Steve Reich - Tehillim (1982)

"People have listened to Tehillim and said. 'It's a Jewish-sounding melody.' And I say horseshit, it's a Steve Reich-sounding melody, and if I'm Jewish then it is. But it doesn't have anything to do with Hasidic melodies or Jewish folktunes. The longer melodies are the result of two forces at work: the long cycles of gamelan gambang, and my study of cantillation. Together they might have played some role in my wanting to do a more traditional piece."


Composer's Notes
"Tehillim (pronounced 'the-hill-leem') is the original Hebrew word for 'Psalms'. Literally translated it means 'praises', and it derives from the three letter Hebrew root 'hey, lamed, lamed' (hll) which is also the root of halleluyah. Tehillim is a setting of Psalms 19:2-5 (19:1-4 in Christian translations), 34:13-15 (34:12-14 in Christian translations), 18:26-27 (18:25-26 in Christian translations) and 150:4-6.

The chamber version is scored for four women's voices (one high soprano, two lyric sopranos, and one alto), piccolo, flute, oboe, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, six percussion (playing small tuned tambourines with no jingles, clapping, maracas, marimba, vibraphone and crotales), two electric organs, two violins, viola, cello and bass. The voices, winds and strings are amplified in performance. In orchestral version there are full strings and winds with amplification for the voices only.

In contrast to most of my earlier work, Tehillim is not composed of short repeating patterns. Though an entire melody may be repeated either as the subject of a canon or variation this is actually closer to what one finds throughout the history of Western music. While the four-part canons in the first and last movements may well remind some listeners of my early tape pieces It's Gonna Rain and Come Out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_loop), which are composed of short spoken phrases repeated over and over again in close canon, Tehillim will probably strike most listeners as quite different from my earlier works. There is no fixed meter or metric pattern in Tehillim as there is in my earlier music. The rhythm, of the music here comes directly from the rhythm of the Hebrew text and is consequently in flexible changing meters. This is the first time I have set a text to music since my student days and the result is a piece based on melody in the basic sense of that word. The use of extended melodies, imitative counterpoint functional harmony and full orchestration may well suggest renewed interest in Classical or, more accurately, Baroque and earlier Western musical practice. The non-vibrato, non-operatic vocal production will also remind listeners of Western music prior to 1750. However, the overall sound of Tehillim and in particular the intricately interlocking percussion writing which, together with the text, forms the basis of the entire work, marks this music as unique by introducing a basic musical element that one does not find in earlier Western practice including the music of this century. Tehillim may thus be heard as traditional and new at the same time."