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This chapter presents Reich's thoughts about Electric Counterpoint, which was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival for the guitarist Pat Metheny. It was composed during the summer of 1987. The duration is about 15 minutes. It is the third in a series of pieces (preceded by Vermont Counterpoint and New York Counterpoint) all dealing with a soloist playing against a prerecorded tape of themselves.

This chapter presents Reich's thoughts about New York Counterpoint. He says that New York Counterpoint is a continuation of ideas found in Vermont Counterpoint (1982), in which a soloist plays against a prerecorded tape of him- or herself. In New York Counterpoint, the soloist prerecords ten clarinet and bass clarinet parts and then plays a final eleventh part live against the tape. The compositional procedures used include several that occur in my earlier music.

This chapter presents Reich's thoughts about Vermont Counterpoint, which was commissioned by Ransom Wilson and is dedicated to Betty Freeman. It is scored for three alto flutes, three flutes, three piccolos, and one solo part all prerecorded on tape, plus a live solo part. The live soloist plays alto flute, flute, and piccolo, and participates in the ongoing counterpoint as well as contributing more extended melodies. The piece can be performed by 11 flutists but is intended primarily as a solo with tape.

This chapter concludes that the blues, including the twelve-bar form of the blues was played in New Orleans by Bolden and his contemporaries. It also concludes that the principles of barbershop harmonization underpinned the tonality of the blues and gave rise to jazz counterpoint. Given that quartet harmonisation was widespread, and brass instruments readily available throughout the South it is unlikely that New Orleans is the unique birth place of jazz. For the same reason it is unlikely that Bolden was literally the first person to perform jazz. He was however the first to introduce this music to a wider public with the opening of Johnson and Lincoln Parks in 1902. Bunk Johnson played with bunk and pioneered jazz alongside Bolden. He should be recognised as a jazz pioneer.

This chapter re-evaluates the role of Steve Reich’s 1980s Counterpoint series in the context of his reinvention as a venerated member of New York’s new music establishment. It aims to show how Reich's re-engagement with past compositional interests—now expressed in more conventional terminology—formed a significant step in facilitating his gradual transformation from outsider to insider. Running in parallel with Reich’s transition toward tradition was a significant change in the composer’s working methods through the use of computer technology, as found in works such as The Four Sections and Electric Counterpoint. An investigation into this important new development offers insights into how Reich has since then pragmatically incorporated digital compositional habits alongside previous analog ones, all while maintaining a secure foothold in the Western classical canon.

This chapter examines why Counterpoint Press eventually accepted the manuscript for Jarrettsville after initially rejecting it. As a precondition for representing Cornelia Nixon, Wendy Weil asked her to write and send one chapter per month of the novel that would eventually become Jarrettsville. Weil thought she could place Nixon's novel Angels Go Naked, but Jarrettsville was the novel she wanted to represent. As Nixon worked on Martha's Version, Weil worked on placing Angels Go Naked until it was released by Counterpoint on April 1, 2000. Martha's Version was sent to five editors in 2002, and then reworked, before being sent out to another sixteen editors from 2003 to 2005. Those sixteen editors all also rejected Martha's Version. The chapter first considers the interdependencies of literary agents and editors and how editors make and legitimize decisions before discussing why Jarrettsville was rejected and later accepted by Counterpoint.

This chapter examines Counterpoint Press editor Adam Krefman's proposal for changing Jarrettsville by focusing on the field of production and how different book publishers fit and operate within it. Krefman had been full of praise for Jarrettsville, but he wondered what kind of novel it was. While Cornelia Nixon had developed a reputation as an author of literary fiction, Jarrettsville's plot makes it more the stuff of popular fiction. The chapter first considers how publishing houses need to strike a balance between artistic and commercial books before discussing the advantages of large publishers versus independent publishers. It then analyzes how Krefman and Counterpoint rearranged Jarrettsville into a nonlinear narrative that begins in medias res in order to use the novel's plot-driven facets to its literary advantage. In particular, it looks at Krefman's suggestion of moving part of the end of Jarrettsville to the beginning.

This chapter examines how a one-sentence email from Kim Wylie, the VP of sales at Publishers Group West, almost led to a doubling of Counterpoint Press's print run for Jarrettsville. Cornelia Nixon enacted Adam Krefman's suggestion to move part of the end of Jarrettsville to the beginning. After this major structural change, only smaller developmental edits and copyediting had to be addressed. The chapter first considers the copyediting and blurbs done for Jarrettsville, as well as the editors' enthusiasm for the novel and Counterpoint's marketing campaign, before discussing how Wylie's email (which read: “About halfway through Jarrettsville, and really enjoying it so far”) helped raise Jarrettsville's profile, increasing the print run for the novel by 1,000 copies while also setting the wheels in motion for larger changes.

This chapter examines Counterpoint Press's marketing for Jarrettsville, focusing on how it increased awareness for Cornelia Nixon's novel at BookExpo America (BEA). It first provides an overview of BEA, a trade conference held in May or early June each year for publishers to coordinate with booksellers, before discussing how novels are transitioned from production to reception, and how the first sale of a novel must be successful in order to create the opportunity for success in the second sale. It then shows how Counterpoint navigated Jarrettsville from the field of production to the field of reception through relationships between publicity directors and reviewers/review outlets, positive online chatter from BEA, the enthusiasm of the field representatives, and the strong buy-in from retailers. The chapter also considers how Jarrettsville generated strong interest from readers in the South and Mid-Atlantic.

This book has shown how authors, publishers, and readers all operate in different fields, rather than occupy a single “literary field.” Through her author tour and occasional fan mail, Cornelia Nixon gained a window into the field of reception. For Counterpoint Press, the decision to publish Jarrettsville had not been a mistake, but it had not earned enough to cover many losses on what would be inevitable future mistakes. For some of the readers of Jarrettsville, the book became an occasional reference point in their future reading and socializing. This conclusion reconsiders the studies of creation, production, and reception and examines the exogenous forces of change that explain the evolution of these three interdependent fields. In particular, it discusses the path from Anne Rice's 1976 Interview with the Vampire to E. L. James's 2011 Fifty Shades of Grey. Finally, it asks whether books are special objects; for example, as status symbols.

Jazzmen (1939) was the first book to place New Orleans at the origin of jazz. Written by Frederic Ramsey Jr., Bill Russell, and Charles Edward Smith, the book relied heavily on what jazz musicians themselves said. La Nouvelle-Orléans Capital du Jazz, by Robert Goffin was published only in French in 1946. Goffin also interviewed New Orleans jazz musicians. This book has been less widely discussed, but contains valuable insights into the early years of jazz. Wilder Hobson, in American Jazz Music 1939, questioned how jazz counterpoint functioned. This issue is still unresolved. This chapter introduces the argument that jazz counterpoint is the product of the application of the principles of barbershop harmony as applied to the instrumentation of a jazz band.

Using Electric Counterpoint as a central reference, this chapter outlines the constitutive role played by audible cultures of the non-West in shaping the distinctive sound of Steve Reich’s music. Reich’s involvement with African music, in particular, extends beyond the common historical narrative of “influence” (construed as mostly confirmation and encouragement for an already formed style). Electric Counterpoint draws on a host of African musical strata—ranging from literal quotations and paraphrases to the application of techniques and principles—derived from local expressive cultures, ritual traditions, biospiritual practices, and musical cosmologies from Ghana, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, and Mozambique. The project tracks the way music and sound circulates within different regimes of meaning, mediation, and value, with a particular interest in retrieving the often tributary and ephemeral phenomena found in geographically remote cultures that, for complex reasons, are systematically written out of world history.