These days the works of American Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steve Reich can be heard nightly in concert halls and conservatories throughout the world ─ most of his listeners, however, first encountered Reich through recordings. Born in New York, and raised both there and in Los Angeles, Reich was part of the 1960s vanguard that broke through and away from abstract serialist soundscapes with a new American modernism. Through his recordings — the latest being a formidable 27-disc curated box set, which will be released by Nonesuch Records on March 14th — Reich awakened broad interest in contemporary classical music, and his compositions forever influenced the way we listen, perform in ensembles, and perceive musical time.

Steve Reich Collected Works presents nearly six decades of the composer’s output. The box set begins with It’s Gonna Rain, an early experiment at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and Come Out, written for a benefit for the retrial of the Harlem Six (six black men that were erroneously convicted of murder in 1965). These meticulous studies in tape loops are juxtaposed with Reich’s iconic phase pieces, including Piano Phase and the unintentionally subversive Four Organs, which feature instruments coming in and out of phase with one another. Reich’s phase pieces incorporate what he had developed with tapes into his home base of acoustic music, an expression of his creative output which culminates in Drumming, written on the heels of his studies at the University of Ghana with Anlo Ewe master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. Subsequent standout moments include the beginning of Music for Mallet Instruments, Piano and Voice, which, when heard in context of the phase works before, departs in instrumentation and process in a way that feels startling and expansive.

When describing his musical style, Reich often discusses slowing down the rate of change — between harmonic, rhythmic, or melodic patterns — so that the process of composing rises to the surface of each composition. Listening to the box set is a kind of meta process: not only do we experience how patterns develop within a piece, but we also have the luxury of discovering and reflecting on how Reich grew as a composer over the expanse of his creative life. Nonesuch organized the pieces (not in strict chronological order) to illuminate this development while an accompanying series of essays provide valuable context. Each essay benefits from the perspectives of Reich’s contemporaries, many of whom are featured in the recordings. 

Reich’s music grew out of the necessities of beginning outside the mainstream. He was keenly aware that most performances of new music tended to be shaky because performers don’t yet have the music in their bones. As he put it, he wanted to go out and “play it right—no apologies, no excuses, just lay it down.” In 1966, he formed his own ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, who would rehearse his works as he was composing them. Early innovations took time to develop, and famously, Drumming required 60 rehearsals to put together. Today, Reich’s work has so permeated the collective unconscious that younger generations of college music students can prepare the piece for performance in just a few days.

Listening to the box set underscores just how central chamber music and ensemble playing are to Reich’s output. Responses to political events, questions posed by religion, and autobiographical reflection all enter into his chamber works, which seem to intertwine both a sense of American individualism and the artistic instinct to collaborate. Reich’s Collected Works also traces the development of some of America’s finest chamber ensembles, including Bang on a Can All Stars, Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, and Ensemble Signal. Two different recordings are included of the exhilarating and vibrant Music for 18 Musicians, which catapulted the composer to mass recognition. This was also the work that opened the doorway to Reich’s 40-year association with Nonesuch Records.

In 1984, Bob Hurwitz, who provides the first essay in this set, assumed the presidency of Nonesuch Records. Though originally a budget classical record company for American listeners, under the tenure of Teresa Sterne, the label had begun branching into newer classical repertoire and music of international cultures. Already acquainted through recordings made with Deutsche Grammophon and ECM Records, the first artist Hurwitz signed to the label was Steve Reich, then in his late 40s. Their debut album was The Desert Music, which calls for a large orchestra and chorus, the greatest number of forces of all of Reich’s work. This and other delicious orchestral works like Music for Ensemble and Orchestra and The Four Sections link compositionally to John Adams, another Nonesuch icon and proponent of contemporary classical music with broad appeal.

For these composers — and others like Terry Riley and Philip Glass (none of whom seem to embrace the label of “minimalism” when describing their own music) — pulse, repetition, and gradual change are the keys to innovation. Interestingly, so is melody. For Reich, without melodic interest, a piece is destined for a short shelf life. In early experiments like It’s Gonna Rain, the listener discovers melody seemingly accidentally through rearranged patterns in looped excerpts of human speech. In Drumming, Reich did the same with carefully tuned bongos and pitched percussion instruments. The melody arises out of a kind of messiness in these early works, yet begins immediately, exuberantly, in later works like Runner, or soars as in the Copland-like Pulse.

When the building blocks of melody are measured, even small developments become magnified and can carry the drama of a piece. Reich’s artistry, like Bach’s, is in understanding how the vertical relationships between interlocking patterns can propel a horizontal melody forward. Reich reclaimed traditional music values for a modern listener, and the entire arc of this creative legacy is on crystalline display in his Collected Works.