Steve Reich Goes Swiss

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Steve Reich at his home. Photo by Harry Benson

If you want to study Steve Reich’s collected working papers, you will have to visit the Swiss city of Basel. The Paul Sacher Foundation has entered into an agreement with the composer to take over his complete musical archive, and make the material available to scholars.

According to a release from the Swiss educational institution, the Steve Reich Collection at the Paul Sacher Foundation covers the composer’s entire oeuvre, from dodecaphonic early works to his latest creations such as Daniel Variations (2006) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet (2007). In addition to letters, sound recordings and manuscript from various stages in Reich’s creative process, the collection will feature his many audio and computer program files, which capture various layers in the music of a composer for whom computers, synthesizers and samplers have long been standard compositional tools.

The Paul Sacher Foundation was founded in 1973 by the Swiss conductor, patron and impressario. At first the foundation’s purpose was to preserve Paul Sacher's musical library. A short while later, the holdings began to be systematically expanded, and its purpose started to change. Today, the Foundation is an international research center for the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, with some 80 estates and collections from leading composers and performers including key influences in Reich’s career such as Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Reich’s former teacher Lucio Berio, Morton Feldman and Pierre Boulez.