This study examines Steve Reich's reflections on his early works in the context of Walter Benjamin's thesis in “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility.” While Reich's thoughts as expressed in interviews and selected writings show a similar attitude to Benjamin's toward changes in human perception,
Benjamin's notion of auratic demise in the age of technical reproducibility is challenged by Reich's understanding of the role of technology in music and the effects of gradual musical processes.
Reich's assertions regarding the aesthetic autonomy of his compositional process are reminiscent of Romantic ideals of art, particularly those embodied by the “poeticized” as defined by Benjamin in “Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin.” However, the means by which Reich claims to have reintroduced artistic autonomy are those that Benjamin attributes to aura's deterioration, such as impersonality and gradual presentation of the artistic subject. This study determines that, while Reich uses mechanical process to
accommodate the change in human perception as Benjamin anticipates, aura is not eliminated as proposed in “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility.” Although the “here and now” of the original is destroyed, aura survives through the authority and transcendent nature of musical process, and singularity is achieved by the unique reception of individual audience members with each hearing. Reich's work may not politicize aesthetics as Benjamin predicts, but through the authority of autonomous musical process and the decentralization of interpretation, the fascist aestheticization of politics may still be averted in the age of technical reproducibility.