Talk:Music for 18 Musicians

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Albums

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Comment

Resolved

The introduction to this piece implies that the piece can be played by a mimium of 18 musicians - however the listed intruments amount to 19 - what gives?

Music for 18 Musicians was written for a cello, violin, two clarinets (both players double on bass clarinet), four pianos, three marimbas, two xylophones, a metallophone, maracas, and four women's voices.

--84.203.32.156 22:52, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Did you actually read the article? It explains that in detail. —Keenan Pepper 22:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cover artwork

There must be an interesting story behind the album cover artwork. Who designed it? Presumably the pattern is related to the music in some way, no? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.41.25.146 (talk) 00:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that somewhere on the album cover and or notes, there is an explanation of the artwork. I don't believe that it corresponds directly with the composition. I'll have to check my album cover. 198.22.236.230 (talk) 23:10, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cover artwork, named Weaver's Notation, was done by Beryl Korot in 1976 86.214.253.195 (talk) 18:05, 18 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Importance of Reich pieces

How are we evaluating the importance of Reich's pieces to the contemporary music project. For example, it seems counterintuitive that the rarely performed Pendulum Music would be accorded the same importance as the best selling Music for 18 Musicians. Hyacinth (talk) 04:03, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pendulum Music was much earlier, and was among the first pieces that crystallized his ideas of music being a process that inexorably works itself out. 18 Musicians is a great piece, and much more popular, but arguably doesn't break new aesthetic and philosophical ground like Pendulum Music, It's Gonna Rain, or the earlier phase pieces did. —Torc. ^(Talk.) 09:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that Reich himself has argued that Pendulum Music is more important to him than it is to other people, unlike 18 Musicians and Piano Phase, the latter of which is very important to both. 18 Musicians, for instance, could be considered of high importance because it is "very notable within Contemporary music, and well-known outside of it" (Wikipedia:WikiProject Contemporary music/Assessment#Importance scale). Hyacinth (talk) 01:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We may note that the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker used Music for 18 Musicians, performed by the Ictus Ensemble, for her highly successful piece Rain (French). Everybody got to be somewhere! (talk) 16:59, 15 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is this article about the composition or a specific album?

Resolved

This page is for the composition. The album now has it's own page, currently at Music for 18 Musicians (album) TlonicChronic (talk) 15:46, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Currently it seems ambiguous. I think the composition is notable enough to be treated on its own, without reference to professional reviews of a particular recording - which will be response to that specific performance, and not the music in its pure form Ceadge (talk) 14:03, 27 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article is without citations

I'm a user of wikipedia. Not really interested in doing much editing here. I noticed there don't seem to be citations for most of this page. However, I'm also looking at Reich's Book, "Writings on Music" and a lot of the material (sometimes verbatim) looks like it could have come from there. That would be a great place to start for a dedicated Wikipedian... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.126.212.25 (talk) 06:17, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Articles should be swapped

Hi @TlonicChronic: I think we should discuss your recent move of the article, creating a situation where the Music for 18 Musicians article is about the CD released in 1978 and a separate article is about the composition.

It's gone technically wrong, because the two distinct articles now have the same Talk page.
It's the wrong way round. It doesn't make sense for the article about the composition to be at Music for 18 Musicians (composition) while the main article is about one recording (out of dozens that exist). Kids are learning in schools about the composition, not the 1978 CD. Books and research papers are mainly about the composition, not the one recording. When users search for "Music for 18 Musicians" it's logical to assume they want to read about the composition, and that notable individual recordings or performances will have sub-articles off that article.
I don't see any attempt of yours to gain consensus for this change. You should have known it would be contradictory to policy, or at least controversial, and set out your reasoning for doing it your way.

Please can we have the articles named sensibly and each with their own Talk page? Thanks in advance, MartinPoulter (talk) 13:35, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for causing confusion. If you think they should be reversed, by all means, that's okay by me. They just shouldn't be together. I didn't mean to cause the talk page issue; I'm still new to editing—I'm just going through the ECM released and standardizing them, and I figured I would remove the composition from the album's page. TlonicChronic (talk) 14:32, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for being so understanding. I see you're doing a lot of work standardising the articles about ECM releases, which is great! In the case of article naming, there are policies we need to follow: we have to be reader-centric, not ECM-centric. ;) MartinPoulter (talk) 15:11, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I was planning on having one be composition and the other be 1978 album, because one is a composition and there are around a dozen album releases of the piece, but I didn't move both to avoid being yelled at for double page moving. I don't think the other needs to be changed back from composition tbh. If anything, maybe a disambig page would be more useful, but I definitely understand the precedent concern. The big issue seems to be the overlapping talk page, which I don't know how to fix. TlonicChronic (talk) 15:25, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The redirects on other pages are definitely a concern though. If you wanted I could go through the pages that link to 18 Musicians and make sure they reach the composition page. TlonicChronic (talk) 15:30, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the help! Very happy to have the two pages separate now. I did my best to separate the purely album stuff from the composition page, and I added the remaining necessaries to the album as best I could. I don't think there's anything else to remove, but do you think a portion of the "composition" section from the composition page should be copied over and slightly reworked for the album page? TlonicChronic (talk) 15:53, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]