Taking Reich’s Pulse: Putting New Music into Context

Abstract

Premiered on November 1st 2016, Steve Reich’s new work Pulse: For Winds, Strings, Piano and Electric Bass epitomizes 51 years of compositional development. Understandably, no formal or analytical discussions exist of this work, a lacuna that inspires the present research questions: Where does Pulse fall in relation to Reich’s overall style and technique? Is it a logical continuation of his compositional evolution? Does it make use of the techniques that distinguish him or does it venture into new territories? To answer these questions, the thesis combines a historical survey of Reich’s compositional output with an analysis of Pulse that considers current analytic scholarship. An overview of the literature on the composer serves to determine the separate compositional periods of his output in relation to his most employed techniques. This amalgamation allows for a historically and stylistically contextualized analysis of Pulse. The resulting synthesis not only creates a new categorization of Reich’s compositional development, but also shows that Pulse embodies a summation of the composer’s musical technique.