The Notes Between

Steve Reich remains at the forefront of the musical movement
known as minimalism, and his 1968 piece, “Pendulum
Music,” was a seminal work of the genre’s early years.
The piece is played with four swinging microphones that create
screeching feedback when they swing by a speaker. The patterns of
this screeching is determined by the performers who set the
microphones in motion like a pendulum. It ends when all the
microphones come to rest and are in unison. The Daily Bruin talked
to him about the enigmatic piece.

Daily Bruin: “Pendulum Music” is a piece that
represented a certain time for you. SR: It was a one-off
piece. Nowadays you could call it visual sculpture and performance
art.

DB: Where did you come up with the idea?

SR: There was a tape recorder with a little microphone attached
to it like a late ’50s, early ’60s Wollensack tape
recorder. It started to squeal feedback when the microphone was in
front of it. When it swung to either side it didn’t, and the
light bulb went off in my head.

DB: That contradicts people’s image of you as being a
scientific control-freak, not intuitive.

SR: Intuition is the rock bottom level of everything I’ve
done. You could have a microphone in your hand, dangle it in front
of the speaker, and when it starts to feedback, you turn it off.
That’s a perfectly normal reaction. Something else occurred
to me partly because of who I am. I was being Western and dangling
my lasso.

DB: People have said it’s a very impersonal piece. How
would you respond?

SR: It should be funny. It shouldn’t be painful, which is
when people get too serious. You should have short pendulums so the
whole thing doesn’t take longer than five to seven minutes.
You should use poor fidelity equipment, poor funky equipment so
that the screech isn’t painful. If you do it that way,
it’s a really good intelligent musical joke. And
there’s a place for that. Interview conducted by Howard Ho,
Daily Bruin Senior Staff.