My favorite part of listening to Steve Reich’s Phases is how they seem to come in and out of phase in many dimensions. There are the intentions of the compositions themselves: where the piece is inherently in or out of phase. Then there is my own personal interpretation of those phases. Sometimes it seems that the piece falls out phase, and then as I pay more attention, or less attention, the piece seems to fix itself. It’s like one minute I just don’t get it because I am listening too hard, so I relax a bit and something about my inner rhythms and sensebilities finds a new method of interpretation and there is another level of understanding that brings it perfectly in phase again. It’s a big resolution: the personal, in-the-moment phases of the listener interacting with the meticulously planned and preformed phases of the piece.
The music truly has shapes and patterns, and Riech has a serious experiment in the properties and effects of alignment going on. Choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker takes Steve Reich’s musical patterns into the visual realm in her work Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich. She explains that way back in the 80′s “Steve’s music invited [her] to dance.” And I’m sure it did, because the interaction between Anne and the music, and the shapes, and the movement, is both scientific and romantic. I don’t really consciously feel these two worlds, science and romance, at the same time very often. But the combination is successful and powerful, and I can not help but be reminded that all the great songs we get off on must have both these forces present. Science and romance are probably colliding in the unconsciousness every time art rocks our world. Sexy.