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| Minimal music | |
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| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Early 1960s, United States |
| Derivative forms | |
| Subgenres | |
| Drone[1] | |
Minimal music (also calledminimalism)[2][3] is a form ofart music or other compositional practice that employs limited or minimal musical materials. Prominent features of minimalist music includerepetitive patterns orpulses, steadydrones,consonant harmony, and reiteration of musicalphrases or smaller units. It may include features such asphase shifting, resulting in what is termedphase music, or process techniques that follow strict rules, usually described asprocess music. The approach is marked by a non-narrative, non-teleological, and non-representational approach, and calls attention to the activity oflistening by focusing on the internal processes of the music.[4]
The approach originated on theWest Coast of the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly around theBay Area, whereLa Monte Young,Terry Riley andSteve Reich were studying and living at the time. After the three composers moved to the East Coast, their music became associated with the New YorkDowntown music scene of the mid-1960s, where it was initially viewed as a form ofexperimental music called theNew York Hypnotic School.[5] In theWestern art music tradition, the American composersMoondog, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich andPhilip Glass are credited with being among the first to develop compositional techniques that exploit a minimal approach.[6][2][7][8][9] The movement originally involved dozens of composers, although only five (Young, Riley, Reich, Glass, and laterJohn Adams) emerged to become publicly associated with American minimal music; other lesser known pioneers includedDennis Johnson,Terry Jennings,Richard Maxfield,Pauline Oliveros,Phill Niblock, andJames Tenney. In Europe, the music ofLouis Andriessen,Karel Goeyvaerts,Michael Nyman,Howard Skempton,Éliane Radigue,Gavin Bryars,Steve Martland,Peter Michael Hamel,Henryk Górecki,Arvo Pärt andJohn Tavener exhibits minimalist traits.
It is unclear where the termminimal music originates. Steve Reich has suggested that it is attributable to Michael Nyman, an assertion that two scholars, Jonathan Bernard, and Dan Warburton, have also made in writing. Philip Glass believesTom Johnson coined the phrase.[10][11][12]
The word "minimal" was perhaps first used in relation to music in 1968 byMichael Nyman, who "deduced a recipe for the successful 'minimal-music' happening from the entertainment presented byCharlotte Moorman andNam June Paik at theICA", which included a performance ofSpringen byHenning Christiansen and a number of unidentified performance-art pieces.[13] Nyman later expanded his definition of minimal music in his 1974 bookExperimental Music: Cage and Beyond. Tom Johnson, one of the few composers to self-identify as minimalist, also claims to have been first to use the word as new music critic forThe Village Voice. He describes "minimalism":
The idea of minimalism is much larger than many people realize. It includes, by definition, any music that works with limited or minimal materials: pieces that use only a few notes, pieces that use only a few words of text, or pieces written for very limited instruments, such as antique cymbals, bicycle wheels, or whiskey glasses. It includes pieces that sustain one basic electronic rumble for a long time. It includes pieces made exclusively from recordings of rivers and streams. It includes pieces that move in endless circles. It includes pieces that set up an unmoving wall of saxophone sound. It includes pieces that take a very long time to move gradually from one kind of music to another kind. It includes pieces that permit all possible pitches, as long as they fall between C and D. It includes pieces that slow the tempo down to two or three notes per minute.[14]
Already in 1965 the art historian Barbara Rose had named La Monte Young'sDream Music,Morton Feldman's characteristically soft dynamics, and various unnamed composers "all, to a greater or lesser degree, indebted toJohn Cage" as examples of "minimal art",[15] but did not specifically use the expression "minimal music".
The most prominent minimalist composers areLa Monte Young,Terry Riley,Steve Reich,Philip Glass,John Adams, andLouis Andriessen.[16] Others who have been associated with this compositional approach includeTerry Jennings,Gavin Bryars,Tom Johnson,Michael Nyman,Michael Parsons,Howard Skempton,Dave Smith,James Tenney, andJohn White.[17][18] Among African-American composers, the minimalist aesthetic was embraced by figures such as jazz musicianJohn Lewis and multidisciplinary artistJulius Eastman.[19][20]
The early compositions of Glass and Reich are somewhat austere, with little embellishment on the principaltheme. These are works for small instrumental ensembles, of which the composers were often members. In Glass's case, these ensembles comprise organs, winds—particularly saxophones—and vocalists, while Reich's works have more emphasis on mallet and percussion instruments. Most of Adams's works are written for more traditionalEuropean classical music instrumentation, including fullorchestra,string quartet, and solo piano.
The music of Reich and Glass drew early sponsorship from art galleries and museums, presented in conjunction with visual-art minimalists likeRobert Morris (in Glass's case), andRichard Serra,Bruce Nauman, and the filmmaker Michael Snow (as performers, in Reich's case).[11]
The music ofMoondog of the 1940s and '50s, which was based oncounterpoint developing statically over steady pulses in often unusual time signatures influenced both Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Glass has written that he and Reich took Moondog's work "very seriously and understood and appreciated it much more than what we were exposed to at Juilliard".[21]
La Monte Young's 1958 compositionTrio for Strings consists almost entirely of longtones andrests.[22] It has been described as an origin point for minimalist music.[22]
One of the first minimalist compositions wasNovember by Dennis Johnson, written in 1959. A work for solo piano that lasted around six hours, it demonstrated many features that would come to be associated with minimalism, such as diatonic tonality, phrase repetition, additive process, and duration. La Monte Young credits this piece as the inspiration for his own magnum opus,The Well-Tuned Piano.[23]
In 1960,Terry Riley wrote a string quartet in pure, uninflected C major.[clarification needed] In the early 1960s, Riley made two electronic works using tape delay,Mescalin Mix (1960-1962) andThe Gift (1963), which injected the idea of repetition into minimalism. In 1964, Riley'sIn C made persuasively engaging textures from the layered performance of repeated melodic phrases. The work is scored for any group of instruments and/or voices. Keith Potter writes "its fifty-three modules notated on a single page, this work has frequently been viewed as the beginning of musical minimalism."[24] Inspired by his work with Terry Riley on the premiere ofIn C,Steve Reich produced three works—It's Gonna Rain andCome Out for tape, andPiano Phase for live performers—that introduced the idea of phase shifting, or allowing two identical phrases or sound samples played at slightly different speeds to repeat and slowly go out of phase with each other. Starting in 1968 with1 + 1, Philip Glass wrote a series of works that incorporated additive process (form based on sequences such as 1, 1 2, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 4) into the repertoire of minimalist techniques; these works includedTwo Pages,Music in Fifths,Music in Contrary Motion, and others. Glass was influenced by Ravi Shankar and Indian music from the time he was assigned a film score transcription of music by Ravi Shankar into western notation. He realized that in the West time is divided like aslice of bread; Indians and other cultures take small units and string them together.[25]
Some ofJean Sibelius's musical works have been seen as foreshadowing minimalism. This is perhaps best exemplified by some of histone poems, such as the repetitive rhythmic patterns and gradual development of musical ideas inNightride and Sunrise,[26]The Bard andLuonnotar.[27] The British conductor Thomas Kemp has suggested that Sibelius might be, in fact, viewed as a proto-minimalist.[27] Among contemporary minimalists composers his influence can be heard, among others, inArvo Pärt,[27]John Adams andPhilip Glass. Adams in particular has a strong affinity towards Sibelius, citing him as a substantial influence on his compositional style. Notably, Sibelius'sSeventh Symphony provided a model for the ultimate form of Adams'sDoctor Atomic Symphony.[28] Among Glass's compositions, his operaThe Voyage has been described as having a particularly Sibelian quality.[29]
According to Richard E. Rodda, minimalist music is based upon therepetition of slowly changingcommon chords [chords that are diatonic to more than one key, or else triads, either just major, or major and minor—see:common tone] in steady rhythms, often overlaid with a lyrical melody in long, arching phrases...[It] utilizes repetitive melodic patterns, consonant harmonies, motoric rhythms, and a deliberate striving for aural beauty."[30] Timothy Johnson holds that, as a style, minimal music is primarily continuous in form, without disjunct sections. A direct consequence of this is an uninterrupted texture made up of interlocking rhythmic patterns and pulses. It is in addition marked by the use of bright timbres and an energetic manner. Its harmonic sonorities are distinctively simple, usually diatonic, often consist of familiar triads and seventh chords, and are presented in a slow harmonic rhythm. Johnson disagrees with Rodda, however, in finding that minimal music's most distinctive feature is the complete absence of extended melodic lines. Instead, there are only brief melodic segments, thrusting the organization, combination, and individual characteristics of short, repetitive rhythmic patterns into the foreground.[31]
Leonard B. Meyer described minimal music in 1994:
Because there is little sense of goal-directed motion, [minimal] music does not seem to move from one place to another. Within any musical segment, there may be some sense of direction, but frequently the segments fail to lead to or imply one another. They simply follow one another.[32]
AsKyle Gann puts it, the tonality used in minimal music lacks "goal-oriented European association[s]".[33]
David Cope lists the following qualities as possible characteristics of minimal music:[34]
Famous pieces that use this technique are thenumber section of Glass'Einstein on the Beach, Reich'stape-loop piecesCome Out andIt's Gonna Rain, and Adams'Shaker Loops.
Robert Fink offers a summary of some notable critical reactions to minimal music:
... perhaps it can be understood as a kind of social pathology, as an aural sign that American audiences are primitive and uneducated (Pierre Boulez); that kids nowadays just want to getstoned (Donal Henahan andHarold Schonberg in the New York Times); that traditional Western cultural values have eroded in theliberal wake of the 1960s (Samuel Lipman); that minimalist repetition is dangerously seductive propaganda, akin toHitler's speeches andadvertising (Elliott Carter); even that thecommodity-fetishism of modern capitalism has fatally trapped the autonomous self in minimalistnarcissism (Christopher Lasch).[35]
Elliott Carter maintained a consistent critical stance against minimalism and in 1982 he went so far as to compare it tofascism in stating that "one also hears constant repetition in the speeches of Hitler and in advertising. It has its dangerous aspects."[36] When asked in 2001 how he felt about minimal music he replied that "we are surrounded by a world of minimalism. All that junk mail I get every single day repeats; when I look at television I see the same advertisement, and I try to follow the movie that's being shown, but I'm being told aboutcat food every five minutes. That is minimalism."[37] Fink notes that Carter's general loathing of the music is representative of a form of musical snobbery that dismisses repetition more generally. Carter has even criticised the use of repetition in the music ofEdgard Varèse andCharles Ives, stating that "I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."[36]
Ian MacDonald claimed that minimalism is the "passionless, sexless and emotionally blank soundtrack of theMachine Age, its utopian selfishness no more than an expression of human passivity in the face ofmass-production andThe Bomb".[38]
Steve Reich has argued that such criticism is misplaced. In 1987 he stated that his compositional output reflected the popular culture of postwar American consumer society because the "elite European-styleserial music" was simply not representative of his cultural experience. Reich stated that
Stockhausen,Berio, and Boulez were portraying in very honest terms what it was like to pick up the pieces after World War II. But for some American in 1948 or 1958 or 1968—in the real context of tailfins,Chuck Berry and millions of burgers sold—to pretend that instead we're really going to have the darkbrownAngst ofVienna is a lie, a musical lie.[39]
Kyle Gann, himself a minimalist composer, has argued that minimalism represented a predictable return to simplicity after the development of an earlier style had run its course to extreme and unsurpassable complexity.[40] Parallels include the advent of the simple Baroquecontinuo style following elaborateRenaissancepolyphony and the simple early classicalsymphony followingBach's monumental advances in Baroquecounterpoint. In addition, critics have often overstated the simplicity of even early minimalism. Michael Nyman has pointed out that much of the charm ofSteve Reich's early music had to do with perceptual phenomena that were not actually played, but resulted from subtleties in the phase-shifting process.[41] In other words, the music often does not sound as simple as it looks.
In Gann's further analysis, during the 1980s minimalism evolved into less strict, more complex styles such aspostminimalism andtotalism, breaking out of the strongly framed repetition and stasis of early minimalism, and enriching it with a confluence of other rhythmic and structural influences.[42]
Minimal music has had some influence on developments in popular music.[43] Theexperimental rock actThe Velvet Underground had a connection with the New York down-town scene from which minimal music emerged, rooted in the close working relationship ofJohn Cale andLa Monte Young, the latter influencing Cale's work with the band.[44] Terry Riley's albumA Rainbow in Curved Air (1969) was released during the era ofpsychedelia andflower power, becoming the first minimalist work to have crossover success, appealing to rock and jazz audiences.[43] Music theoristDaniel Harrison coinedthe Beach Boys'Smiley Smile (1967) an experimental work of "protominimal rock", elaborating: "[The album] can almost be considered a work ofart music in theWestern classical tradition, and its innovations in the musical language of rock can be compared to those that introducedatonal and other nontraditional techniques into that classical tradition."[45] The development of specific experimental rock genres such askrautrock,space rock (from the 1980s),noise rock, andpost-rock was influenced by minimal music.[46][47][48][49]
Philip Sherburne has suggested that noted similarities between minimal forms ofelectronic dance music and American minimal music could easily be accidental. Much of the music technology used in dance music has traditionally been designed to suit loop-based compositional methods, which may explain why certain stylistic features of styles such asminimal techno sound similar to minimal art music.[50] One group who clearly did have an awareness of the American minimal tradition is the Britishambient actThe Orb. Their 1990 production "Little Fluffy Clouds" features a sample from Steve Reich's workElectric Counterpoint (1987).[51] Further acknowledgement of Steve Reich's possible influence on electronic dance music came with the release in 1999 of theReich Remixed[52] tribute album which featured reinterpretations by artists such asDJ Spooky,Mantronik,Ken Ishii, andColdcut, among others.[51]
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