Composer Terry Riley (b. 1935) is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of Minimalism in music. He grew up in California playing the piano, and he studied music at San Francisco State University, San Francisco Conservatory, and the University of California at Berkeley before becoming involved with the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1962. In the 1970s, he began studying Indian classical music with Pandit Pran Nath. He also started teaching at Mills College in Oakland, where he met David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet. He has collected many other distinguished collaborators throughout the years, including La Monte Young, Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, Bang on a Can, and many others. He has also toured as a duo with his son, guitarist Gyan Riley. His musical ideas come from an eclectic variety of influences that are as varied as his collaborators, including jazz, Hindustani music, and tape loops. In turn, Riley has influenced countless artists, among them the English rockers The Who, who named their song “Baba O’Riley” after him and Meher Baba. Follow him at Wikipedia, his website, Wise Music, Red Bull Music Academy, The Guardian, and the LA Philharmonic.
In C is Riley’s most performed and recorded work. He wrote it in 1964. The score is one page, featuring 53 small cells of music that are to be repeated ad lib. by any number of performers on any combination instruments. The result is a multi-layered, constantly evolving, meditative performance that can never be experienced the same way twice. Riley provides detailed instructions in the score, including something of a philosophy statement:
It is very important that performers listen very carefully to one another and this means occasionally to drop out and listen. As an ensemble, it is very desirable to play very softly as well as very loudly and to try to diminuendo and crescendo together.
Each pattern can be played in unison or canonically in any alignment with itself or with its neighboring patterns. One of the joys of IN C is the interaction of the players in polyrhythmic combinations that spontaneously arise between patterns. Some quite fantastic shapes will arise and disintegrate as the group moves through the piece when it is properly played.
It is important not to hurry from pattern to pattern but to stay on a pattern long enough to interlock with other patterns being played. As the performance progresses, performers should stay within 2 or 3 patterns of each other. It is important not to race too far ahead or to lag too far behind.
Since any ensemble of any size or type can perform In C, recordings of it abound. Here are just a few. Its first recording was released in 1968:
Riley himself appears in this 2015 performance with Stargaze in Amsterdam:
In C Mali uses African musicians instruments (and the lead singer of Blur) in a distinctive performance at the Tate Modern in London:
Third Coast Percussion organized a big performance at Millennium Park in Chicago in 2015. Their instructions and retrospective are essential reading for anyone else looking to do something like this:
There is absolutely an embarrassment of internet riches related to In C. First, watch this informational video about it:
For the readers out there, check out this thorough and loving profile from Tero Parviainen. There is also a Wikipedia article, a forum on Mod Wiggler, a write up on Cantaloupe Music attached to the Bang on a Can recording, another detailed article on New Music USA (reprinted from Robert Carl’s book In C), and a program note at the LA Phil. The Music Institute of Chicago helpfully provides Instructions for Beginners for In C.
For the interactive types, I HIGHLY recommend playing around with two In C-related tools. First, teropa’s collection of five bots that each play the piece allows you to choose how they advance, creating a virtual simulacrum of a real performance of the piece and its many layers and textures. It is also tied to a dynamic visual display. Second, The Repeater Orchestra lets you create your own randomly repeated music, roughly in the style of In C. Don’t say I didn’t warn you – these are both crazy addictive!
One final bonus: don’t miss this brief interview in which Riley talks about so much, including how times change, the creation of In C, drugs, his teachers and collaborators, and more.