Pattern perception and temporality in the music of Steve Reich: an interdisciplinary approach

Abstract

This dissertation examines pattern perception and temporality in the music of Steve Reich. The research was based on the thesis that the temporal experience of Reich's music is significantly influenced by how a listener's perceptual ordering faculties respond to the ambiguous pattern structures which characterise much of his work. The study had two primary aims. The first was to evaluate the potential for research in auditory perception to provide insights into the temporal nature of Reich's music. The second aim was to investigate how resulting patterns participate in the perception and cognition of his music. The interdisciplinary approach adopted in this research responds to the lack of information on Reich's music, and a prevailing view among musicologists that his compositions resist conventional analysis. The analysis conducted in this thesis was divided into two parts. The first involved a beat class analysis of Reich's phase shifting music to consider evidence for internal progressive structures which imply goal-direction. The second part involved the design and implementation of a series of experiments which tested the salience of resulting patterns, and listeners' perception of pulse in Reich's Piano Phase. Together, the different analytical perspectives presented in this study contribute to a more complete understanding of the temporal nature of Reich's music. While a principal aim of this study was to contribute to a better understanding of Reich's music, the research simultaneously confronted a range of methodological issues associated with conducting interdisciplinary research. That is, this study assessed the capacity for certain theories in auditory perception to shed light on the perception of authentic examples drawn from the Western musical repertoire. The results suggested that current models of pulse perception have the potential to predict aspects of pulse salience in relatively complex stimuli, such as the music investigated in this study. Similarly, findings suggested that the principles of auditory stream segregation can be used to contribute to an understanding of music which exploits perceptual thresholds and ambiguous musical relationships. In this way the study provides a model for future research which seeks to examine the interaction between linear and nonlinear characteristics of musical time.