another real first in his repertoire. Take for example the word tov, or 'good', which is set on an A major chord (in the super-bright first inversion if you're keeping notes). Meanwhile, the translation of 'perverse' is set on an augmented fourth- or the diablus in musica. The Devil in Music. An interval so terrifyingly unsettled than to use it in church music use to invite excommunication.

Reich claimed that the third section was the first slow movement he had ever written. It is certainly his most chromatic. Again, he takes a different approach to the setting writing as a duet for two voices, then for four. He also introduces metal percussion- vibraphones- for the first time and there is a clear aural shift from the wooden percussion of the first half.

The jubilant fourth section, Reich's own Hallelujah Chorus, takes techniques from the three previous sections to create what is essentially a classical recapitulation- a technique that would be instantly recognised by, say, Mozart. The biggest sound so far creates an almost ecstatic awakening. Perhaps the most striking feature is the silence- after thirty minutes of a constant drive, the voices exclaim one final Hallelujah then there is absolute silence. A live performance would be absolutely breathtaking.

Reich is exceptionally difficult to perform- hence it being performed almost exclusively by his own Allstar Band- and it is a credit to his musicians that they can pull it off. How George Monahan manages to conduct this piece is beyond me, with its constant change of meter but it's almost constant speed (except that third section). Similarly how the voices manage to stay in time for fifteen minutes in a canon divided only by a quaver is also quite beyond me, let alone when you throw their doubling instruments into the mix.

As could be expected from a Reich CD, the sound quality is excellent.

I don't use the word 'inspirational' lightly. To me, it conjures up images of crystals and Enya music- both of which I'd rather avoid thank you very much. Yet Tehillim is truly that- Inspirational. Uplifting. Triumphant. All those words too often bandied around by New Agers yielding CDs of whale song and pan pipes. Yet Tehillim traverses religious boundaries to create a uniquely spiritual aural experience.



Recommended: Yes