Parallel Octaves

As an iconic American composer, Terry Riley (born 1935) is always considered as a minimalist. However, this kind of thoughts would be ignoring part of his creativity. In fact, Riley added plenty elements in his compositions since 1970s, especially when he started collaborating with the Kronos Quartet. Riley’s composing style is very extensive, including improvisation, polyrhythm and jazz. He adopted classical elements, such as instrumentation, musical forms, structure and tonality. He also combined the elements from different periods to create unique musical textures. This research focuses on Terry Riley’s String Quartet, G Song. The research will be divided into two parts. The first part introduces Riley’s life and the background of G Song. The second part focuses on music analysis, including the musical structure “Two forms in one work”; The harmony “Unresolved Dissonance”; The rhythm “Metric Modulation”; The baroque “Canon”; The modern “Pointillism”. The purpose of this study is to discuss how Riley combined classicism and modernism into a work, and discuss why the statement “Terry Riley is considered as minimalist” would be ignoring part of his story.

Canon in D 是德國作曲家 Johann Pachelbel（譯：約翰．帕海貝爾）的作品，亦是當代最廣為人知的古典音樂作品之一。Canon in D 的「初版」由三支小提琴，伴隨一件（或數件）低音樂器一起演奏，後來被改編為各種形式的演奏版本（例如鋼琴獨奏、管弦樂團演奏的 Canon in D，皆屬改編版本）。它的創作日期並沒有明確被記載，但一般認為是創作於 1680-1706 年之間。