by Ben Hogwood Photo credit Jeffrey Herman

Background

Reich’s short but dazzling group of pieces for tape signs off with Melodica. The composer lays out clear instructions in the score, an image of which appears in his Writings On Music compendium. He describes its genesis in typically concise fashion:

“Melodica is composed of one tape loop gradually going out of phase with itself, first in two voices and then in four. The original loop is of myself playing the four-note pattern on the melodica, a toy instrument. I dreamed the melodic pattern, woke up on May 22nd, 1966, and realized the piece with the melodica and tape loops in one day. Melodica was composed of musical pitches, as opposed to the speech fragments used in my two earlier tape pieces, It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). It proved to be both a transition phase shifting process, and the last tape piece I ever made.”

Listen

Thoughts

For the first time, Reich’s music does away with speech, applying the development of phase patterns to pitched music played on an instrument. This is a simple, jerky four note motif played on the melodica – whose repetitions can be jarring to start with. The key moment is just before two minutes in, where the phase shifting becomes noticeable to the untrained ear, and the echo effects start off those now-familiar sensations where the ear starts to pick out fleeting movements between the parts.

As the parts double from two to four, the melodic shapes dance in the mind’s eye, the rhythms bouncing off the walls – a dazzling effect for something so apparently simple! Then, almost without warning, the music stops, like switching off a radio – but continues to reverberate in the listener’s ears long after the sounds have died.

A postcard of minimalism, Melodica is a critical stage in Reich’s development as the emphasis shifts to instrumental music.

Recordings

Melodica – to my surprise – does not appear anywhere in Reich’s recorded oeuvre, though as you see above is easily accessed on YouTube.

Also written / released in 1966 Marvin Gaye Moods of Marvin Gaye; Frank Sinatra Strangers in the Night; Ligeti Lux Aeterna

Next up: Piano Phase (1967)

Published post no.3,050– Saturday 17 October 2026