From the WSJ, April 22nd:

Fifty years ago this week, on April 24, 1976, the lights went down in New York’s Town Hall for the world premiere of a single piece by Steve Reich called “Music for 18 Musicians.” Roughly an hour later, when the music had shimmered back into silence and the shouting, stomping standing ovation had finally come to an end, it struck me that the world of classical music had just changed.

It wasn’t even Mr. Reich’s first masterpiece, but “Music for 18 Musicians” was the composer’s largest, grandest and most accessible work to date—it grabbed its mostly youthful listeners, won them over and kept them fascinated throughout. The scoring was a unique mix of four pianos, a plethora of percussion instruments, two clarinets (doubling bass clarinet), four wordless and amplified women’s voices, a violin and a cello.…