Terry Riley, a Founder of Minimalism, Turns 80

This week marks the 80^th birthday of the composer Terry Riley, whose pioneering 1964 piece “In C”helped start the musical genre known as minimalism. According to John Schaefer, host of WNYC’s Soundcheckand New Sounds, “In C” “opened the floodgates for Philip Glass and Steve Reich,” the composers we associate with minimalism. But in 1964, it didn’t sound like anything else — classical or pop. As Schaefer tells it, Riley was working as a jazz pianist when the idea for the piece came to him one night, coming home late on the bus. “In C” is made up of short musical phrases, each of which gets repeated for as long as each player in the ensemble feels like it, and it can be played by any number of musicians. “The 53 short patterns all came to him at once,” Schaefer tells Kurt Andersen. The improvisatory quality of “In C” comes from Riley’s experience as a jazz musician. But the idea for the repetition was inspired by Riley’s “study of tape technology, where stuff loops around,” Schaefer says. And that repetition was the most revolutionary part. “This is the essence of minimalism.”

The first recordingof “In C” came out in 1968, and by then Riley had moved on to creating tape loops and synthesizer music that became a big influence for Krautrock bands like Ash Ra Tempel and Tangerine Dream — as well as for The Who, who paid tribute to Riley in the famous opening to “Baba O’Riley.” But the classical music establishment was less than ecstatic. “Terry Riley was not accepted as a classical composer for many, many years,” Schaefer says. “Remember what was happening in classical music in 1964: it was difficult, it was atonal, it was cerebral.” “In C,” on the other hand, “was all about the body, about the pulse.”

More than 50 years later, “In C”‘s influence continues to be felt, both in contemporary classical and in pop music. One of the newest recordingsof the piece is by a group called Africa Express, which includes Malian musicians as well as Brian Eno and Blur’s Damon Albarn. “It may or may not be ‘In C,'” Schaefer cautions, given how far the band departs from Riley’s original. But that’s part of what makes “In C” so influential. It’s elastic enough to accommodate lots of different influences and interpretations. No two performances are ever quite the same — and that’s kind of the point.

The original 1968 recording of “In C”:

A 2011 recording of “In C” by Bang on a Can All-Stars:

Africa Express, “In C Mali”: