Steve Reich turned 90 this week, and his early tape pieces reveal how deeply human voices and political witness shape what seems like pure musical technique.
In the mid-1960s, Reich created two landmark works using recorded voices looped against themselves. "It's Gonna Rain" samples Brother Walter, a Pentecostal street preacher in San Francisco, whose 1965 apocalyptic warning Reich layered over and over until the voice became a "wall and wail of sound". "Come Out", made in 1966, uses the voice of Daniel Hamm, one of the Harlem Six, six Black men wrongly convicted of murder in New York. Reich originally composed "Come Out" as background music for a benefit event raising legal costs for their defence.
The accidental discovery that launched Reich's signature technique came when one of his tape machines slipped out of sync with another, creating a micro-canon where identical material played at slightly different speeds. But these pieces matter for more than their formal innovation.
Reich has described his approach as setting not just words but "human beings". The vocal recordings function simultaneously as musical material, political inspiration and emotional expression. The looping and canon techniques that appear narrowly musical are embedded in factual circumstance: where the pieces were made, how they were recorded, and whose voices are being represented and amplified.
The article frames Reich's work alongside two other musicians. A composer named Kendall also puts humans at the heart of their music. Conductor Celibidache represents a contrasting approach. The piece argues that across these three figures, "there is no such thing as pure music", whether considering technique, mode of expression or legacy.