Looking Outwards 09 – Sara Frankel

caption: Terry Riley’s “In C” results in a different performance guaranteed eery time played.

The looking outwards assignment I am reviewing is Kyle Leve’s week 6 post about In C by Terry Riley. Listening to it, at first it sounded kind of jarring and unsettling because of the lack of harmonic progression, but the more I listened to it the more I appreciated it. Kyle mentions that this “piece… allows each player to make their own artistic decisions and have freedom from the written page”. I agree with this comment as there are legitimately infinite combinations and interpretations as it is dependent on how many or littles musicians there are and their own musicianship. I do agree with Kyle though to a degree about randomness as if one listens to it in passing, it would really not make sense. However, if you stop and listen and allow yourself to be open minded to the momentum of the music, the music should not feel random at all but in fact, the nonsense you hear should seem coherent.