DLXXI. REICH, Steve: City Life

DLXXI. REICH, Steve (1936-       )

City Life (1995)
1. Check it out
2. Pile driver/alarms
3. It's been a honeymoon -- can't take no mo'
4. Heartbeats/boats and buoys
5. Heavy smoke
The Steve Reich Ensemble
Bradley Lubman, cond.
(23:16)

"City Life is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 pianos, 2 samplers, 3 (or 4) percussion, string quartet and bass. Like several earlier works, it is an arch form (A-B-C-B-A). The first and last movements are speech samples as part of the musical fabric, and both feel like 'fast' movements, though the actual tempo of the first is moderate and the fairly rapid tempo of the last movement is harder to perceive because of the many sustained sounds. The harmonies leading to E-Flat or C Minor in the chorale that opens and closes the first movement reappear in the fifth movement in a more dissonant voicing and finally resolve to C Minor which then ambiguously ends as either a C dominant or C Minor chord. The second and fourth movements do not use any speech whatsoever. Instead, each uses a rhythmic sample that determines the tempo. In the second, it is a pile driver; in the fourth, heartbeats. Both start slow and increase in speed. In the second, this is only because the pile driver moves from quarter notes to eighths, and then to triplets. In the fourth movement, the heartbeats gradually get faster in each of the four sections of the movement. Both movements are harmonically based on the same cycle of four dominant chords. The third and central movement begins with only speech samples played by the two sampler players. When this duet has been fully built up, the rest of the strings, winds and percussion enter to double the pitches and rhythms of the interlocking speech samples. This central movement may well remind listeners of my early tape pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966).

For the first movement, a street vendor in lower Manhattan was recorded saying, 'check it out.' The source of the third movement, 'it's been a honeymoon -- can't take no mo',' was recorded at a mostly African American political rally near City Hall. Most of the speech samples in the fifth movement are from actual field communications of the New York City Fire Department on February 6, 1993, the day the World Trade Center was bombed. They were made available to me through the courtesy of Assistant Commissioner for Communications Stephen Gregory. The samples heard in the fifth movement are:

'Heavy smoke'
'Stand by, stand by'
'It's full a' smoke'
'Full a' smoke'
'Urgent!'
'Guns, knives or weapons on ya?'
'Wha' were ya doin'?'
'Be careful'
'Where you go'
'Careful'
'Stand by'

-- SR