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Start Date: September 22, 2022
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ARTIST: Steve Reich 
TITLE: Tehillim
YEAR: 1982
LABEL: ECM
CONDITION: Strong VG+ / VG+  
DETAILS: Despite the freshness of the rhythmic language, we still find here the clarity of Reich's earlier compositional thought. The melodic material for each movement is drawn from a single tune stated at the movement's opening. And Tehillim is still built out of musical processes. The material which runs through the process is much longer than before-instead of the single chord of Four Organs or the tiny speech snippet of It's Gonna Rain, the basic unit of Tehillim is now an entire melody, 25 seconds or longer in duration. But like his earlier pieces, each movement of Tehillim is built out of repetitions of this melodic unit, and each repetition involves some sort of variation on the original.

The first half of Tehillim was composed and premiered first, and these two movements show the most direct connections to Reich's austere earlier work. In Part I, the melody, initially presented by a solo voice and a drum, is processed through canons of increasing complexity, recalling the phasing tape loops of It's Gonna Rain. In Part II, the melody is gradually lengthened, like the chord in Four Organs. The instruments maintain rigidly stratified roles throughout: the drums and mallet instruments lay down an interlocking pulse; the voices and winds present melodic material; and the strings provide harmonic grounding through shifting, sharply accented chords.