Editing In C (section)

==Composition==
Alongside fellow students [[Loren Rush]] and [[Pauline Oliveros]], Terry Riley had been involved with group improvisation since 1957–8.<ref name=NPR>{{Cite web|title=''In C'' Forever: The eternal evolution of Terry Riley's minimalist masterpiece |work=NPR |url=https://www.npr.org/2024/11/03/nx-s1-4886709/in-c-forever-the-eternal-evolution-of-terry-rileys-minimalist-masterpiece|publisher=[[NPR]]}}</ref> The immediate forerunner for the piece was the incidental music Riley wrote for [[Ken Dewey]]'s play ''The Gift''. It was being performed in Paris in 1963 when Riley was asked to provide music for it. He ran into [[Chet Baker]] and recorded his quartet performing songs that included [[Miles Davis]]' "[[So What (Miles Davis composition)|So What]]". Riley was familiar with the [[Echoplex]] and wanted to replicate its sound. A technician from [[Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française|ORTF]] set up a [[tape loop]] system for the composer. ''Music From The Gift'' inspired Riley to work with loops for years to come.<ref>Strickland, Edward. ''American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music''. Bloomington: [[Indiana University Press]], 1991. 112.</ref> Riley created installations using tape loops that he called "time-lag accumulators".<ref>[[Alfred Frankenstein|Frankenstein, Alfred]]. "Magic Theater in Kansas City", ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]''. June 2, 1968. 31–2.</ref><ref name=Alburger/>{{rp|5}}

When he was back in San Francisco the following year, Riley was playing piano nightly at the Gold Street Saloon. On the way to work one night in March 1964, he heard ''In C'' in his head and wrote it down after the show. The score consists of short melodic fragments, which was a staple of Riley's music from that period.<ref>Mertens, Wim. ''American Minimal Music: La Monte Toung, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass''. Translated by J. Haukiet. London: Kahn & Averill, 1983. 37f.</ref> Soon after, [[Morton Subotnick]] asked Riley to perform solo at the [[San Francisco Tape Music Center]]. He prepared the work to be performed with an ensemble on that concert.<ref name=Duck>Duckworth, William. ''[https://archive.org/details/bwb_P8-AFH-901/page/277/mode/1up Talking Music]''. Schirmer Books, 1995.</ref>{{rp|277f}} 

Riley saw ''In C'' as way a for instrumentalists to play in the style he had developed with tape loops.<ref name=Alburger>[[Mark Alburger|Alburger, Mark]]. "Shri Terry: Enlightenment at Riley's Moonshine Ranch". ''Twentieth‐Century Music'' 4, no. 3. March, 1997. 1–20.</ref>{{rp|7}} His artistic goal was [[Shamanism|shamanistic]]. He wanted to write music that created a [[satori]] for the listener:<blockquote>I was never concerned with minimalism, but I was very concerned with [[psychedelia]] and the [[Counterculture_of_the_1960s#Psychedelic_research_and_experimentation|psychedelic movement]] of the sixties as an opening toward consciousness. For my generation that was a first look towards the East, that is, [[peyote]], [[mescaline]], and the [[psychedelic drug]]s which were opening up people's attention towards higher consciousness. So I think what I was experiencing in music at that time was another world...music was also able to transport us suddenly out of one reality into another. Transport us so that we would almost be having visions as we were playing. So that's what I was thinking about before I wrote ''In C''. I believe music, shamanism, and magic are all connected, and when it's used that way it creates the most beautiful use of music.<ref name=Duck/>{{rp|269}}</blockquote>

Most of the music Terry Riley composes is not written down. ''In C'' was an early exception, and remained one of his few notated pieces until [[Kronos Quartet]] began commissioning him in the 1980s. Riley specifically scored ''In C'' so that it would be open to many interpretations. The score is so minimal it fits on a single page, and Riley felt, "if you can't do it with just that, it's not worth doing".<ref>Smith, Geoff and Nicole Walker Smith. ''[https://archive.org/details/newvoicesamerica0000smit/page/233/mode/1up New Voices: American Composers Talk about Their Music]''. Amadeus Press, 1995. 233.</ref>