Re: [microsound] minimalism [substraction #2]

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@xxxxxxxxx>]

[subtraction #2]

> The second type of minimalism, the pure-tone/silence type of minimalism
> exemplified by John Cage and La Monte Young, I would call 'boundary
> minimalism.' This type of minimalism seeks to map the limits of music by
> asking the question: "how much content can be removed from a the work before
> the work ceases to be a piece of music?" Boundary minimalism seems to be
> more allied to conceptual art movements.


When I visited La Monte Young's installation with Marian Zazeela,

    Dream House
    Seven + Eight Years of Sound and Light
    The Base 9:7:4 in Prime Time
    When Centred above and below
    The Lowest Term Primes in The Range 288 to 224 with The Addition of 279
    and 261
    in Which The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped above and Including
    288
    Consists of The Powers of 2 Multiplied by
    The Primes within The Ranges of 144 to 128, 72 to 64 and 36 to 32
    Which Are Symmetrical to Those Primes in Lowest Terms
    in The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped below and Including 224
    within The Ranges 126 to 112, 63 to 56 and 31.5 to 28
    with The Addition of 119


in NYC, at 275 Church St. in Tribeca, there was a shrine of Pandit Pran
Nath, the Kirana vocalist and spiritual guru, who lived there from 1977-1979
[1].

Form/content -- the ceaselessness?


In "Some Historical and Theoretical Background on My Work" [2], Young speaks
of "just intonation," as "that system of tuning based on the natural
principles of overtones and resonances as our ears hear them and our voices
produce them, that is, as they are found in nature."

If, as hypothesized above, "content" is that which is removed to approach a
"cease," a cease of music, the degree zero of music, nature as the degree
zero and the goal of perfection, then nature is that which is the artifice
of minimalism's reductionism. For Young, that which is most natural to begin
with, as that which begins. Music with content added, from Young, constructs
the artificial from nature's designation as absence of music, as the total
music possible.


tV


[1] http://www.hungryghost.net/PPN/BoonPPN.htm
[2] 1987 version: http://www.diapasongallery.org/archive/01_06_20.html
Quote taken from Revised 1999 version.



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