Re: [microsound] Re: [mcrosound] mnmalsm

[Ian Andrews <i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

tobias c. van Veenwrote:

> ps. Sure sure, I'm being rough: but the question is, why write a history of
> minimalisms that seeks to inscribe it into a logical ordering of categories
> and back into the narratives of Western music? This seems to appropriate for
> Western music's sing-song the very extra-categorial movements and
> incorporation of non-Western themeatics, thought and sound that forms of
> minimalism (forms which would constitute entirely different "minimal/isms")
> sought to share with cultures perhaps less obsessed by the same
> monumentalizations.
>

Write a history of minimalisms? I thought I had explained that that is
really the furthest thing from my mind. Ultimately minimalism (as such) is
not even the object of my analysis its just something that keeps getting in
the way. I'm not even sure that we should be calling it 'minimalism' as that
word always seems to find itself in a secondary position to its proper form
"Minimalism" (Reich, Glass, Riley et al, or the Minimalists in the plastic
arts). Perhaps the "reductive tendency" would be better.
At the moment I'm only trying to establish that whenever we (on this list)
refer to "minimalism" we are very often not always talking about the same
thing.

> What constitutes an analytic definition of "fashion" in this context and how
> does it differ from practices that are apparently fashionless, zero degree
> fashion, i.e. "out of fashion"?

do we need an analytic definition? What would be much more interesting is to
investigate how "fashion" differs from fetshism. Does fashion "become"
fetishism?  Is fetishism the limit case of fashion? Are fashion and
fetishism polar opposites: fetishism relating to the particular, while
fashion relates to the universal? does musical fetishism differ markedly
from fetishism in its sexual form (Freud) or its economic form (Marx)?
Because both these terms: "fashion" and "fetishism," often seem to be
interchangeable in much of the writing on this list.

> Isn't "mastery" a modernist, if not metaphysical category that should be
> assessed as such and not a priori given to judge all categorization of
> minimalism(s)?

Mastery, perhaps a bad choice of words, here should be read in the context
of musical accomplishment (not a great word either but perhaps better than
excellence or virtuosity), and not in the Hegelian sense of Herrschaft
(though not completely unrelated or without its problems).
However, I did not at anytime use the word "mastery" to "judge all
categorisation of minimalism(s)" Nor am I really interested in elevating
type of minimalism over another. But, simply put, within the field of what
I've designated as "aesthetic minimalism" there are some works that engage
me and then those that wouldn't give the time of day. The works that engage
me do so for very much the same reasons that any other music does (eg. the
timing of intervals between sound and silence, the combinations of different
tibres and textures, etc.). But the best of this work, in my opinion, offers
a bit more. Such works might sound busy yet still, empty yet full, light but
at the same time heavy.  This kind of music, I think, is difficult to
achieve.

> - the point of _rupture_ within any history is negated, effaced in favour of
> including all manifestations of an apparent "minimalism" as "minimalism" in
> a linear, uninterruptable narrative that struggles for, in this case,
> "addition": "Thirty to forty years on, we need to have something to add to
> that body of work."
>
> How does this contrast vis-à-vis Richie Hawtin's publicized notion of
> "subtraction" when he began M_Nus records in the late 90s, shortly after the
> Concept:96 series?
>
> What does it mean to "add" to a "history" of possible movements of
> "subtraction"?

Adding (more and more recordings) as opposed to subtracting (content,
elements, etc.)? I don't really find this point worth perusing. However, I
find your choice of the word "subtraction" to describe the reductive work of
minimalism(s) much more interesting.  It immediately implies subtraction
from something else so that minimalism (each minimalism) is in a parasitic
relation to its precursor.  This means that each minimalism occurs in
reaction to particular context so that you can have minimal-techno, minimal
rock, minimal bagpipe music, whatever.  Each is bound to its own genre. But
subtraction also defines a telelogical direction: a tendency to subtract
more and more towards the absolute limit case of silence.


Best,

ian


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