The Desert Music is a work of music for voice

Voice

Voice may refer to:* Human voice* Voice control or voice activation* Writer's voice* Voice acting* Voice vote* Voice message-In film:* Voice , a 2005 South Korean film* The Voice , a 2010 Turkish horror film directed by Ümit Ünal...

s and orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

 composed by Steve Reich

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

 based on texts by William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...

. It consists of five movements, and in both its tempi and arrangement of thematic material, the piece is in a characteristic arch form

Arch form

In music, arch form is a sectional structure for a piece of music based on repetition, in reverse order, of all or most musical sections such that the overall form is symmetric, most often around a central movement...

 (ABCBA). It was composed in 1983.

Orchestration

The piece is scored for a chorus

Choir

A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...

 of 27 voices: nine soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

s, and six each of alto

Alto

Alto is a musical term, derived from the Latin word altus, meaning "high" in Italian, that has several possible interpretations.When designating instruments, "alto" frequently refers to a member of an instrumental family that has the second highest range, below that of the treble or soprano. Hence,...

s, tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

s and basses. It calls for a woodwind section comprising four flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

s with three doubling on piccolo

Piccolo

The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...

, four oboe

Oboe

The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...

s with three doubling on cor anglais

Cor anglais

The cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....

, four B clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

s with three doubling on B bass clarinet

Bass clarinet

The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...

 and four bassoon

Bassoon

The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...

s with one doubling on contrabassoon

Contrabassoon

The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...

.

The brass section comprises four horns

Horn (instrument)

The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....

, four trumpets with one doubling on optional piccolo trumpet

Piccolo trumpet

The smallest of the trumpet family is the piccolo trumpet, pitched one octave higher than the standard B trumpet. Most piccolo trumpets are built to play in either B or A, using a separate leadpipe for each key. The tubing in the B piccolo trumpet is one-half the length of that in a standard B...

, two trombone

Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...

s, a bass trombone, and one tuba

Tuba

The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...

. The percussion section is characteristically extensive, comprising two timpani

Timpani

Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

, both doubling on rototom

Rototom

Rototoms are drums which have no shell. They consist of a single head in a die-cast zinc or aluminum frame. Unlike most other drums, they have a variable definite pitch. Composers are known to write for them as tuned instruments, demanding specific pitches. Rototoms are often used to extend the tom...

s, two marimba

Marimba

The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys ...

s, two vibraphone

Vibraphone

The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the struck idiophone subfamily of the percussion family....

s, two xylophone

Xylophone

The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...

s, two glockenspiel

Glockenspiel

A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...

s, maracas

Maracás

Maracás is a town and municipality in the state of Bahia in the North-East region of Brazil.-References:...

, sticks, a pair of bass drum

Bass drum

Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...

s, and a medium gong

Gong

A gong is an East and South East Asian musical percussion instrument that takes the form of a flat metal disc which is hit with a mallet....

.

Two piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

s, played by four musicians, comprise the keyboard section, and 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.

Form

I : Fast Tempo (quarter = 192 in 4/4 time)
II : Moderate Tempo
IIIA : Slow Tempo
IIIB : Moderate Tempo
IIIC : Slow Tempo
IV : Moderate Tempo
V : Fast Tempo

The tempi between two sections are related by a ratio of 3:2, introduced at the end of each section by either tuplet

Tuplet

In music a tuplet is "any rhythm that involves dividing the beat into a different number of equal subdivisions from that usually permitted by the...

 or dotted rhythms, respectively. So, I and V have 192 bpm

Tempo

In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...

; II, IIIB, and IV have 128 bpm; IIIA and C have 85 bpm.

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

Relation to other Reich pieces

The piece opens similarly to many other Reich's own works: a piano or mallet instrument pulsing on the beat, with another piano or marimba soon fading in on the offbeats (Music for 18 Musicians, Sextet, Three Movements for Orchestra). Also characteristic of several of Reich's pieces, such as New York Counterpoint, Electric Counterpoint, Sextet, Music for 18 Musicians, Three Movements for Orchestra, the exposition of the pulse is followed by pulsed notes in the choir and orchestra fading in and out over the course of a chord progression. Also, the first movement prominently features a repeated rhythm found in several of the aforementioned works:
Twice in Section IIIC, the strings begin playing a slightly modified section from Reich's New York Counterpoint.