Gareth K Vile gets into a debate about music, taste and rhythm.
Over on my radio show, my producer Harry and I frequently argue – on air – about each other’s tastes. Every so often, I’ll slip in a cabaret number, or something from my collection of obscure experimental music. That’s the point he usually decides that he needs to collect some cables from outside the studio. Then he’ll pull out some recent release, and I’ll start banging on about how it all sounds like bad 1980s’ pop. Since the show would rapidly descend into long pauses as I fiddle with microphones or press the wrong buttons without him – I once managed to play an MP3 at the wrong speed, I tend not to belabour the point, especially as he might mention how old I am.
Our biggest argument came over minimalism. Part of the show’s remit is to pick up on what is going on in Glasgow, and both the RSNO and SCO keep me enthusiastic through plenty of contemporary classical. But when the London Sinfonietta bowled up at the City Halls, we fought over the correct use of Music for Eighteen Musicians. Harry saw it as glorified chill out music, probably for the day after the latest twenty first birthday party he has attended. I believe that minimalism is the most dynamic, most overwhelming manifestation of classical music.“It’s not strictly classical, is it?” Harry concluded. “That refers to the period between baroque and romanticism.” I forget that he is studying music, despite being a drummer.
The concert at the City Halls proved both of us right. Closing my eyes as the eighteen musicians got percussive and vocal, there is a soporific effect. The lapping and overlapping of the strings, the fading of the voices, the hypnotic rhythms underpinning the washes of keyboard and intrusive parps of woodwind: Reich can be relaxing, even meditative. And unlike the programmatic symphonies of the Great Composers on Classic FM, Reich is abstract when he sculpts sound. The complexity of the beats, which explain why the remix project was such a failure, become lulling.
Fortunately, I spent most of the concert watching the musicians. When Reich composed Eighteen Musicians, he seems to have orchestrated a silent ballet behind the score. The percussionists swap places, wander between instruments: the quiet dignity of classical musicians lends a hushed drama to their shifts. When they unleash an additional layer of sound, I am ready to pick up the stakes that we laid in the pre-concert betting.Yet the final impact is soothing. The applause is almost unwelcome, distracting me from the meditative mood that the finale invoked. Nevertheless, I still wouldn’t want to listen to Reich with a hangover.
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