AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
You may not know it, but minimalist music is everywhere - of course in concert halls but also in movies, TV ads and even pop music.
(SOUNDBITE OF TAYLOR SWIFT SONG, "PEACE")
RASCOE: That's a song by Taylor Swift. And as NPR Tom Huizenga reports, that repetitive pulse imitates the single piece of music that helped launch minimalism 60 years ago.
TOM HUIZENGA, BYLINE: That piece of music is by American composer Terry Riley, and it's called "In C."
(SOUNDBITE OF TERRY RILEY'S "IN C")
HUIZENGA: On November 4, 1964 in San Francisco, Terry Riley and a group of like-minded musicians debuted "In C." Riley says the music first came to him in unlikely circumstances.
TERRY RILEY: I played ragtime piano at the Gold Street saloon at the time, and I was riding to work on the bus when I heard this "In C" first line kind of came into my consciousness like somebody was playing it to me. So as soon as I got off work that night, I went home and wrote down the first line.
(SOUNDBITE OF TERRY RILEY'S "IN C")
HUIZENGA: The rest of the music came to Riley quickly. Still, once he had all the musical ingredients, it wasn't quite ready for prime time.
RILEY: When we first started rehearsing it, nobody, including me, knew how to play it. I had a kind of idea of how it should sound, but to rehearse it and actually turn it into music - it took a bit of doing.
HUIZENGA: It took some doing because "In C" has so few guidelines, and that's the idea. The composer gives up control. The score is just a single page, 53 little musical riffs that any group of musicians play in order but at their discretion. Every performance will, by design, sound completely different.
MAYA BEISER: I was actually blown away by the notion of freedom that it presented.
HUIZENGA: Cellist Maya Beiser released her own version of "In C" earlier this year.
BEISER: I immediately just felt that it was such a genius thing akin to E=MC square, you know, just this idea that it's something so simple.
HUIZENGA: Armed with just her cello, a looping machine and a pair of percussionists, Beiser emphasizes the deep, sometimes headbanging grooves inherent in the music.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAYA BEISER'S "IN C: 5")
BEISER: This was the nirvana section 'cause it's just - it's very Kurt Cobain or Led Zeppelin.
HUIZENGA: Unlike Beiser's mostly solo approach, "In C" is usually played by a dozen or more musicians, which, Riley says, emphasizes its communal power.
RILEY: One of the things that "In C" has done over the years is helped to connect people of different backgrounds.
HUIZENGA: And you could say that connection started big time in 1968 when Riley recorded "In C" for Columbia Records, catapulting this strange new music directly into the mainstream. These days, University of Maryland Music Professor William Robin brings his students together for annual performances of "In C," most recently in May.
WILLIAM ROBIN: It's a really powerful live experience, and the nature of the music - it is at once fully notated, but it has the sound, the ethos of this kind of communal jam session, where musicians are repeating these little rifts over and over and over again.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ROBIN: What makes "In C" such a landmark work is that it is kind of right at the center of pushing the boundaries of what music could be, while also having this incredibly rich and attractive soundscape that's groovy in a way that pop music was groovy in the mid-'60s.
HUIZENGA: And groovy enough today to attract a wide array of musicians - including an orchestra from Shanghai...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HUIZENGA: ...Two musicians from West Africa...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HUIZENGA: ...There's a Swiss industrial band...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HUIZENGA: ...Indian musicians from Brooklyn...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGER: (Vocalizing).
HUIZENGA: ...And Japanese acid rock.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HUIZENGA: Even at the beginning, Riley understood how "In C" was influential.
RILEY: Other composers were taking an interest in what I was doing, so I knew that it was going to have some significance.
HUIZENGA: It was game changing. Philip Glass and Steve Reich embraced Riley's evolving repetition. It's hard to imagine this Reich masterwork without "In C."
(SOUNDBITE OF STEVE REICH'S "MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS")
HUIZENGA: At 89, Riley, who now lives in Japan, is still composing and doesn't mind looking back to the piece that helped launch a musical movement.
RILEY: "In C" is like one of your children. They went out, became famous, did some good things, met some other people and turned out to be something different than you imagined at the beginning.
(SOUNDBITE OF BANG ON A CAN ALL-STARS' "IN C")
HUIZENGA: And it's not hard to imagine that "In C" will remain a piece that fascinates listeners and players for at least another 60 years. Tom Huizenga, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF BANG ON A CAN ALL-STARS' "IN C")
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