Clapping Music

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Clapping music is a minimalist piece written by Steve Reich in 1972. It is written for two performers and is performed entirely by clapping.

A development of the phase shifting technique from Reich's earlier works such as Piano Phase, it was written when Reich wanted to (in his own words) "create a piece of music that needed no instruments beyond the human body". However, he quickly found that the mechnism of phasing slowly in and out of tempo with each other was inappropriate for the simple clapping involved in producing the actual sounds that made the music.

Instead of phasing, one performer claps a basic rhythm of 12 quaver beats in length for the entirety of the piece. The other claps the same pattern, but every 12 bars he misses the 12th quaver, so that s/he shifts by a quaver every 12 bars over the first performer's "base" rhythm.

The two performers continue this until the second performer has shifted 12 quavers and is hence playing the pattern in unison with the first performer again (as at the beginning), some 144 bars later.

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