Rocking the Classics by Macan Edward

Author:Macan, Edward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1997-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

Minimalism

Minimalism is probably the most significant style of art music to emerge during the second half of the twentieth century. It emerged at roughly the same time as psychedelic music, during the mid-1960s. Its originators were young composers who were consciously rebelling against the complexity and icy abstractness of contemporary avant-garde styles such as the total serialism of the 1950s or the aleatoric (chance) music of the 1960s. As a style, minimalism is characterized by the use of ostinato networks—that is, several interlocking melodic patterns, usually modal—that are repeated over and over again with gradual, undramatic changes. The resulting harmonic progressions are simple and essentially consonant; there are few cadences. The rhythmic patterns are usually highly charged and energetic, reflecting the influence of African-American styles, especially jazz. An even clearer nod in the direction of African-American music was the increased unwillingness of a composer like Terry Riley to notate his music, and the correspondingly increased reliance on improvisation. The major minimalist composers—Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, LaMonte Young—undertook a systematic study of specific world musics, especially Indian classical music. Not surprisingly, the overall structural conception of their pieces, which are often very long, emphasize ideals more generally associated with Eastern than with Western musics—gradual, undramatic change, and an emphasis on musical elements such as overtones that normally go unnoticed in music where harmonic and melodic changes occur more quickly.

Progressive rock audiences often overlapped with audiences for American minimalism, which has had by far the largest audience of any art music style originating in the second half of the twentieth century;17 it is perhaps surprising, then, that the two styles have not interpenetrated more than they have. There are isolated progressive rock passages that bear an almost uncanny resemblance to contemporaneous minimalist pieces. The opening of Van der Graaf Generator’s “Lost” (1970) resembles the busy, woodwind-dominated ostinato networks often used by Philip Glass in his music of the 1970s; the superimposed ostinato patterns and asymmetrical meters of ELP’s “Infinite Space” (1971) suggest a slowed-down version of Steve Reich’s Octet (1978).

For the most part, however, the two styles remained clearly separated. Both styles were monumental, but minimalism was above all a meditative music, a music that focused narrowly on a deep channel of experience; the greatest achievement of the minimalists was to create structural approaches that successfully capture psychedelia’s acid-induced sense of timelessness.18 While progressive rock did of course prominently feature meditative passages as well, the foundation of the style rests on sudden shifts between acoustic and electric instrumentation, between rock- and classically-oriented rhythmic conceptions, between simple/consonant and complex/dissonant harmonies. In short, progressive rock was a dramatic (and an eclectic) style in a sense minimalism never set out to be.

A more intimate connection can be seen between the electronic minimalism of Terry Riley and the English jazz-rock of the Canterbury school. Daevid Allen, who was involved in early incarnations of both Soft Machine and Gong, worked with Riley in Paris in the mid-1960s, and introduced Riley’s use of tape loops and electronic drones to other members of the early Canterbury school.

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