Source Inspirations

I lis­tened to a great lec­ture last week by per­cus­sionst Jim Preiss. He’s the prin­ci­pal per­cus­sion­ist of the Brook­lyn Phil­har­monic, the Amer­i­can Com­posers Orches­tra, the Westch­ester Phil­har­monic, and the River­side Sym­phony and also per­forms reg­u­larly with the Orches­tra of St. Luke‚Äôs and the Amer­i­can Sym­phony Orches­tra. He’s also been a mem­ber of the Steve Reich Ensem­ble since 1971, about the time Reich com­posed his famous piece Drum­ming.

Mr. Preiss talked about Reich’s inspi­ra­tion for Drum­ming. In his trav­els, Reich had come across West African drum­ming and Bali­nese game­lan, and was inpired to com­pose some­thing in response. Like his inspi­ra­tion sources, he wanted to com­pose music that didn’t require per­form­ers to read the score; they would per­form by rote memory.

I got to think­ing about all the dif­fer­ent kinds of source inspi­ra­tions that we hap­pen upon every day. Per­haps some­thing you hear on the sub­way, or in traf­fic, or in con­ver­sa­tion. Noise, books, a movie, a sculp­ture, or what­ever — source mate­ri­als can be found in just about every­thing we come across, if you stretch out and think creatively.