Searching for Harmony in All the Wrong Places: Steve Reich's Music for String Orchestra (1961)

Abstract

The main objectives of this thesis are to show how minimal music has been described in musicological literature and to provide an analysis of a student piece, Music for String Orchestra (1961), by one of minimal music’s composers, Steve Reich (b. 1936). Juxtaposing the many different thoughts on the origins of minimal music with this analysis provides several insights on the importance of the American academic climate in which Reich was educated. The objective is, however, not to show that this academic period was the only formative element in Reich’s compositional career. Rather, the examination of Music for String Orchestra, and the connections this piece shows with earlier developments in twentieth-century music, demonstrates how the influence of avant-gardist or modernist thoughts on music should be considered one of the important influences among many. Although acknowledged by many authors, the significance of Reich’s academic period is frequently underestimated in musicological literature on minimal music. This understudied area in the study of minimal music and the history of music in general, therefore, deserves attention.