Steve Reich, Tehillim

A setting of four psalm texts in Hebrew for voices and ensemble, written after Reich returned to Judaism in his forties and went to study cantillation.

⭐⭐⭐ THE ONE PIECE IN THIS SECTION WHERE THE ENGAGEMENT IS DOCUMENTED RATHER THAN INFERRED, AND WHERE THE MUSICAL PROBLEM IS THE TRADITIONAL ONE. Reich found that the traditional melodies for the Psalms were lost in the Western branch and surviving in the Yemenite one — the repertoire Section III is about — and rather than quote it he did something stranger: he set the Hebrew with no fixed metre, letting the words' own accents make the rhythm. That is a compositional method derived from a doctrine that the text is prior to the setting. ⭐ It is also the moment his own music breaks out of pure process, which composers noticed at the time.