City Life is a minimalist composition by Steve Reich written in 1995. It is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 vibraphones, unpitched percussion, 2 samplers, 2 pianos, string quartet, and double bass. All instruments except the unpitched percussion are to be amplified. Its duration is 24 minutes. This article is about minimalism in art and design. ... Composition deals with the bits and pieces that make up things. ... Steve Reich (born October 3, 1936; last name pronounced []) is an American composer. ... This article pertains to the musical instrument. ... Modern Oboe The Oboe is a musical instrument of the woodwind double reed family. ... A bass clarinet, which sounds an octave lower than the more common B♭ soprano clarinet. ... Luigi Waites plays a vibraphone, July 29, 1999 The vibraphone, sometimes called the vibraharp or simply the vibes, is a musical instrument in the percussion family. ... Percussion instruments are music instruments played by being struck, shaken, rubbed or scraped, hence the percussive name. ... A sampler can be any of the following things: In general, a sampler is any broadly representative cross-section of some collection; for instance, food products are sometimes packaged in samplers containing a variety of chocolates or beers. ... This article is about the modern musical instrument. ... The resident string quartet of the Library of Congress in 1963 A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instruments—usually two violins, a viola and cello—or a piece written to be performed by such a group. ... Side and front views of a modern double bass with a French bow. ...

The use of the samplers extends the idea of using everyday sounds in music, endebted to the taxi horn in Gershwin's An American in Paris, the sirens used by Varèse, and Antheil's airplane propeller within the classical tradition as well as to rock and roll and rap. This use also harkens back to Reich's early tape pieces (especially the third movement). The samplers are loaded with speech and other sounds (car horns, door slams, air brakes, subway chimes, pile drivers, car alarms, heartbeats, boat horns, buoys, and sirens), many of which were recorded in New York City by Reich himself. The last movement uses bits of field communications from the New York Fire Department from the day the World Trade Center was bombed. George Gershwin photograph by Edward Steichen in 1927. ... An American in Paris is a symphonic composition by American composer George Gershwin which debuted in 1928. ... In Greek mythology, the Sirens or Seirenes (Greek Σειρῆνας) were sea nymphs who lived on an island called Sirenum scopuli which was surrounded by cliffs and rocks. ... Edgar (or Edgard) Varèse (December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer, who moved to the United States in 1915, and took American citizenship in 1926. ... George Antheil (June 8, 1900 – February 12, 1959) was an American composer and pianist of Polish descent. ... A propeller can be seen as a rotating fin in water or a wing in air. ... Rock and roll (also spelled Rock n Roll, especially in its first decade), also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. ... Hip hop music is a style of popular music. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, and is at the center of American finance, politics, music, and culture. ... The twin towers, photographed from the west The World Trade Center in New York City was a complex of seven buildings leased by Larry Silverstein from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey around a central plaza, near the south end of Manhattan in the downtown financial district. ... The World Trade Center bombing was the February 26, 1993 attack in the garage of the New York City World Trade Center. ...

The work is divided into five movements and like many other Reich compositions, they follow an arch-like form of A-B-C-B-A. They are: In music, a movement is a large division of a larger composition or musical form. ...

1. Check it out
2. Pile driver/alarms
3. It's been a honeymoon -- can't take no mo'
4. Heartbeats/boats and buoys
5. Heavy smoke

Each movement is named for a sample contained within it. The first, third, and fifth movements use speech samples (often doubled with instruments, as in Different Trains), while the second and fourth use only rhythmic samples, which drives the tempo in these movements. Different Trains is a famous three-movement piece for string quartet and tape written by Steve Reich in 1988. ...

In true Reich style, the paired movements share a chord cycle. The first movement, interestingly, does not open with pulses (as in many of Reich's other pieces), but with a chorale. This same chorale appears in a slightly more dissonant voicing at the end of the fifth movement, leading the final chord which ends on an ambiguous C dominant/minor seventh chord. Other features common to Reich's pieces, such as phasing to build intricate composite rhythms. In poetry, dissonance is the deliberate avoidance of patterns of repeated vowel sounds (see assonance). ... A seventh chord is a chord or triad which has a note the seventh above the tonic in it. ...

The work was commissioned by Ensemble Modern, the London Sinfonietta, and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. It premiered in March of 1995 and recorded on the Nonesuch label in 1996. Ensemble Modern is a chamber ensemble dedicated to the music of modern composers. ... Nonesuch Records is currently a Warner Bros. ...

References

• Reich, Steve. 1995. City Life. New York: Hendon Music/Boosey & Hawkins.

• Reich, Steve. Liner Notes. Proverb/Nagoya Marimba/City Life. CD. Nonesuch Records, 1996.