Re: [microsound] minimalism

[Julian Knowles <julianknowles@xxxxxxx>]

> I'd be interested to hear any comments.  Julian?

Hi Ian

Some comments from a rainy sunday afternoon.. I hope my responses 
aren't too scatty, as i'm typing off the top of my head here)!!

This is very interesting. I found your identification of  'aesthetic 
minimalism' very useful, particularly in terms of understanding recent 
fashions in electronic music. I  think it is useful to look at 
minimalism as a concept, aside from its historical manifestations as an 
art movement. (as you have done) I'd like to give this some more 
thought beyond this initial response, but I'll think aloud (or is that 
type?)....

I think you can relate people's work according to different sets of 
criteria and see different lines of 'connectedness' (if that makes any 
sense?). The connections between one musical idea and others I think 
are nested in a complex multidirectional matrix. That said, your 
proposed method of tackling the issue, I think is eminently workable,  
and helps us understand the music better. I fully agree with your 
caveat about the pitfalls of classification, that's sensible...

I really like the way you have grouped approaches into the following

1) Self reflexive minimalism - process, systems, externalisation of 
structure
2) Boundary minimalism - tones, silence
3) Aesthetic minimalism - the 'look and feel' of minimalism, a more 
peripheral engagement with the ideas


I'll pick out some of the ideas in your post at random..... I'm jamming 
with the ideas, rather than directly responding here... I apologise in 
advance if i get a bit hung up on the secondary issues and if i don't 
provide the kind of useful response you might be after {can think about 
it some more}

You and others have identified something called 'process music'. Such a 
term is commonly associated with the music or Steve Reich, Philip Glass 
and Terry Riley among others (the repetitionists). I would like to  
leave Glass to one side for a moment, because I find his approach to 
repetitionism less strict, and listening to his music, I would question 
how comfortably he sits in this camp at all, but musicologists seem to 
be happy. There is a tremendous irony that the most famous minimalist 
could be argued to be the least convincing one, but i digress!!!

After early experiments with tape, later process music was usually made 
with conventional instruments and relied on a principle of shifting or 
displacing repeated patterns. The concept of 'pattern' varies from 
composer to composer, and the easiest one to understand, in my view, is 
Steve Reich, who (early tape work aside) sets up a repeated pattern in 
each instrumental part and temporally displaces those patterns across 
the parts throughout the piece. Now in the case of Reich, the 
displacements were usually quite small, in divisions of beats of at 
least in the order of sub-bar proportions. Reich developed a 
compositional style where he viewed 'music as a gradual process'. 
Rellly's work was similar. In C, as an example uses similar principles, 
but such a work allows displacement to occur between parts on a bar 
length basis (via indeterminate numbers of repetitions of whole bars 
across parts).. Pretty direct comparisons can therefore be made across 
Reich and Riley's work. The concept here seems to be  focus on process 
and economy of compositional means.

Getting to the nitty gritty..

I would agree with your summary that this music draws attention to the 
underlying processes (or foregrounds them). Indeed in the case of some 
of Lucier's work, nothing exists outside the process. I would cite 'I 
am Sitting in a Room" as an elegant example of this. One could draw a 
comparison to modernist composition via the shared desire to foreground 
strict formalistic processes in composition. There is a precision and 
formality to the work of Reich which ironically can be seen to echo the 
approach of the serialists. I say 'ironically' because I understand 
Reich absolutely hates European Serialism and it is well known that he 
developed his compositional style in direct reaction to it. When he was 
a student, all music schools were teaching young composers straight 
ahead Darmstadt serialism.  Above all, it is clear that the process is 
easily audible in repetitionist music, far less audible in serial 
music. A serial work can often be identified without too much trouble, 
but the permutations of the row beyond straight transposition demands 
some freakish skills to hear. Even transpositions can be very hard to 
hear if the row is thrown between instrumental parts, as in the 
'Klangfarbenmelodie' approach (gladiatorial music school listening 
tests come to mind.....). I would,  however,  contest the suggestion 
that the modernists 'failed' to make the structures audible. I would 
suggest  this was not necessarily an objective in the first place. To 
my mind, the modernists/serialists were focussed on form and structure 
to achieve an inner beauty, coherence and integrity  to a work, so that 
there was a  'scientific elegance of structure',  The other objective 
was to demonstrate and disseminate a new compositional language which 
gave equal status to all 12 tones and served as a powerful vehicle to 
step beyond tonality and functional harmony. The outcomes of all \this 
were admitted by the composers  themselves  to be somewhat obscure to 
the casual listener [see Milton Babbitt - 'Who Cares if You Listen?]. 
Serialists,  by and large,  were focussed on a conversation with the 
educated musical elites and not the average listener. If the average 
listener didn't 'get it', they weren't concerned. On the other hand, 
composers like Reich and Glass actively sought wider 'general' 
audiences by making their music accessible - moving right away from the 
concept of 'difficult listening'. For this reason, many people would 
locate them in the post-modernist school.

You wrote:

> I would call this type 'self
> -reflexive minimalism.' By this I mean that the primary concept of the 
> work
> involves a foregrounding of the work's underlying processes, and that 
> in
> order to achieve this a certain amount of minimalist reduction becomes 
> a
> necessity.  In other words, in these works, minimalism is a consequence
> rather than a goal in itself.

I think this works quite well for repetitionist composers, but I am not 
sure how well it works for other musical movements where form, 
structure and process are foregrounded.  Integral Serialism, for 
example, where all aspects of a work are serialised and precisely 
ordered, yields a very high degree of complexity if one will allow a 
notion of complexity that arises from the richness of detail  in intent 
  surrounding each sonic event. This to me highlights an question we 
need to ask ourselves here,  Are we trying to find minimalism in the 
output (the sound?) or in the intent and compositional procedure?

If you are focussed on the input end, you could argue that the 
repetitionists are exploring a concept of "minimal input, maximal 
output". Applying this principle to Reich, each time there is a small 
temporal displacement in the network of patterns, whole new melodies, 
rhythms and intervallic relationships arise - a musical 'butterfly 
effect'...and perhaps the best piece to illustrate this would be 
something like 'Piano Phase" Here,  a minor disturbance to the 
substructure of the music, yields a significant transformation of the 
surface.

You note the difficulties with "boundary minimalism"  in the longer 
term (ie where is there left for it go?). but I also see a problem with 
some of the "aesthetic minimalism", especially at events I've attended 
or played at over the past few years, where there seems to be an 
serious lack of thinking in relation to ideas around composition (in 
particular) and form. It is very common for an act to take to the stage 
with some earth hum, or a simple drone, noise, or a sine tone or 
whatever and for very little of consequence to unfold over the set. 
This is  presented in the name of a deliberate minimalist aesthetic 
position. I find it  baffling when people talk about 'new minimalism', 
in relation to this work, when the word itself implies a focussed  
compositional framework. It's almost as if we need to revisit some of 
the [dare i say it] more traditional ideas around music and 
composition. Moreover, If the focus is going to be returned to 
minimalism and a sense of integrity is to be preserved, then we need to 
rigorously investigate the body of ideas and translate the outcome into 
an engaging musical experience. Thirty to forty years on, we need to 
have something to add to that body of work.  We don't need the, 'hey 
minimalism is cool, so i'll play the same sound for a whole set and be 
really hip' thing..... or the "wouldn't it be cool to play nothing for 
the whole set' thing"..... yawn... I see this being a potential problem 
of "aesthetic minimalism" which allows  positions which can be 
sustained on a more superficial level.
It seems to me that artists adopting this approach run a higher risk of 
falling into the traps I've outlined above and 'fashion' rears its ugly 
head again!. It raises the question,  can you have a non-specific, 
peripheral engagement with these ideas? Does it work? Minimalism in one 
sense, screams 'discipline', 'precision'. and 'form'.

Anyway, here is another way of looking at the various types of 
minimalism.

1) minimalist in process  (minimal input, streamlined process,  or 
economy of compositional gesture) - 'Process musics' (in effect, your 
category 1) Repetition fits here.

2) minimailst in form/texture and content (stasis, minimal change, 
simplicity in content) - 'Perceptual musics' or music which invokes 
'active listening' - music where the listener needs to change their 
perception of the sound or relationship to it in order to elicit a 
sense of change. Music which interacts with acoustic spaces could also 
sit in this area. "listening to the music of the sound, as opposed to 
the sound of the music" Tones and drones here.

3) minimalist in sound content  (minimal dynamic, quiet music. silence, 
emptiness, approaching no content) - 'Threshold musics.' Cage's silent 
works etc... (in effect your category 2)

Although this helps to understand how the ideas can be implemented, it 
doesn't,  as you say, capture "minimalist influenced" work. I think if 
you are interested in focussing on post digital electronics then 
perhaps your system of classification may be more useful.

i realise this is a bit of a ramble, but i hope it is of some 
interest!!!

cheers

julian

_________________________
Julian Knowles
Head of School
School of Contemporary Arts
College of Arts, Education and Social Sciences
University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797
Penrith South DC, NSW, 1797, Australia