Proverb — Steve Reich

If you like Steve Reich, you may enjoy my a cappella cover of “Electric Counterpoint!“ From Joel Chapman’s recital, “What is This, Mozart?“ Senior Conducting Recital on May 09, 2014. Memorial Church, Stanford University. Please check out my channel and subscribe to catch new uploads! SUPPORT ME ON PATREON!! I’m releasing an album in 2022. Or, if you want to send a little support but don’t want the hassle of making an account, you can, you know, BuyMeACoffee P A T R E O N | B U Y M E A C O F F E E | Social: I N S T A G R A M | F A C E B O O K | T W I T T E R | W E B S I T E | ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶ -- FROM THE PROGRAM NOTES Steve Reich’s “Proverb“ takes one sentence by Ludwig Wittgenstein, “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!,” and stretches it across five voices and fifteen minutes. For the duration of the piece, three sopranos present the text in a unison canon, with the singers singing the same line at different times. In other words, it’s exactly like Row, Row, Row Your Boat. The boat is hit by Class-5 rapids, but the principle is the same. Further, Reich uses the method of augmentation throughout the work. He stretches Wittgenstein’s text into longer and longer phrases, so that as the music progresses, each word in the phrase is held for more time. It is as if we are zooming into the text to examine it in finer and finer detail. At a certain point, the tenors take the vowels the sopranos sing and vocalize on them in lines inspired by the organum of Pérotin and other 12th–13th century composers associated with Notre Dame de Paris. Proverb is a mesmerizing work that is both meditative and exhilarating. With machine-like rhythm that bounces between metric groupings of five, seven, six, and two, the piece shows the beauty of nonstop, metronomic music and how captivating one small thought can be. Victoria Chang, Kimberly Johnson, Frances Molyneaux, soprano Ben Laboy, Will Watson, tenor Alec Arceneaux, vibraphone Mark O’Meara, electric vibraphone Adam Detzner, Eric Tuan, electric organ Joel Chapman, conductor