Despite its surface simplicity and benign disregard of High Art, Terry Riley's In C has come to be regarded as one of the landmark compositions of the twentieth century. Robert Carl's engaging account does much to uphold this view, and the Oxford University Press book series Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation is to be congratulated for venturing beyond the safe haven of the Classical and Romantic traditions to include a work that has been hailed, to quote the series editor Malcolm Gillies, as ‘the founding text of what we now recognize as musical minimalism’ (v). Nonetheless, the nature of In C as a part improvised, part open and indeterminate work sees the author eschewing more traditional musicological approaches in the interests of providing an ‘understanding of Riley's aesthetic stance in the 1960s and a technical reconstruction of how, when and where the work came into existence’ (v). This, then, is ‘musical genesis’ in the widest sense of the word, and although Carl's monograph covers musical structure and interpretation, his writing is at its most illuminating and engaging when he examines and describes the sociocultural and historical factors that contributed to In C's emergence and eventual success.

A narrative outlining the genesis of the work unfolds in Chapters 2 and 3, where Carl traces Riley's early compositions and the music that influenced them. The post-war avant-garde scene is briefly set out (5–6), in addition to the West Coast's connections with the musical experimentalism of Henry Cowell and John Cage (6–7). Carl draws attention to La Monte Young's importance in developing a concept of extended musical time which influenced Riley's own thinking in this area, but the author is also correct to point out that Riley's experiments with tape loops (developed through his association with the San Francisco Tape Music Center) enabled him to pursue ‘his own path, related to Young's in goal but different in means […] based on repetition rather than just sustained tones’ (23). Carl is quick to identify features in Riley's formative works that prefigure In C's innovative formal and melodic designs, such as the ‘small harmonic kernels, linked in sustained pulsing patterns’ (31) of the String Trio (1961). Riley's Keyboard Study no. 1 also evinces ‘a radical restriction of harmonic content, even more so than [in the later] In C’ (33). Dance forms an important element in Riley's early development too; his work with Anna Halprin and, in particular, the tape music he produced for Ken Dewey's The Gift (1963, featuring the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker) are seen to anticipate the process of musical fragmentation and repetition heard in In C, while also looking towards Steve Reich's early tape pieces It's Gonna Rain (1964–5) and Come Out (1966), albeit ‘without the rigorous focus on process’ (37).

Chapter 3 focuses on the première itself, which took place under the auspices of the San Francisco Tape Music Center at 321 Divisadero Street, San Francisco, on 4 November 1964, followed by a further hearing in the same venue two days later. Carl's by turns colourful and dramatic account of the event (the second performance was almost cancelled as the result of a fire notice placed on the building) is supported by the recorded reflections of a number of performers interviewed by Carl. The list now reads like a veritable ‘who's who’ of practitioners of experimental and minimal music: Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, Jon Gibson, and Morton Subotnick, among others. What transpires from Carl's lucid account is that In C's première was a unique and extraordinary event. For example, members of the audience were encouraged to sit where they pleased – in and around the performers – which would presumably have been unusual even for an ‘avant-garde’ concert at this time. The use of a Chamberlin organ (a kind of early analogue sampler, according to Carl) also lent the performance an important electronic dimension, and an ‘integrated light show’ (46) made it something of a ‘multimedia event’ (48).

Carl's reference to probably the first ever written account of the work – music critic Alfred Frankenstein's review in the San Francisco Chronicle – is valuable in judging initial responses to it, especially his assertion that In C was ‘the evening's masterpiece’ (53). Frankenstein later reaffirmed this judgement in a review of the first recording, issued by Columbia Records in 1968, where he claimed that In C was ‘one of the definitive masterpieces of the twentieth century’ (95). Indeed, the significance of the Columbia Recording is described and contextualized in Chapter 5, which focuses on the work's ‘post-genesis’. Carl also provides informative summary descriptions of subsequent recordings of the work in the appendix that concludes the study.

The author's description of the Columbia recording as the work's ‘second premiere’ includes some fascinating anecdotes, such as producer David Behrman's comments at the end of the session – ‘you know I think we've just changed music’ (83) – but Carl's assessment of the recording is not always positive. He states that it became ‘a burden to the work, very early in its life, because [it] seemed to define the parameters of the piece, framing it in listeners' minds with a specific sound and formal sensibility’ (88). He argues that ‘the Columbia release […] pigeonholed the piece more than it needed so early in its life’ (88). But what première recording, by its very nature, would not do this? Maybe Carl's point is that In C is inherently resistant to something as fixed as a recording, a view implied in his comment that In C ‘can never exist in a “definitive version”’ and shared by Keith Potter when he said that ‘performances of In C [should] be conceived more as contributions to an ongoing exploration of its potential than as merely a faithful reproduction of the score’.Footnote ¹

Carl's most perceptive observations are often made on the tacit understanding that In C is by its very nature ‘an object subjected to multiple realizations’ (109). When Carl attempts to address the work ‘as a score in its own right’ (107), however, his analysis comes up short. His close readings of the score as ‘analytical object’ are on the whole less convincing than his work on In C's genesis and formation.

His analysis of the work applies two basic approaches. The first (‘endogenous’) arises from a study of the notes themselves and views In C as a kind of structural ‘artifact’ (55). The second (‘exogenous’) involves ‘[examining] the piece as it actually occurs, in real-time performance’ (57). Carl's ‘endogenous’ approach inevitably places greater emphasis on the score, but he justifies this by stating that In C ‘reaffirms the importance of the score, the traditionally notated artifact, within it’ (60). Of course, the dangers of treating the score too literally relate to the fact that – with the exception of the beginning and the end – what is seen on the page rarely equates to what is heard.

Nevertheless, in Chapter 4 Carl sets out to apply the principles of formal analysis to the work, and it is in his examination of pitch-class densities in each unit (or ‘module’, as he describes it) that his analysis, as illustrated in his Figure 4.1 (61), comes unstuck. Part of the problem lies in the fact that he does not state explicitly whether pitch class C is included in his calculations. (C, as the ‘pulse note’, is heard throughout the piece, whether it appears in the module in question or not.) As nearly all the pitch-class densities in Figure 4.1 would be incorrect if C were included, it is likely that pitch-class densities have been calculated with C omitted from those modules where it does not appear except in the continuing pulse. However, even by that measure modules 45 and 48 are also incorrect, since they both contain two pitch classes (D and G, and G and F respectively), not three. Strangely, Figure 4.1 omits module 51 altogether. Carl's rhythmic analysis of the work is also confusing, and the designation in Figure 4.3 of module 39 as 15 crotchet beats long (rather than 1.5) can surely be understood only as an unfortunate typo.Footnote ²

While such errors may not undermine the general thrust of Carl's analysis, of more significance are the conclusions he draws from module 35. He rightly accords some importance to this module, assigning it a separate subheading in Chapter 4 (66–8). It is by some distance the longest unit, comprising twenty-two notes spread across thirty crotchet beats. Potter has described it as ‘the only real melody in the entire piece’.Footnote ³ Carl identifies nine pitch classes in module 35, whereas in fact the correct number is seven (eight if one includes the pulse note C; namely E, F, F♯, G, A, B♭, and B). This leads him on to claim that In C expands and develops more than it does in reality. There is certainly a general progression from ‘lesser to greater’ units, followed by ‘a gradual paring down’ (61), but this does not occur to the extent that Carl's analysis suggests. After all, In C is still a minimalist (or, maybe more accurately, proto-minimalist) work, and surely part of its appeal lies in the fact that despite, like Cage's 4′33″, being reductive in terms of content, it is still, in terms of concept, replete with rich meanings.Footnote ⁴

In fact, one senses at times that Carl is attempting to measure the importance of In C according to more traditional, classical principles. In his preface he already frames the work in this way, writing that ‘I now happily anticipate the emergence of particular modules, often with the same eagerness I would feel for a climactic moment in Beethoven or a particularly lyrical theme's emergence in Brahms’ (ix). Later he lays a claim for Riley's place in the pantheon of great composers by stating that In C's content and structure are ‘not so far removed from the motivic strategies of Beethoven and Brahms’ (65). In his analysis he observes that the ‘gradual transformation of […] motives […] come[s] straight from the playbook of more traditional practice’ (64). Carl sees In C as ‘reflective of a deeply compositional temperament, one that understands development and growth’ (62), and concludes that Riley's ‘attention to gradual change […] comes very much from the spirit of motivic development that we find in the core classical canon’ (65).

Here, however, one wonders if Carl is having his cake and eating it. It is curious to see so much emphasis placed on the notion of classical ‘progress’ in a work which, elsewhere in the book, is described as ‘the Sacre of musical minimalism’ (6), a work which seems ‘to stand the whole idea of musical “progress” on its head’ (3). Carl is certainly correct in identifying traditional elements here – motivic and rhythmic development, large-scale harmonic design, and at least a degree of goal-orientation – as others (such as Keith Potter and Robert P. MorganFootnote ⁵) have done before him. However, it is equally clear that in varying the lengths of the modules Riley was building into the work a fail-safe way of constructing a straightforward, efficient, yet gently unpredictable polyphonic weave rather than setting out a musical structure in which motivic transformation ensures organic unity and coherence. Motivic development becomes a ‘by-product’ (to use Reich's termFootnote ⁶) of In C's contrapuntal design rather than its sine qua non. Units of varying lengths are thus composed in order to ensure that parts dovetail, overlap, and phase with one another effectively.

There is therefore a sense in which Carl shoehorns the intuitive, quasi-improvisatory ‘construction’ that lies behind In C's motivic transformations into more traditional didactic theories of development and transformation. He also claims that the work's overall structure evinces a ‘gradual rise’ followed by a ‘long process toward a resolution’ (62) according to an arch-like ABA design, ending where it began. This interpretation rather diminishes In C's through-composed, improvisatory nature. The work does not end where it began, but rather fans out in ever-spiralling rings that orbit the central pitch of C (‘around’ or ‘on C’, as Potter has perceptively pointed out). Rather like the concerto principle in Baroque music (with which In C arguably shares a closer kinship than with works from the Romantic tradition), these curves never stray too far from the home ‘key’ or ‘mode’, but one still does not hear ‘the same modal content throughout’ as Carl contends (64).

Whereas in the past there has been a danger of over-emphasizing the differences between minimalism and previous forms of Western music, Carl's analysis is in danger of making too much of the similarities. For example, it is difficult to see how modules 48–53 can in reality constitute a ‘coda’ for the work in the way that Carl suggests (69). All but two of the final six modules feature a B♭, which is accorded a more prominent place in this final section (its only previous appearance is in the ‘melodic’ module 35). The primacy accorded to B♭ suggests transposed mixolydian, though Carl hears this as G dorian. Whichever is the case, the last modules do not signal a clear return to a home key or mode, as one might expect from a conventional coda. Riley opens up new modal and harmonic possibilities in this final section rather than closing things off. As Potter states, the end of In C is left ‘hanging in the air’.Footnote ⁷

Analytical misconceptions notwithstanding, one of the most thought-provoking aspects of Carl's monograph is his claim about the work's ‘all-American’ status. Carl first proposes this notion at the beginning of the book, when he describes In C as ‘a shining landmark within a remarkable period of American music’ (vii), adding a little later that the group dynamics in the composition are ‘a great tribute to American ideals of individualism and democracy’ (7). Carl's assessment of Alfred Frankenstein's review also positions the work within this context: he writes that the critic ‘actually places Riley into an “All-American” school of composition far different from either serial or aleatoric versions of avant-gardism’ (54). There is certainly some truth in this, especially when one considers that the minimalist movement emerged from America. But this view of In C as ‘American’ does rather contradict Carl's description of the work as ‘possibly the first truly “globalist” composition’ (9). His all-Americanism, in other words, goes against the work's transnationalism. One suspects that the study would have benefited from unpacking the meaning of terms such as ‘Americanism’ and ‘globalism’. My own view is that Riley did not so much consciously apply transnational principles in In C, but rather allowed a wide range of musical experiences – from both within America (in the form of jazz, ragtime, experimental, and Fluxus activities) and outside (his interest in North African and Indian music, for example) – to shape and inform his aesthetic approach.

Carl's concluding comments about In C's legacy draw on the thoughts of a number of important composers, practitioners, and academics, including Kyle Gann, Ingram Marshall, and Robert Black. This rather brief chapter does not consider the work's influence on a diverse range of post-experimental and minimalist composers, however. Reich's debt to the work is acknowledged briefly, but there is no mention of works that were partially or wholly modelled on In C's concept, design, and soundworld. These might include Frederic Rzewski's Le Moutons de Panurge (1969), Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning (1968–70), John White's ‘machine music’, and parts of Louis Andriessen's De Staat (1972–6). Indeed, it is likely that the trumpeter Jon Hassell, who performed on the original recording of In C, would not have developed his own brand of ambient minimalism without this experience.

There is much to commend in Carl's intelligent and informative account, in particular the detailed ethnographic research carried out on the work's genesis and formation. With the exception of John Richardson's study of Glass's Akhnaten (1999) and Robert Adlington's analysis of Andriessen's De Staat (2004), few monographs have engaged with specific works from the minimalist repertory.Footnote ⁸ Robert Carl's book gives additional weight to the notion that In C is minimalism's year zero, and shows that the work deserves to be accorded as much scholarly significance and attention as other landmark works of the twentieth century.