Minimalist Music

Steve Reich (1936- ), in his essay “Music as a Gradual Process” (1968), wrote that “a compositional process and a sounding music [...] are one and the same thing.” His aesthetic creed of “perceptible processes,” indicated in these words, is known as the basic idea of minimal music. Although minimal music has been considered a counterpart of minimal art, this essay first appeared in the exhibition catalogue of Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1969), an exhibition recognized as a threshold of postminimalism in the plastic arts. In this paper, I would like to clarify a linkage between Reich’s music and postminimal art in view of his involvement in the Anti-Illusion show.
The theme of the Anti-Illusion show was to refocus on the process of making art. By emphasizing the processes and materials of the works, the participating artists tried to deny illusion and expose the reality of art. Among these works, Reich performed his Pendulum Music, in which he made the sounding process visible as microphones’ swinging. This piece clearly demonstrates that Reich’s claim in “Music as a Gradual Process” was propounded in connection with postminimal art as an attempt to disclose musical processes and thereby reveal the real.

This chapter describes a lesson that gets learners to go beyond the loop paradigm typical to most DAW production environments by encouraging a focus on the musical content of looped materials. Students will develop skills using a DAW’s MIDI editing facilities for “re-calculating” musical content, such as note value augmentation/diminution and pitch transposition. In addition, students will investigate the potential of musical materials for variation, transformation, and re-combination in the context of extended musical structures. One of the key learning outcomes of this exercise is understanding that looped material need not remain a static and unaltered building block in a composition/production.

Article on German minimal techno and discourses of minimalism, published in a special issue of JPMS on German Pop:
Journal of Popular Music Studies 25, no. 2(2013): 154-84.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jpms.2013.25.issue-2/issuetoc

1964. Terry Riley composed his masterpiece, In C, that soon will become one of the most important work of all the musical avantgarde of the Sixties. Riley, fascinated by the post-Fluxus compositions of La Monte Young, explores an aspect  that seemed still at stage of gestation: repetition.


For the full work, contact me: stefano.varotto.8@studenti.unipd.it

Öz: Sanat türleri kendi başlarına var oldukları gibi, bir-birlerinden destek alarak da gelişmişlerdir. Hemen hemen bütün sanat dalları tarihsel süreçte birbiriyle ilintili olmuştur. Sinema da seyirciyle ilk buluştuğu andan itibaren müziğin ilgi çekme işlevinden yararlanmıştır. Bu işlev kısa sürede anlam oluşturmaya katkı sağlama fonksiyonunu üstlenmiştir. Ancak sinema kendi dilini geliştirirken diğer sanatlardan ayrıştığı gibi, müzikten aldığı desteği de azaltma yönüne gitmektedir. Sinemada gerçekçi yaklaşım klasik anlatı kalıplarının dışında kalarak, günlük yaşama daha yakın ve kurgu yerine gerçekliği aktarmaya çalışan bir anlatım tarzını tercih etmektedir. Kracauer'ın temellerini attığı gerçekçi-lik, minimalist sinemanın kuramsal dayanaklarındandır. Minimalist sinema ve etkilediği diğer yaklaşımlar müzik kullanımı konusunda da minimal bir tavrı benimsemişlerdir. Hatta günümüzde sinema, müziği hiç kullanmamaya varan bir reddetme süreciyle de karşı karşıyadır. Ancak gerçekliğe daha yakın olarak, filmin içinde gerçekleşen ses ögelerine daha çok eğilen bir yaklaşımla mizansenin desteklendiği gözlemlenmektedir. Çalışmada, film müziği işlevine evrilene kadar sinemada müzik kullanımının geçirdiği gelişme süreci ve minimalist sinemada müzik ve ses ögelerinin kullanımının anlatım diline katkısı Michael Haneke'nin Aşk (Amour, 2012) film örneğiyle incelenecektir. Abstract: Art types have existed on their own as well as they have developed by getting support from each other. Cinema has benefited from the drawing attention function of the music from the moment that first met the audience. This function makes contribution to create meaning in a short period of time. However, while cinema has been developing its own language, it has decomposed from other arts and also it has been reducing the support that it receives from music. The realistic approach in cinema prefers a narrative style that tries to transfer the reality instead of the fiction and close cases to the daily life by staying out of the classical narrative patterns. The realism, that Kracauer laid its foundation, is one of the theoretical basis of minimalist cinema. Minimalist cinema and other approaches that it affected adopted a minimal attitude for the use of music. Even in today cinema faces with a process that totally rejects the use of music. However, it is observed that the scene is supported, as closer to the reality , through an approach stating the audio elements in the movie. In the study, the developing process of the music use in cinema since the inverson to the movie soundtrack function and the contribution of the use of music and audio components in minimalist cinema to the narrative language will be examined with Michael Haneke's Amour (2012) movie example.

The field of interactive music systems (IMSs), beginning in the 1980s, is still relatively young and fast moving. The field of music theory-analysis, during the same period (since 1980), has undergone a major transformation in terms of technological innovations, flexibility, and breadth. The two fields have not really caught up with each other. It will be interesting to see what arises as they do — especially as both fields have become more concerned with the role of the body and embodied cognition. Framed in terms of contrasting epistemological orientations, this essay considers some relevant developments in IMSs, music cognition, and music theory and analysis, leading up to the present.  The most popular approaches to music cognition and to IMS design are rationalist (Ashby 2010), exploiting the ‘correct’ embodiments of music (Godøy 2004, Leman 2007, Paine 2009) based on affordances (Gibson 1977, Kelso 1998). This essay, however, advocates a pragmatist (Ashby 2010) approach inspired by music analysis and exploiting the potential of kinesthetic learning (associative learning). Prompted by a progressive approach to music analysis, theory, perception, and cognition (Dubiel 1999, Mailman 2007), interactive music technology can also be constructive, flexible, and progressive, by exploiting kinesthetic learning from immersion in new and unusual motion-to-sound mappings derived from dynamic formal processes in analysed music. In this way, immersive interactive systems offer an opportunity systematically to learn new associations based on principles theorised in response to analysis. Experience of these systems essentially ‘rewires the brain’, thereby exemplifying what Korsyn (2004) has attributed to Lewin’s (1986, 1987) approach to music perception: the ironist approach, as formulated by Rorty (1989). Thus a pragmatist ironist experimental (PIE) approach is articulated. Rather than committing to any particular ways music is already embodied, this approach acknowledges the flexible nature of embodied musical experience. It forges and uses interactive music technologies continually to redescribe and therefore reform how music is embodied, thereby disembodying to re-embody music, expanding how music is heard, contemplated and experienced.

Art of the 20th century is characterized by the rise of the mythical thought and transformation of the myth into an artistic creativity. In music we can encounter manifestations of conscious and unconscious neo-mythologism in various forms. The methodological foundations of our text are concepts by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Carl Gustav Jung, Gilles Deleuze or Victoria Adamen-ko. The text focuses on the basic identification of the repetition as a mythological sign and its manifestation in the music of the 20th century (Arnold Schoenberg, George Crumb, minimal music etc.). Constitutive principle of repetition in music is connected with categories such as musical space and time, contrast, difference, musical thought.

I defend in this paper the thesis that there is a complex relation between minimalist musical works and the metaphysics of time, involving ontological, epistemological and axiological issues. This relation is explained by means of three sub-theses. The first one is that minimalist musical works literally exemplify-in Goodman's sense-the properties ascribed to time by the metaphysical static view: 1) minimalist works intrinsically possess those properties by being composed according to the technique of minimal repetition; 2) they extrinsically refer to those properties in virtue of pragmatic processes of accommodation of disagreements on what is taken to be common ground in a particular musical context. The second sub-thesis is that, in exemplifying those properties, minimalist musical works are valuable from two perspectives: a formalist one, according to which minimalist works purify the concept of what a musical work is; and a cognitive one, insofar they allow us to obtain phenomenal knowledge of what it is like to experience time as the static view conceives it. The third sub-thesis is that each particular minimalist musical work is valuable insofar it achieves either the formalist or the cognitive goals in an original way.

Since its emergence as an aesthetic category in the mid-twentieth century, minimalism has been contentious amongst scholars of all forms of art. It has been alternately celebrated, questioned, and condemned by not only its critics, but also the artists whose works have been given the historical title “minimalist.” This article explores the emergence of minimalist music, examining its relation to the earlier “avant-garde” works of John Cage and other eclectic influences, such as jazz and Eastern music. In doing so, this article attempts to establish a broad understanding of the elements integral to minimalist music, with a special focus on the composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich. The works of Riley and Reich are compared to the works of visual artists Barnett Newman and Sol LeWitt in order to highlight the pivotal elements of the minimalist aesthetic, including repetition, simplicity, and, to borrow Cage’s term, “Unfixity.” This article concludes that the minimalist compositions of the aforementioned composers ultimately demonstrate the integral characteristics of minimalism better than their visual counterparts, due to the temporal nature of music. However, the article seeks to demonstrate the importance of contemplating visual and musical interpretations of minimalism together, as they are complimentary windows into this modern movement.

The aim of this paper is to present a rereading of the gamut of sonorities used by John Cage in his String Quartet in Four Parts (1950) with reference to the third movement, subtitled ‘Nearly Stationary’. Our analysis of this movement appears to provide compelling evidence that Cage was already assigning a central function to the use of silence in compositions pre-dating his famous work 4’33” (1952). Previous interpretations of Cage’s String Quartet have not on the whole drawn attention to the function of silence within it. For example, neither Bernstein nor Pritchett’s gamut of sonorities for the work (Pritchett’s gamut comprises 33 while Bernstein includes an additional 10 sonorities, creating a total of 43) include silence as a ‘sonority’. As shown in the following analysis, one of the movement’s key features is its symmetrical organisation, but these relationships only make full sense when Pritchett and Bernstein’s gamut of sonorities are redrawn to include the ‘silent sonority’, whose significance for Cage’s work in general, and this quartet in particular, is therefore very important.

For some years I have been meaning to upload some of the material I have gathered over the years, including interviews I conducted with experimental composers and performers. One of the most useful, clearest interviews was my interview with Michael Nyman, 23 March 1983, just a few days after I had seen him in Hammersmith with the eponymous Michael Nyman Band, performing music from the Peter Greenaway film, The Draughtsman’s Contract. Although the Nyman Band, and the Campiello Band before it, had been in existence and successfully performing since 1977, The Draughtsman’s Contract was the start of Nyman’s fame as a composer of music for film, opera, and other genres.

I interviewed Nyman in the kitchen-diner of his home in Ladbroke Grove. He was not interested in rehashing his research from past criticism and Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (Studio Vista, 1974), his landmark history of experimental music that has yet to be supplanted, despite numerous attempts. His disinterest was just fine: I could read that Nyman to know him; what I didn’t yet know enough was his “rebirth” as a composer after years of music writing and research. Michael Nyman was a gregarious, charming host. The interview stops where he says, “I’ll come and show it to you,” but afterward he did show me his music, from the Waltz in F onward. It was a brilliant afternoon, and I was sorry that my little cassette machine was unable to pick up this second session, as videocameras do today.

The interview is published on the Reprint Series of Jems: Journal of Experimental Music Studies. http://experimentalmusic.co.uk/wp/jems-journal-of-experimental-music-studies/ , upload 13 November 2017.

Nakon avangardnog eksperimentisanja (dodekafonija, integralni serijalizam, elektronska muzika, aleatorika itd.) i njenog prekida/negiranja tradicije, tendencije u muzici od kraja 60-tih godina 20. stoljeća pa sve do danas mogu se smjestiti u kontekst postmoderne epohe. (Čavlović 2014: 663) Uviđajući nedostatke komunikacije s publikom koju je imala avangarda, " Autori Postmoderne oživljavaju sve što je Modernom 'zaboravljeno', odnosno podsjećaju se na ono čega su se avangardni kompozitori prividno odrekli. Pri tome, međutim, ne nastoje da se po tradiciji novog pravca koji negira onaj pre sebe 'okome' na tekovine avangarde, već pre da se posluţe svime što im je u zvučnom iskustvu na raspolaganju. " (Prodanov: 139) Na taj način Postmoderna vrši jedan vid revizije moderne, ili čak pokušaj njene korekcije. Mnogi od kompozitora nastojali su pojednostaviti muzički jezik i fakturu, pa se prema tome u okviru postmoderne muzike javio pokret/pravac nova jednostavnost, a koji je zapravo reakcija i jedan logičan nastavak unutar historijskog ciklusa stilova. Estonski kompozitor Arvo Pärt (1935) jedan je od postmodernih kompozitora koji se odvojio od modernističkih tendencija i okrenuo srednjovjekovnoj i renesansoj muzici.

HANEKE’S ‘AMOUR’ MOVIE AS MUSIC AND MINIMALIST EXAMPLE IN CINEMA FROM THE STORY TELLING TO REJECTION
Öz: Sanat türleri kendi başlarına var oldukları gibi, birbirlerinden destek alarak da gelişmişlerdir. Hemen hemen bütün sanat dalları tarihsel süreçte birbiriyle ilintili olmuştur. Sinema da seyirciyle ilk buluştuğu andan itibaren müziğin ilgi çekme işlevinden yararlanmıştır. Bu işlev kısa sürede anlam oluşturmaya katkı sağlama fonksiyonunu üstlenmiştir. 1800’lerin ilk yarısında programlı müzikle başlayan müziğin hikaye anlatma işlevi zaman içinde sinemanın kullanımına evrilirken, sinemanın klasik anlatı yapısını oluşturmasına katkı sağlamıştır. Hareketli görüntünün sunumunda müziğin kullanılmasıyla başlayan sinema ile müzik ilişkisi, film müziği/soundtrack olgusuna kadar gelişmiştir. Sinema ve müziği tek bir kavramda özdeşleştiren film müziği kavramının kaynağını, temeli hikaye anlatmak olan programlı müzik ve onun da dayanağı olan “Romantik Senfoni” dönemi ile ilişkilendirmek mümkündür.
Sinemanın gelişim sürecinde önemli bir yer edinen müzik ve film müziği özellikle ana akım sinemanın ayrılmaz bir parçası haline gelmiştir. Ancak sinema kendi dilini geliştirirken diğer sanatlardan ayrıştığı gibi, müzikten aldığı desteği de azaltma yönüne gitmektedir. Sinemada gerçekçi yaklaşım klasik anlatı kalıplarının dışında kalarak, günlük yaşama daha yakın ve kurgu yerine gerçekliği aktarmaya çalışan bir anlatım tarzını tercih etmektedir. Kracauer’ın temellerini attığı gerçekçilik, minimalist sinemanın kuramsal dayanaklarındandır. Minimalist sinema ve etkilediği diğer yaklaşımlar müzik kullanımı konusunda da minimal bir tavrı benimsemişlerdir. Hatta günümüzde sinema, müziği hiç kullanmamaya varan bir reddetme süreciyle de karşı karşıyadır. Ancak gerçekliğe daha yakın olarak, filmin içinde gerçekleşen ‘ses’ ögelerine daha çok eğilen bir yaklaşımla mizansenin desteklendiği gözlemlenmektedir. Çalışmada, film müziği işlevine evrilene kadar sinemada müzik kullanımının geçirdiği gelişme süreci ve minimalist sinemada müzik ve ses ögelerinin kullanımının anlatım diline katkısı Michael Haneke’nin Aşk (Amour, 2012) film örneğiyle incelenecektir.
Abstract: Art types have existed on their own as well as they have developed by getting support from each other. Almost all of the art types have related to each other in the historical process. Cinema has benefited from the drawing attention function of the music from the moment that first met the audience.  This function makes contribution to create meaning in a short period of time. The story telling function of the music began with the programmed music in the first half of 1800s has evolved to be used in the cinema in the course of time as well as has contributed to create the classical narrative structure of the cinema. The music and cinema relationship began with the use of the music in the presentation of the motion picture has led to the movie soundtrack phenomenon. It is possible to mention a relation of the source of movie soundtrack that identifies the cinema and music in a single concept, to the programmed music, of which the base is storytelling and to the basis of it as “Romantic Symphony” period.
The music and movie soundtrack that have gained an important place during the development process of the cinema, have become an integral part of the mainstream cinema. However, while cinema has been developing its own language, it has decomposed from other arts and also it has been reducing the support that it receives from music. The realistic approach in cinema prefers a narrative style that tries to transfer the reality instead of the fiction and close cases to the daily life by staying out of the classical narrative patterns. The realism, that Kracauer laid its foundation, is one of the theoretical basis of minimalist cinema. Minimalist cinema and other approaches that it affected adopted a minimal attitude for the use of music. Even in today cinema faces with a process that totally rejects the use of music. However, it is observed that the scene is supported, as closer to the reality, through an approach stating the audio elements in the movie. In the study, the developing process of the music use in cinema since the inverson to the movie soundtrack function and the contribution of the use of music and audio components in minimalist cinema to the narrative language will be examined with Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012) movie example.

Now, when we speak about post-minimalism, the presence of Latin American composers is rather scarce, and those who do work under this aesthetic are thought of as un-representative, since their music is not considered “ethnic” enough. However, minimalist, post-minimalist, and ambient composers have not denied that their own technical and sound research owes a great deal to the study of non-Western sound traditions. This has stimulated a debate about innovation processes based on ideas coming from other traditions, not founded on Western models of musical thinking, but applied to them with the purpose of renovating them. Uruguayan composer Coriún Aharonián (1940-2017), was especially critical about these procedures; he argued that they perpetuate the colonial character of Western music.

Final and fairly extensively amended versions of min&quantity paper:
Quantity underpins contemporary existence. This point is convincingly argued by Badiou and a host of thinkers writing in his wake. The present piece proposes that the minimalist aesthetic offers us remarkable insight into this quantitative ontology, in particular through the technique of modular repetition as exemplar to different types of counting or calculation. The additive and subtractive patterns of such repetition recognise their own formative procedures as fundamentally quantitative, exemplifying the difficult relationship between counting, telos, and identity. The music of Philip Glass, the writing of Samuel Beckett and Robert Lax, and the sculpture of Sol LeWitt furnish us with poignant examples in this regard.

Bu araştırmanın amacı; hız ve hareket fetişizmi üzerinden, çeşitli sanat akımlarının, nasıl bir yol izledikleri; zamanın koşullarına göre ne tür bir zorunlulukla, ya da tam tersi bir istekle bu hamleyi benimsedikleri, çok detaya girilmeden kısaca anlatılmaya çalışılmıştır.

Fütürizm Manifestosu üzerinden toparlanmaya çalışılan hız, şiddet ve gürültü estetiği, Intonarumori (gürültü makineleri) dağarcığı göz önünde bulundurularak müzikteki yansımalarından kısaca bahsedilmeye çalışılmıştır. Tez süreci boyunca başta George Antheil olmak üzere, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Steve Reich ve Philip Glass gibi bestecilerin başlıca yapıtları incelenerek birbirleriyle ve icra pratikleriyle bağları irdelenmeye çalışılmıştır.

Son derece daraltılmış; yalınkat bir malzemeden çoğaltılarak “Az çoktur ve şeytan ayrıntıda gizlidir” sözüyle bağlamlanan mekanik tekrara dayalı tasarımsal ve performatif öğeler, Phase-Shifting Process algısıyla Minimalizm bağlamında derinleştirilmeye çalışılmıştır.

Bu bestecilerin önünü açmaları ve başka kültürlerin müziklerine daha derinlikli birer perspektifle yaklaşmaları açısından Henry Cowell ve 20. yy müziğinin en önemli fikir adamlarından biri olan John Cage’in bağlama dair başat görüşleri nakledilmiştir.
Çalışmanın özellikle perküsyon icracılarına, pratiklerini zihinselleştirmede destek olması amaçlanmıştır.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Motorik, Repetitif, Döngüsellik, Zihin-Kas Kordinasyonu, Bağımsız Hareket Ergonomisi, Post-Modernizm

This article presents the interpretation of a famous song cycle – Songs from Liquid Days, composed by Philip Glass (in cooperation with Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, David Byrne and Laurie Anderson) in 1986. In the first part the author tries to illustrate an artistic way of a popular American minimalist, strictly connected to avant-garde movements at the beginning of his career. The next section concerns the analysis of the piece: the author pays special attention to the elements of rhythm and harmony, which constitute – a typical for Glass’ music – sound and impression of infinity. The last part presents the interpretation of Songs from Liquid Days in the context of the ritual: there is put a hypothesis that many stylistic features of this composition determine a similar reaction, which appear among ritual participants as well.

This article deals with the topic of temporality in Steve Reich’s early works, starting from the analysis of It’s Gonna Rain’s sketches held at the Paul Sacher Stiftung. It demonstrates that the technique of phasing came out of an idea of composing and decomposing spatial structures, rather than of a simple mistake or of technological needs. The notion of spatialization of music writing, aiming at the creation of temporal perceptual paradoxes, will be put into relationship with a vectorial, but non protensive and endless conception of musical time.

From the EMC Blog (see URL link): Transatlantic Encounters was a study day associated with the long-running Minimalism Unwrapped festival at Kings Place, London. The study day featured talks by Howard Skempton, Christopher Hobbs, Sarah Walker, and Colin Matthews. This entry, from the Experimental Music Catalogue Blog, describes the day and the context of the discussions that occurred.  The full article with images appears on the blog at the link above; for convenience, the  text can be downloaded here.

You are sitting in silence as a black-and-white freeze-frame of phantom dancers appears on a scrim across the front of the stage, the opening shot of a film by artist Sol LeWitt. Then, like a startling squall, Philip Glass' pulsing music jolts you into vigilance and live dancers leap from the wings, turning, tilting their upper bodies sideways, arms outstretched. You are engulfed in Dance , choreographer Lucinda Childs' germinal 1979 work.

In 1968, the pianist John Tilbury and the composer Cornelius Cardew, having built up a great body of experimental music, asked the then-youngest member of the experimental music community, eighteen-year-old Christopher Hobbs, to create a method of disseminating these pieces to other musicians. Hobbs founded the Experimental Music Catalogue (the EMC), which took off so well that by 1971 the EMC was run by a committee consisting of Hobbs, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman. The EMC was distinctive as a small publishing initiative in its Anthologies of score collections grouped according to instrument or activity (the Keyboard Anthology, Educational Anthology, Verbal Anthology) and in its insistence that composers kept rights and other decisions regarding their works. From 1969 to the early 1980s, the EMC sent experimental and minimalist music by mail order to an international audience, representing British experimental and systems music worldwide in scores as Brian Eno’s Obscure Records represented it worldwide in sound. Although the EMC mailing address was in London, much of the musical activity from these composers occurred at Leicester Polytechnic (the predecessor of this festival’s host, De Montfort University), where Bryars had founded a music department steeped in the ethos that created the EMC. Indeed, the EMC, revived by Hobbs and Virginia Anderson in 1999 as a web-based publisher and record label, is now based in Leicester. This lecture, the keynote for the festival, shall explore English experimental, minimal and postminimal music as part of the history of the EMC, much of which appeared at the EMC2: Remembering the Experimental Music Catalogue weekend. [VA]