Imagine four hands clapping in unison a fast syncopated rhythm that lasts just six quick beats. Repeat 12 times. Have one pair of hands shift the pattern in phase by half a beat, keeping the rhythm unaltered. The result to the listener is an emergent clapping pattern that is still fast and syncopated but quite different. Repeat 12 times, shift again, repeat, shift and so on until the original pattern re-emerges at the end of the cycle.

Clapping Music was written by Steve Reich in 1972, and represents the most distilled presentation of a style that he has embodied in many instrumental combinations. Requiring enormous concentration and skill from musicians, Reich typically deploys blocks of musical patterns of rhythm and harmony that unfold like a machine but are unpredictable and artistically judged, and can compel and delight any ear that has adapted to them. A true original, Reich has proved both popular and influential for the past 20 years.

Three Tales is Reich's latest excursion in this style. Completed in May, it is now on international tour (see http://www.stevereich.com) and will be produced as a DVD. But it is more than pure music that filled a large theatre in London for four nights last week. The work is a highly integrated combination of music with a video with soundtrack. It addresses explicitly the significance for humanity of technology — in particular, of the Hindenberg airship disaster, the Bikini Atoll test of the fission bomb, and Dolly the cloned sheep.

The video, by the pioneering video artist Beryl Korot (Reich's wife) takes images, newspaper cuttings and interviews of people involved in the events, and quotations from the Book of Genesis about responsibilities and power bestowed on mankind at the moment of creation. In the first section, the music ranges from keening harmonies in response to the Hindenberg explosion to a rhythmic rattle of metallic percussion for the airship's construction. The section about Dolly has biologists, artificial-intelligence researchers and ethicists commenting on cloning and identity. The emphasis of this movement is reflected by a statement by Richard Dawkins that: “We, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes”. Dawkins' impersonal visage uttering “machines” is seized on and looped seemingly endlessly.

This is genuine, compelling art that attracts lively and diverse audiences. It is a unique and morally ambiguous response to challenges whose origins lie in science. But it is built, in part, on soundbites that amount to a provocatively simplistic summary of what modern biology is telling us. Nevertheless, for those intrigued by a face-to-face encounter between outstanding music theatre and the implications of twentieth-century technology, this is a must-hear, must-see.