Abstract

This short article seeks to explore how the minimalist genre has evolved throughout the history of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, from its genesis to post-minimalism, which has developed a more traditional vision of the genre. Originally found in composers such as Le Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, who had been influenced by the new technological advances and non-western cultures, minimalism has spread into diverse artistic planes and is now present, both in concert halls, and in areas that are not dedicated to music. At a time when the online music distribution media plays a central role — in particular, the digital streaming platforms — in contemporary music dissemination and production, minimalism continues to gain preference and sympathy, both from the listening public, as from composers and performers.

At the end of this article, an aesthetic vision for minimalism will be presented, a vision that meets the compositional paradigm of the genre today.

Keywords: Minimalism, Technology, Repetitive Structures, Materialism.

  

The origins of minimalism

The minimalist style[1] was already present in musical composition before the 1960s. Certain composers, such as Erik Satie, had created pieces that could already be called “minimalist” in their style — note, for example, the work “Gnossiennes”. However, Satie’s ideas were much more related to the purpose of parodying the classical composers of his time, who presented an excessively far-fetched style. Thus, with an almost “Dadaist” attitude, and at a time when Brahms’ Symphonies were regularly interpreted, Satie intended to mock[2] his contemporaries by presenting pieces of particular simplicity.

One of Satie’s most controversial pieces — and also closer to the concept of minimalism in it’s structure — is “Vexations”, characterized by the 840 repetitions of the same musical fragment, without placing barlines in the score. In the context of Satie’s work, this piece is equivalent, in a way, to an epic of “Wagnerian” proportions, and the author’s language in this work is comparable to Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelungs”.

However, Satie’s influence did not have its ultimate impact until the 1950s, when John Cage began to develop his work around some of Satie’s ideas. Cage’s work is so experimental, “Neo-Dada”, and radical in the way that he challenged the listener to think about how music was being listened to, that it leads to a new understanding of musical material, bringing together both Satie’s ideas and those of Zen Buddhism. Cage began to develop pieces that were extremely simple in terms of resources and materials, and these pieces served as inspiration for the minimalist movement.

Works like “In a Landscape” are examples of how the composer began to use repetitive structures as a basis in an ostinato scheme and using the simplest scale of traditional harmony: the pentatonic. In “ 4’33” ”, Cage takes to the limit the idea of using “as few resources as possible”, as well as the ideas that circulated in his time about the phenomenon of listening, creating a piece that consists essentially of not listening to a performance for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, allowing the ambient noise in the room to become the object to be heard.

These ideas had repercussions in the first minimalists, such as La Monte Young, which, in the 1960s, was linked to both conceptualism and to serialism. In fact, it was Young who initially developed minimalism. Still in the 1960s, his works began to move from strict serialism to a “minimalist conceptualism”[3].

His 1958 string trio is a clear example of how Young was increasingly concerned with the idea of musical perception and how the listener should be able to understand the process by which the composition was made. This trio consists essentially of a series of 12 tones, but in which the notes are so long that what we find is a static and slow texture in which each note has it’s own weight. It can be said that the ideas of regular pulsation and the minimum possible use of resources are what make this work minimalist.

            However, Young’s string trio was still the beginning of a journey in which the composer would gradually leave serialism and approach a new aesthetic closer to minimalism, where the phenomenon of sound perception is what is most important in the production of this composer. His work consists essentially of an extremely gradual transformation of the compositional materials, either at a harmonic, timbral or structural level, a compositional method that was classified among the theorists as “materialist minimalism”.[4]

In his “Composition 1960 #7”[5], Young composes a piece that consists essentially of the resonance of two notes, a B and an F# that corresponds to an interval of a perfect fifth starting in B, thus producing a resonance effect between the first and third partial, due to the law of the harmonic series.

Young, himself, classifies minimalism as “the use of as few elements as possible” and his ideas were not left out of the American cultural scene. The 1960s, as the age of sexual liberation and the breaking of taboos by the American youth, were the ideal time to develop these unorthodox ideas.

One of the most important composers of this generation was Terry Riley, a student of Young at the University of California. He quickly began composing within the minimalist style, but his work could not be more distinct from Young’s. Riley’s concerns did not revolve around the minimal use of materials, nor around the process of listening as a gradual perception of material changes, but rather they revolved around the compositional process itself.

Riley wanted the listener to be able to perceive the gradual structural changes within a music piece, more so he wanted a community experience. If Young falls into the category of materialist minimalism in this decade, Riley falls into the category of minimalism by employing repetitive structures.

The use of harmonic or melodic sequences that stay in the ear and that are rich enough in themselves, from a compositional point of view, to be repeated several times without ever becoming tiresome, is what characterizes this conceptualization of minimalism. Thus, with the use of repetitive structures for the first time in the Western compositional panorama, music is no longer micro, nor macro.

One of Riley’s most iconic works of this period is “In C” (1964), a piece that consists of playing a pulse to give the tempo to the musicians, while each one plays a musical fragment. The only rule is that none of the musicians should be more than 2 fragments ahead, or behind, the remaining.

The truth is that many of the works were only possible to be conceptualized by the advent of the “tape machine”, which allowed, for the first time, the use of processes such as cuts, loops, among other treatments that helped to deconstruct the way we perceive the musical material and its relationship with the structure.[6]

One clear example of how technology effectively influenced the ideas behind the minimalist genre is Steve Reich’s “It’s Gonna Rain”. When he encountered Riley, during a trip that Riley made to New York, Reich started to develop a new style influenced by the ideas of repetitive structures, and also by the processes that he had learned in the studio from “It’s Gonna Rain”, in particular the process of phasing.

Philip Glass and Reich were the ones who further developed the genre and led to our traditional concept of the style. Both made fundamental contributions. Reich contributed with a new conception of rhythm, that was more concerned with the rhythmic complexity of each fragment and the integration of the fragments in the structure of the work, rather than with the harmonic complexity of the piece. On the other hand, Glass was more concerned with harmony and respect for the traditional rules of harmony. As such, they both contributed, in their own way, to what we now call “post-tonal harmony”, despite the different paths taken.

Post-minimalism, beyond traditional boundaries

If the 1960s and 1970s were the advent of minimalism, the 1980s were the years that established minimalism. Figures like Glass and Reich began to be accepted in concert halls. Glass had premiered his opera “Einstein on the Beach” already in 1976, at the Metropolitan Opera House, but, in the 1980s, the work was performed, for the first time, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was both a success and a scandal[7].

In 1988, Reich premiered “Different Trains”, with the Kronos Quartet, and, in 1990, he won the Grammy for best contemporary composition. Figures like Glass and Reich, who, at the beginning of their careers, had to play in art galleries and open spaces, because they were not welcome in concert halls, began to enter the more conservative environment.

This leads to a change of style in the musical environment, because the genre began to have its own space. If, before, minimalism was understood in a strict and almost saturating way, now it was understood in a way closer to the traditional paradigm of composition. The materials developed more quickly, the repetitions were no longer so excessive and, in a way, minimalism gradually became the contemporary music of the masses.

A genre that seemed to be exclusively American, at first, slowly spread across Europe and found its expression in composers such as David Lang, Michael Nymann, Ludovido Einaudi and Wim Mertens, all of whom had a different vision and frame in the genre.

Nymann is an example of a composer whose work is based on repetitive structures and on the use of ostinato. From his production in the 1980s, I would highlight his string quartet No. 1, composed in 1985, a work that reminds us of the classical and baroque universe, but is fully inserted into the contemporary current. It is based on materials from the works by the Renaissance composer John Bull, and it is a clear examples of how the minimalist genre entered the academic universe.

Nymann is also one of the first composers to achieve his stardom through the cinema, notably with his original soundtrack for the 1993 film “The Piano”. Nymann’s compositional paradigm is diverse, since he composes academic works, as well as original soundtracks, and also plays his hits with his big band, thus being one of the composers who clearly demonstrates how the minimalist genre is versatile.

But minimalism did not stop evolving in the United States. Emerging from the new musical paradigm of the 1980s, composer John Adams — one of the most respected American composers —, started to develop works like “Phrygian Gates” (1977-1978) that seemed to reflect both the composer’s eclecticism and a strict vision of minimalism based on repetitive structures. His career evolved radically, though, when he began composing music for concert halls. He created successful works for orchestra, and composed some of the most controversial operas to this day, such as “Nixon in China” (1987), He even composed soundtracks, thus being an example of a composer whose work conveys eclecticism, while still retaining success.

In a completely different hemisphere — metaphorically speaking —, is Ludovico Einaudi, one of the bestselling Italian composers of today, who reached his current peak with the release of the album “Seven Days Walking”. He studied with Luciano Berio, in the 1980s, and premiered in the 1990s, with the album “Le Onde” (1996). In fact, Einaudi is one of the most sellable composers on the planet. His work was the result of a fusion between the classical genre and popular styles, in the sense that he crosses genres such as rock, pop and folk, with the erudite universe.

Einaudi belongs to a generation of composers who, in the 1990s, absorbed phenomenon of world music. His works focus on the figure of the stage artist, being composed exclusively for solo piano. Despite this approach, his works are generally not very difficult to perform, allowing both professionals, and amateurs alike, to perform them worldwide.

New Minimalisms, a new perspective

Today, the genre has spread through a world so diverse in means and audiences, that it is almost impossible to speak of a cohesive style. Instead, we may speak of several minimalisms. But a particularly recent and interesting phenomenon is the rise of the online music distribution media — namely, the digital streaming platforms —, where such diversity seems to be “ruled” (maybe even limited?) by tags, that influence the composers’ aesthetic conceptualization.

In 2012, Max Richter, one of the most important composers in the UK today, gave life to a project named “Vivaldi Recomposed” (published by Deutsche Grammophon), in which he recomposed some of Vivaldi’s works in an almost iconoclastic style, mixing elements of electronic music with baroque music. This fusion between the acoustic world and the techno world is already present in Nisl Frahm, and such tendency is a consequence of the 1990s.

Another composer who has given a lot to talk about lately, and who is one of the clearest examples of how the music distribution media influences the compositional process, is Oláfur Arnalds. One can say that Arnalds’ work belongs to a style that could be clearly tagged as “melancholic piano” or “sad piano”. In fact, all his work revolves around that musical universe and aims at a specific target audience. Additionally, a bit in the same line as Einuadi, Arnalds is a case of a composer who also performs his own work and, although being a stage artist, his visibility in the social media and streaming platforms is remarkable.

The online music distribution media has allowed composers to establish their personal styles based on tags that can be associated with precise music genres, thus permitting them to reach specific audiences more easily. In this regard, styles such as “melancholic piano”, “sentimental piano”, or “mellow piano”, have been particularly active in recent years.

However, a new genre is increasingly emerging, based on the tag “modern classical”. How to define it? It seems to consist of a more traditional view of composition, closer to the erudite music universe than to the popular music universe. But one can also say it relies on the idea of using the current minimalism as predominant style, while applying formal composition rules, hence classical.

This article is the prelude to a larger and broader research, where many of the topics addressed here will be further explored and a new aesthetical approach to minimalism will also be presented. So, I encourage all those wishing to deepen their knowledge about the minimalist movement, and eager to discover this new aesthetic proposal, to read my next article to be published also by Blue Spiral Records.

[1] The term “minimalism” is widely discussed in the academic context and its use varies greatly depending on the period in which it is addressed. For example, in the 1960s, in relation to the works of Young and Riley, Herman Sabbe uses the term “acoustical art”, in an analogy to “Op art”: “[…] While the technique of repetition and multiplication of similar short cells, linked in a continuous , gradually variegated progression static, though incessantly moving, acoustic texture , that seems to be an aural analogy to the visual experience of observing a Op art painting”. Michael Nymann, in his book “Experimental Music” talks about subgenres derived from minimalism such as “Hypnotic music”, “Process Music”, “Modular Music”, “Wallpaper Music” and even “Going-nowhere Music”, each of these classifications serve to describe various facets of the genre.

[2] One of the works that clearly demonstrates this satirical attitude is “Embryons Desséchés”, in which, at the end of the third piece, “De Podophthalma: Un peu vif”, we can find an ironic reference to the end of Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony, with the excessive repetition of the tonic chord, out of time. Satie intended, thus, to ironize Beethoven’s attempt to reinforce the chord of the tonic and demonstrate that it ended in splendor in a major tonality (note that the symphony begins in a minor tonality).

[3] “The thinking of John Cage and that of the composers of repetitive music has been influenced by serialism. These composers no longer show any interest in serial structure, but they are interested in its aural result, in so far as it is contradictory to its open structure.” Wim Mertens, in “American Minimal Music”, p.104.

[4] “Strictly speaking, the term minimal can only be applied to the limited initial material and the limited transformational techniques the composers employ”, Wim Mertens, in “American Minimal Music”, p.12.

[5] “The absence of anarchistic, destructive or aggressive characteristics in a piece like this makes some critics conclude that Young’s work is not part of the fluxus ideal”, Wim Mertens, in “American Minimal Music”, p.26.

[6] “So, Terry Riley started playing with tape loops and repetition, Steve Reich applied the effect to live pianists, and poof! a new aesthetic existed.”, Kyle Gann, in “Minimalism”, p.186.

[7] “The movement emerged as a mass audience phenomenon in 1974, with the release of Reich’s Deutsche Gramophone Recording, and in 1976, with the historic premiere of Glass’s ‘Einstein on the Beach’, at the Metropolitan Opera House”, Kyle Gann, in “Minimalism”, p.187.