Steve Reich-Music For Mallet Instruments Amadinda Percussion Group(1995)(Hungaraton Records Kft)/minimalism

Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ is a 1973 composition by American composer Steve Reich. The piece is scored for glockenspiels, marimbas, metallophone (vibraphone without resonators), women's voices, and organ, and runs about 17 minutes.
The piece is in four sections, played without a break, marked off by changes in key and meter: 1) F dorian, in 3/4 time; 2) A flat dorian, in 2/4; 3) B flat minor, in 3/4; and 4) D flat, in 3/4.
The piece involves two interrelated musical processes: the builidng up of a duplicate of a preexisting pattern played by the marimbas and the glockenspiels, and the augmenting (lengthening of the duration of notes) of repeated chord cadences of the women's voices and organ. The women's voices sing a simple vowel sound, "ee," doubling upper notes of chords played by the organ. The piece is in four sections, with changes of key and meter between the sections.
The decision to double organ and women's voices was made by Reich after several months of experimentation. First he tried doubling four wind instruments with two men's and two women's voices. One attempt along this line was made with two bass clarinets and two clarinets; another involved bass trombone, trombone, flugelhorn, and trumpet. He found that the performers, both the wind players and the vocalists, had difficulty keeping in tune for long chords. Reich substituted organ for the wind instruments, and then eliminated the men's voices to avoid a sound that was "too heavy and slow moving."

Sextet is a composition by Steve Reich. As the title indicates, it is written for an ensemble of four percussionists and two keyboardists. The percussionists play (at various times) three marimbas, two vibraphones, two bass drums, crotales, sticks, and tam-tam. The keyboardists play both pianos and synthesizers set to an electric organ sound. The piece was composed in 1984–1985 and is about 28 minutes in duration.
The piece broken into five movements and, like many other Reich compositions, Sextet has an arch form: A-B-C-B-A. The paired movements share a tempo and a particular cycle of chords. These cycles use dominant chords with added tones to give it a darker, more chromatic sound, much like Reich's previous piece, The Desert Music.
Sextet plays with two aspects of music. First, it tries to overcome the natural acoustic limitations of percussion instruments. To overcome the note duration limitation (percussion instruments only produce notes of short duration), Reich employs bowed vibraphones, where the vibraphone is not struck with a mallet, but the bars are bowed with a bass bow. A similar limitation in the keyboard section is countered by the use of the synthesizers. To overcome the range limitation (mallet instruments don't have a true bass register family member), the bass drum is employed, with doubling from the pianos or synthesizers.
Second, the piece plays with ambiguity. In the third movement, a basic 12 beat pattern is ambiguous between a division into three and into four. In other parts of the piece, the line that was the melody becomes the accompaniment, even though the actual notes do not change.
The piece was co-commissioned by the Laura Dean Dancers and Musicians and the French government. An incomplete version premiered in December 1984, in Paris. The piece was reworked in early 1985 and received its American premiere in New York on October 31, 1985 during the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as the stage music for Laura Dean's ballet Impacts. It then was recorded by Steve Reich's ensemble on Nonesuch Records in 1986.