This is one of the most important and influential works of the 20th century. If you don't already have it, get thee to Amazon.
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If you're listening to it and wondering what the deal is, here is the score.
One page of short musical fragments and two pages of written directions, with very loose guidelines for instrumental composition or length of performance. It's easy to see how revolutionary it was.
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I've only got this one (which I downloaded when it was $1--what a ripoff ) and the Bang On A Can version.
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I've got that one (now this one too, thanks! ) one from the Shanghai film orchestra (no, I don't know anything about them or why they did this work) and some other generic one that I bought about a decade ago and don't remember a thing about. I'm afraid that since my actual cds and cd cases are all several states away form me that's all I can tell you, sorry.
Are you a John Adams fan? There's a few works by him that have a similar feeling (at least to me).
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No, in fact I don't know him! Tell me more!
I suppose it depends what you're into in this category. "Nixon in China" is his most famous work, and honestly I really enjoy it. The first act is the most explosive and the one I listen to the most, but the third act is really very beautiful: quite introspective.
His pieces that are most similar to Terry Riley (since that's how this started): the "Harmonium", "Shaker Loops", "Light over Water" and "Harmonielehre" works (all totally separate things).
He's written some more pop stuff, including at least one musical (called "I was Looking at the Ceiling & Then I Saw the Sky") but I'm not super into those works (though I have them after I received the world's best birthday gifts: Earbox )
If you're coming from a more classical music bent, his Violin Concertos are amazing, I think they're a good lead in to the genre in general.
If you're going with a quick intro, I recommend "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" and "The Chairman Dances", short pieces that give a good feeling for his work. Finally, I recently got "Dharma at Big Sur" and I have to say, great piece of music. It's got that In C feel (and length!). It's a bit slower but emotionally charged.
Really my favorite in the field, and probably in music in general, is Philip Glass; giant fan.
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Oh, I love Philip Glass. I'm not a completest, but I've got quite a bit of his stuff. In fact, tomorrow at work the '93 recording of Einstein on the Beach is coming up on my random album list. I can't wait.
Arvo Pärt is an Estonian who started experimenting with music while he was isolated behind the iron curtain. Once he got out, he found that people in the west like Steve Reich and Terry Riley were doing things very similar to what he was doing. He doesn't sound exactly like the American minimalists, as he was heavily inspired by European Renaissance music. The result is a fascinating hybrid of cutting edge modern and ancient ideas that doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard before.
Probably his most famous works are found on two ECM releases called Tabula Rasa and Te Deum. I can't recommend those highly enough. I've just picked up another CD from a smaller label called Da Pacem that is entirely choral, performed by an Estonian choir and conducted by Paul Hillier, and it's gorgeous.
I'll put that John Adams on my Amazon list. I'm due for another order before too long, and it's always fun to discover some new minimalism. Thanks. Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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Thank you so much for mentioning Arvo Part. Strangely enough, I've been looking for something similar for a few days. Well, not quite similar, but something choral and interesting. I lived in Estonia when I was a kid and always twig when I hear it mentioned. I checked out his works and I love them. I just bought Te Deum. I think I've also found my Dad's birthday present. (:
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I only have the version of the piece that I performed in college- and and maybe one that Riley did.
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I listened to some samples... not my kind of minimalism I guess. Probably just because I'm not a huge chorus person in general (despite my positive feelings about Mahler ). Basically I stick with Glass, Riley, Adams and Reich. Not because I'm not open to others but I haven't found another I like yet. I'm pretty picky I guess. If you have other suggestions though, I'd love to hear them!
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When you say samples, do you mean iTunes or Amazon? Like most minimalism, it's not best appreciated in 30-second intervals.
If I knew you didn't like choral pieces, I'd have definitely suggested starting with Tabula Rasa. Not only are all the pieces on that album instrumental, but the piano on the first track is played by Keith Jarrett. That's about the same level of coolness as when Steve Reich got Pat Metheny to play Electric Counterpoint.
However, totally understandable if it's not your thing. I'll let you know what I think of Adams when I get my order in. Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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I looked into that, I do like it more: thanks for the heads up! It reminds me of some of Adam's newer things. "On the Transmigration of Souls" in particular, though a few of the ones I mentioned above as well (e.g. "Dharma at Big Sur"). I'll have to pursue this further.
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Also, if you want a bit longer taste of what Pärt sounds like, here is a clip of the beginning of the movie "Gerry," which was set to a piece called Spiegel im Spiegel. I wouldn't say it's totally representative of his style (as I know it), but it is quite lovely.
I've got a friend who knows a bit about minimalism--he got his Ph.D. with a dissertation on LaMonte Young. He just turned me on to a guy named Paul Lansky. One of the things he's most famous for, in a pop culture sense, is writing a piece in the early '70s that Radiohead turned into their song Idioteque.
He's also known for a series of experiments in which he records human voices, then uses computer programs (which I believe he writes himself) to extract tiny fragments of sounds from those recordings and turn them into sound collages. It kind of reminds me of a high-tech (and more deliberately musical) version of It's Gonna Rain or Come Out.
I've got one of his albums called Ride, which features the latest of these experiments, a piece called Idle Chatter Junior, and several other collected works.
He's got a website on which he's collected samples of some of his work. I don't know that I'd recommend him as highly as Reich, Glass or Part: I find his music highly interesting as experiments, but not quite as enjoyable as some other minimalists (although I may change my mind when I've had more time to explore his music.) But in any case, it's well worth checking out for anyone with an interest in the form.
And incidentally, I found out when I was reading up on him, that my friend wrote the All Music Guide articles on each piece on the CD Ride that I just bought. So if you want an expert's opinion, check it out: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That first one is a much better explanation of Idle Chatter Junior than I was able to manage.
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Speed, Lansky's piece, "Mild und Leise" is not actually minimal- it's through-composed. And it's awful in my opinion, although Idioteque is much better- Lansky gets 90% of his credit as a composer for being sampled by Radiohead, even though the chords in his piece were quoted from Wagner, so it's not like even that iteration was totally original.
I say feh to a fair amount of minimalism. Some stuff I love, but minimalist composers generally get away with bloody murder, put on self indulgent concerts and test the patience of friends and family- and I say this having performed pieces by Reich and Riley, as well as Pärt.
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Fair enough. I know the term "Minimalism" is kind of like the 20th century answer to the term "Classical," in that it gets applied to a lot more music than it should by strict definition. And I realize that I play a bit fast and loose with the definition myself, so I've got no problem with your correction. In fact, I'm a little surprised that this is the first time in the thread that you've corrected me... I take it as a compliment.
And yes, it's good to remember that the vast majority of any musical genre is garbage. Fortunately, I've managed to find plenty in this genre that I really enjoy listening to. I've also been introduced to several pieces by my friend that I find intellectually interesting but I can't imagine ever wanting to hear as music (Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room" and "Music on a Long Thin Wire" come to mind. The descriptions of LaMonte Young's music seems to fit this category too, although his recordings are rare enough that I couldn't tell you from experience.) And then I've stumbled across several pieces that seem to be trying to ape these earlier experiments without the creativity that accompanied them, which neither interest me intellectually nor aesthetically. I think, for me, Lansky is somewhere in the middle of the first two categories. I don't actually own a copy of "Mild und Leise," but the one CD of his that I do have I find quite interesting, and enjoyable enough to keep a place in my collection.
For me, the best type of minimalism is just like the best type of blues, jazz or Celtic music. It doesn't concern itself with slavishly sticking to the canonized conventions of its form, but it uses the ideas as jumping-off points to make something truly unique and compelling. For example, a recent favorite piece of mine is This Binary Universe by BT. It's a long way from strict minimalism, but it was clearly inspired by many of their ideas. And more importantly, it uses the same spirit of musical and technological experimentation that made those early pieces so exciting to create a product that is as good as many of them.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Speed, Lansky's piece, "Mild und Leise" is not actually minimal- it's through-composed.
I always thought that minimalism could be through-composed. I know process music isn't, and sometimes they're used interchangeably, but I always thought minimalism was a little broader than straight process music.
I won't get into examples, because I know all these definitions are a bit flexible, but I always thought many of the defining minimalist pieces went a bit beyond pure process music.
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I agree, generally. I also agree somewhat with Eliot Carter's famous "minimalism is death," statement, although if the answer to minimalism is Carter, then the cure may be worse than the disease. Everything should be in its fair proportion, and most of the best "minimalist," music is in fact more post-minimal, some call it "functionalist," music, although that nomenclature has not caught on. I found towards the end of my college studies that I worked more and more towards a kind of functionalist, post minimalist approach to my music- music became the application of notes to a framework that established itself as some piece of a narrative. Music of this kind of origin does not have to be starkly ugly, and many composers these days are finding a lot of freedom to make sonorously beautiful music out of post minimal designs.
In many ways I think minimalism, for all its new-agey political correctness and psuedo-eastern philosophy, helped American composers especially to escape the creative black hole of serialism and "total music," that swallowed up academia for some time in the middle of the 20th century. In their attemps to create art that was a-cultural and a-political, serialists just managed to create their own little sphere of politics and culture out of some god-awful collections of sounds. There were good composers even in that camp, but the signal to noise ratio got quite high, just like it has more recently with minimalism.
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Well, many of the defining minimalist pieces *were* pure process music. In Lansky's case, his music came a little after the height of experimentation with process and aleatory music. It's true, something could be "minimal" and through-composed, depending on how you look at it. Through composition is just a way of saying there are no defined sections in the work, which generally does distinguish it from a minimalist piece, which has either a clear motivating process, or a clear division of sections that interrelate in some concentric pattern.
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) and the Bang On A Can version.
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) one from the Shanghai film orchestra (no, I don't know anything about them or why they did this work) and some other generic one that I bought about a decade ago and don't remember a thing about. I'm afraid that since my actual cds and cd cases are all several states away form me that's all I can tell you, sorry. ![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
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If you have other suggestions though, I'd love to hear them!
