Saturday, February 13, 2010

Justin scribbles hastily...

I've been investigating lots of minamlist music lately -- mostly Philip Glass, John Adams (not the president) and a little of Meridith Monk. Their styles of composing seem so different. Philip Glass's music is rarely harsh but instead generally nice and pleasant sounding but oh, so repetitive. John Adams is not so repetitive but a little more difficult to listen to; he excels in strange and prolonged dissonances. Meridith Monk's music is not only repetitive but usually contains no melodic line, no counterpoint, and the harmony seem random -- as if she planned the construction of the composition with complete disregard for the pitches. Hence, her music is vastly different sounding from Glass's and one would not immediately guess that they both consider themselves of the same genre: minimalism.

So what is minimalism, that it contains such a wide variety of music and composers? According to Michael Nyman (one the first minimalist composers; a founding father, if you will), the definition of minimalism is:

(1)...any music that works with limited or minimal materials: pieces that use only a few notes, pieces that use only a few words of text..

(2)...or pieces written for very limited instruments, such as antique cymbals, bicycle wheels, or whiskey glasses...

(3) ...pieces that sustain one basic electronic rumble for a long time...

(4) ...pieces made exclusively from recordings of rivers and streams...

(5)...pieces that move in endless circles...

(6) ...pieces that set up an unmoving wall of saxophone sound...

(7) ...pieces that take a very long time to move gradually from one kind of music to another kind...

(8)...pieces that permit all possible pitches, as long as they fall between C and D...

(9)...pieces that slow the tempo down to two or three notes per minute...


Nine criteria in toto, and interestingly enough, not one of them can be found in either of the three aforementioned composer execpt for Monk. Why is this so; aren't Adams and Glass minimalist composers? They are -- to an extent.

I personally would argue that like everything else, minimalism eventually has to modify itself into something that the public would be satisfied with or it would suffer the fate of many, many other "isms" (Philip Glass, in his early days, could find absolutely nobody to commission him or professionals to perfom his music. Obviously, this is no way to earn a living.) Minimalist composers find that playing remastered recordings of the ocean does not really please an audience paying twenty dollars minimum for a seat in the concert hall. Likewise, the novelty of pieces moving in endless circles, or music composed for whiskey bottles inevitably wears aways, leaving an almost "emperor with no clothes on" effect.

How do minimalist composers remedy this? What do they alter? They simply discard the questionable elements and keep the good. They throw away the loud, annoying saxophone noise and keep the repetiveness, What's more, they add harmony. I find it no coincidence that Philip Glass has lately been breaking his ties with strict minimalism and stressing his extensive study of Mozart's counterpoint and harmony. He retains the repetition however and this results in a moody, haunting even sublime atmosphere, which I, personally, enjoy -- especially in scores like "The Illusionist".

John Adams is going in a similiar route, though his music generally tends to sound more neoclassical (new-classical) than anything else. (Basically, neoclassism is throw-back to the good ole days of Shostacovitch , Sravinsky and Prokofiev, but nowadays, neoclassism is never without that twenty-first century "spin".)

Meridith Monk. Not having heard terribly recent compositions of her's, I can't really say anything much about her changing. However, I'm pretty sure she isn't. The last I heard, it appeared that she much prefers the technical aspects of composition over the aesthetic. The "icy demonstration of mathamatical principles" as Bloch would have it, greatly intrigues her.

To conclude, minimalism needed to be adapted and changed some before it was largely embraced by musicians and listeners. Philip Glass realizes that; John Adams realizes it. They've both adapted considerably and the exent of the evolution of their music is incredible. Consequently, they're well-known, well-respected, with soundtracks to reputable movies to their names, and many people enjoy their music. Meridith Monk, on the other hand, seems to be restricting herself to strict mimimalism. This, in my opinion, is a pity. In this way, I believe that she is not only restricting herself to the narrow confines of the college/university, but she is also, in effect, dooming herself to obscurity.