The Desert Music

The Desert Music is a cantata for voices and orchestra written from September 1982 to December 1983 by American minimalist composer Steve Reich, setting texts by William Carlos Williams. Its title is derived from Williams' poetry anthology, The Desert Music and Other Poems. The composition consists of five movements, with a duration of about 46 minutes. In both its arrangement of thematic material and use of tempi, the piece is in a characteristic arch form (ABCBA).

The Desert Music received its world premiere on March 17, 1984 in Cologne.

Orchestration

The piece is scored for a chorus of 27 voices: nine sopranos, and six each of altos, tenors and basses.

The orchestra calls for:

• 4 flutes (doubling on 3 piccolos), 4 oboes (doubling on 3 cor anglais), 4 B clarinets (doubling on 3 B bass clarinets), 4 bassoons (doubling on 1 contrabassoon)
• 4 horns, 4 trumpets (doubling on 1 optional piccolo trumpet), 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba.
• 2 timpani players (doubling rototoms); 7 percussionists (including 2 players on marimba; 2 players on vibraphone; 2 players on xylophones, doubling glockenspiels; maracas paired with sticks; 2 bass drums, and medium tam-tam).
• 2 pianos, played by four musicians (doubling 3 synthesizers)
• The strings (12-12-9-9-6) are broken into three sections of (4-4-3-3-2) seated by their section with the first set of 16 players stage right, the next 16 center stage, and the last 16 stage left

There is also a reduced orchestration, prepared by Reich himself, for a chorus of 10 voices (3 sopranos, 3 altos, 2 tenors, 2 basses), accompanied by:

• 4 flutes (doubling on 3 piccolos)
• 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones (all brass optional)
• 4 pianos, all doubling synthesizer
• 12 solo strings, broken into three quartets, plus one or two basses

No reductions are made in the percussion.

Music

The Desert Music<nowiki/>'s text is taken from passages from poems in William Carlos Williams's anthology of the same name. The work is in five movements and lasts around 50 minutes. Percussion is heard throughout the work playing in complex and changing metres such as and .

The tempi between two sections are related by a ratio of 3:2, introduced at the end of each section by either tuplet or dotted rhythms, respectively: I and V have 192 beats per minute; II, IIIB, and IV have 128i; and IIIA and C have 85.

Sections I and V have the same harmonic structure. Sections II and IV have both the same harmonic structure and the same words, and likewise Sections IIIA and IIIC.