So how does everyone REALLY feel about minimalist composers?

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:57 pm

ravel30 wrote:Chalkie,

You have to understand that someone like me who respects your knowledge to the highest point could not help but be extremely curious about a composer in your top 3. How interesting. I have to admit that I didn't know this composer before up until a few minutes ago where I listened to his ''Rothko Chapel''.

Very interesting piece indeed. I was wondering if you and KarlHenning have any other recommandation about this composer ?

I am not kidding, I consider Bach and Shostakovich to be the Bookends of Classical Music and I have hundreds of CD's by each Composer, including every known work, Morton Feldman however is unique, they made him Professor of Music at Buffalo University but the day he showed up for work the Security Man at the University thought he was the New Janitor, he was big friends with the likes of John Cage and many, many artists like Samuel Becket, Philip Guston, Christian Woolf...he named pieces of music for these friends, a good starting point is probably the Piano and String Quartet by the Kronos Quartet on Nonesuch, it is an easily accessible piece of Music, his works for Piano, called simply Piano and Palais de Mari (for Francesco Clemente) have two wonderful Recordings by Aki Takahashi and Marianne Schroder, also For Bunita Marcus in a recording by Hildegard Kleeb is very fine...this stuff is incredibly minimal, very, very slow and very long, the Piano Pieces run for 30 and 75 minutes...his other chamber music works are even longer, For Philip Guston runs Three Hours and Nineteen Minutes, String Quartet No.2 is Six Hours and Seven Minutes long...other shorter pieces include The Viola in my Life, Clarinet and String Quartet, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, Patterns in a Chromactic Field, Why Paterns, Triadic Memories, Coptic Light and Crippled Symmetry...he considered his music to be like paintings and if you get to like it has an incredible effect on the listener...being a Composer and Musician Karl can explain it better than I...one last thing, many of the finest recordings were available on a Swiss Label called Hat Hut Art but those recordings are long since deleted and probably fetch a large price on Amazon, I have not Googled them but will leave that to you...Mode has a number of recordings available...

Here is Morty the Janitor...

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This is a painting of Morty, by Philip Guston, Morty was a loud and gruff man, rotund and very funny...

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This is the first page of the score of his work De Kooning from 1963...

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karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 7:33 am

ravel30 wrote:
Chalkperson wrote:. . . I was wondering if you and KarlHenning have any other recommandation about this composer?

I'll go two weeks at a time listening to Why Patterns? once a day. It was one of a number of streams feeding into stars & guitars.

Cheers,
~Karl

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 7:37 am

Chalkperson wrote:...other shorter pieces include The Viola in my Life, Clarinet and String Quartet, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, Patterns in a Chromactic Field, Why Paterns, Triadic Memories, Coptic Light and Crippled Symmetry...he considered his music to be like paintings and if you get to like it has an incredible effect on the listener...being a Composer and Musician Karl can explain it better than I...

I don't know that I can, my dear Chalkie. I realized after a while that I listen to Feldman's music with different ears than those with which I listen to almost any other music, but I cannot quite explain it.

Triadic Memories is a piece I need very much to revisit; haven't heard it since my own days in Buffalo.

Matt, Coptic Light is a strong rec, too.

Cheers,
~Karl

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 8:46 am

Chalkperson wrote:This is the first page of the score of his work De Kooning from 1963...

Scores like this look great, but when it's an ensemble like that, such scores are not really useful to the players. (For piano solo, e.g., such considerations don't matter.) It's much less effort for the composer to re-think his score in traditional notation, than for the players to learn to 'think inside the alternate notation'.

There is a case for the aesthetics of the clean look of such a score. But as I say, it's a trade-off with the ready communication of established notation practice. The composer may prefer that his music only be played by players who are comfortable with his alternative notation.

Cheers,
~Karl

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 10:14 am

karlhenning wrote:
Chalkperson wrote:This is the first page of the score of his work De Kooning from 1963...
Scores like this look great, but when it's an ensemble like that, such scores are not really useful to the players. (For piano solo, e.g., such considerations don't matter.) It's much less effort for the composer to re-think his score in traditional notation, than for the players to learn to 'think inside the alternate notation'.

There is a case for the aesthetics of the clean look of such a score. But as I say, it's a trade-off with the ready communication of established notation practice. The composer may prefer that his music only be played by players who are comfortable with his alternative notation.

I posted it for purely aesthetic reasons, it shows the highs and lows, I have never seen a recording of it though, maybe it was a gift, interestingly Paul McCartney has one of the finest Willem De Kooning Collections in the World, Robert Fraser (Dr Robert) used to go to Macca's office on friday afternoons to show Paul and Linda Paintings that were for sale, Linda had a keen eye for that kind of stuff...

hangos · Post by **hangos** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 11:42 am

I once read somewhere that Sibelius's Tapiola could be regarded with hindsight as a forerunner of minimalism ; "the quintessence of the static"
Can't say I agree though, as for one thing it gets somewhere in the end, and a lot happens in between!

Niki · Post by **Niki** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:58 pm

Great selection ravel !!
I first heard Spiegel im Spiegel on the radio 2-3 years ago, when it was released I guess, and bought the CD ( I think is called "For Alina" or maybe just Alina as chalkperson mentioned).

And yet I do not consider Avo Part a real minimalist. I group him with John Tavener as the new wave of religious / baroque music.

I find P. Glass music very interesting and refreshing - specially for movies - when taken in small doses. His Kayanisqatchi (?) for the same name movie done by the Reggie bros. is amazing. I also think Steve Reich has some very satisfying works.

I can understand some comments made above regaridng repetition Vs invention. Although I am not a minimalism fan I found the music providing the central elements it is suposed to: motion. When listened to carefully there is something new with each measure and the very subtle, gradual progression makes a very pleasant listening. Another thing that is very important to is to have a fresh, new composition, a new idiom every time. Minimalism supplies this and it is ( was...)a fresh breeze.

diegobueno · Post by **diegobueno** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 5:21 pm

Adams and Reich are two of my favorite composers of the last quarter of the 20th century. Reich's intricate interlocking rhythmic patterns are a joy to hear. Adams has gone far beyond minimalism and is particularly strong in orchestral music.

Reich --
Music for 18 instruments
Different Trains
The Desert Music
New York Counterpoint

Adams --
Harmonielehre
Fearful Symmetries
Gnarly Buttons
Hallelujah Junction
Naive and Sentimental Music

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 9:04 pm

Niki wrote:Great selection ravel !!
I first heard Spiegel im Spiegel on the radio 2-3 years ago, when it was released I guess, and bought the CD ( I think is called "For Alina" or maybe just Alina as chalkperson mentioned).

The CD's title is Alina, the piece of Music is called Fur Alina...either way, every home should have one, I bought 50 copies when it came out and gave them as Xmas Presents to my friends and clients...

James · Post by **James** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 10:50 am

Boringboringboringboringboringboringboringboringboringboringboringboringboringboringboring

Post by **Corlyss_D** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 4:19 am

So how does everyone REALLY feel about minimalist composers?

For people who make such a big deal about how little they have to say, minimalists waste way too much time saying it. A real minimalist would have one composition of a single bar, period, and leave the field to those who do have something to say and say it much more beautifully.

some guy · Post by **some guy** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 8:01 am

On the other hand there's this:

“I have nothing to say and I’m saying it and that is poetry as I need it.”

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 1:14 pm

Corlyss_D wrote:
So how does everyone REALLY feel about minimalist composers?
For people who make such a big deal about how little they have to say, minimalists waste way too much time saying it. A real minimalist would have one composition of a single bar, period, and leave the field to those who do have something to say and say it much more beautifully.

I consider Morton Feldman's work to be incredibly beautiful, as Karl says, you do not listen to it like other music, you almost don't try to listen, you just let it wash all over you, it's peaceful and serene and also not quite tonal...Part's work is also incredibly beautiful too...

diegobueno · Post by **diegobueno** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 11:01 pm

One composer who grew out of the minimalist aesthetic but doesn't completely belong to it is Michael Torke. Like the minimalists, his music is pattern-based, but there's no literal repetition. There may be some background pattern that repeats, such as a sequence of chords, but the foreground patterns are always shuffling, reforming, evolving. Adjustable Wrench is an excellent example of this.

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Mon Aug 10, 2009 11:15 pm

diegobueno wrote:Adjustable Wrench is an excellent example of this.

Yep, Torke and Adjustable Wrenches do make sense...

diegobueno · Post by **diegobueno** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 8:50 pm

Chalkperson wrote:
diegobueno wrote:Adjustable Wrench is an excellent example of this.
Yep, Torke and Adjustable Wrenches do make sense...

I'm sure the humor in the title was not lost on the composer.

ravel30 · Post by **ravel30** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:17 pm

I would like to take back a previous comment I made. Philip Glass' music is awesome !!!! I only based my previous comment on two pieces that I have heard of him and I was wrong. Today, I listened to a few of his pieces that blow me away. I listened to some excerpts of:

-Koyaanisqatsi (wow!)
- Kundun (Chalkie, thank you so much for that recommandation.)

and I found that short little piece of his

I am a mathematician by trade so I've got to love the clip. But the music is so amazing for me. I just cannot get it out of my head.

Am I the only one who find this short amazing ?

Ravel30

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 10:20 pm

diegobueno wrote:
Chalkperson wrote:
diegobueno wrote:Adjustable Wrench is an excellent example of this.
Yep, Torke and Adjustable Wrenches do make sense...
I'm sure the humor in the title was not lost on the composer.

There is even a 1995 parody disc by Brain Eno and Jah Wobble called Spinner...

ravel30 · Post by **ravel30** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 8:29 pm

ravel30 wrote:I would like to take back a previous comment I made. Philip Glass' music is awesome !!!! I only based my previous comment on two pieces that I have heard of him and I was wrong. Today, I listened to a few of his pieces that blow me away. I listened to some excerpts of:

-Koyaanisqatsi (wow!)
- Kundun (Chalkie, thank you so much for that recommandation.)

and I found that short little piece of his

I am a mathematician by trade so I've got to love the clip. But the music is so amazing for me. I just cannot get it out of my head. Am I the only one who find this short amazing ?

Ravel30

It has almost been two weeks now and I still cannot take this piece of music out of my head. Why do I find this piece brilliant and wonderful ?

What other pieces by Glass other than Kundun and Koyaanisqatsi would CMG members recommend ?

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 11:48 pm

ravel30 wrote:What other pieces by Glass other than Kundun and Koyaanisqatsi would CMG members recommend ?

The Fog of War
Powaquaatsi
The Hours
The Secret Agent
Notes on a Scandal
Dracula -The Kronos Quartet

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 11:59 pm

...Not the Violin Concerto? Gidon Kremer provides one of the few performances of his that I enjoy playing that work with Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Vienna Philharmonic. Great music-making.

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 12:19 am

Ken wrote:...Not the Violin Concerto? Gidon Kremer provides one of the few performances of his that I enjoy playing that work with Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Vienna Philharmonic. Great music-making.

I was sticking to Soundtracks...

ravel30 · Post by **ravel30** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 5:10 pm

Ken wrote:...Not the Violin Concerto? Gidon Kremer provides one of the few performances of his that I enjoy playing that work with Christoph von Dohnanyi and the Vienna Philharmonic. Great music-making.

Ken,

Thank you for mentionning the violin concerto. I have had that piece for a while and it never really hooked me before until I gave it another listen today. Splendid piece from a composer that I definitively have to explore more.

Thank you Chalkie for the suggestions. Lovely pieces to explore I am sure.

some guy · Post by **some guy** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:00 am

An invaluable article on minimalism by one of the few composers who calls himself a minimalist.

Anyone who wants to know more about the various types of music contained in this category should read this.

http://www.editions75.com/Articles/Mini ... 0music.pdf

some guy · Post by **some guy** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 4:07 am

Sorry for the double post, but I noticed that this thread had gotten the black spot. (Which makes readers of R.L.S. nervous!)

Anyway, the article by Tom Johnson is pretty good, I think, as it's not just a historical list of practitioners but a philosophical meditation on what minimalism can mean, by one of the minimalists.

Has anyone read that, yet? Don't be scared! It won't hurt you, unless you find that opening up your listening to more possibilities is painful!! Then, I suppose it would hurt....

The other reason I bumped this up is because I just heard a couple of pieces that use the repetition kind of minimalism* (which is not, I repeat (!), the only kind) here at Ostrava Days, pieces by František Chaloupka and Bernhard Lang, both of whom were there. (Along with Elliott Sharp and Petr Kotík and one of the legends of the sparseness school of minimalism,** Christian Wolff. Festivals are good fun.)

*In this case, the full orchestra maximal kind of repetition that John Adams made famous, though there are plenty of Bang on a Can folks who do it even more maximally than he.

**Not a real "school."

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Fri Aug 28, 2009 7:37 am

Tangentially: a virtual neighbor in Toronto who enjoys my Out in the Sun says that it reminds him of Steve Reich.

And if anyone in the area may be interested, Out in the Sun will be performed at the University of Michigan this November.

Cheers,
~Karl

some guy · Post by **some guy** » Fri Aug 28, 2009 8:54 am

And last night was Phill Niblock's Disseminate, played by Zinc & Copper Works (Daniel Costello, french horn, Daniel Ploeger, trombone, and Robin Hayward, tuba.

A real treat of drone minimalism, plus I met Phill afterward and found out he's not only a monster of new music but a really sweet guy, too.

diegobueno · Post by **diegobueno** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 1:31 pm

Another member of the repetitive school of minimalism who often gets overlooked is David Borden, who lives in Ithaca, New York and worked with Robert Moog on his first synthesizers back in the 60s. As he says in the essay on his website*, his job was to be the "chief idiot"**. Moog let Borden play with his synthesizers and if Borden couldn't break them or destroy them, he knew he had a good design. Borden went on to form a group called Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company, which was the world's first all synthesizer ensemble. His 12-part The Continuing Story of Counterpoint obviously owes a lot in its concept to Glass' Music in Twelve Parts.

I knew Borden while I was living in Ithaca. He was a colorful, sometimes crotchety character, not afraid to speak his mind. I was particularly impressed with his Variations on a theme of Philip Glass and The Perilous Night Companion, tributes to Glass and Cage, both of whom were among his friends.

* http://www.mothermallard.com/

** There's a forum censor that changed the wording here. Go to his website to read the original word.

some guy · Post by **some guy** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 2:52 pm

Indeed!

David was long one of my favorites. A kind of guilty pleasure, as nothing that pretty can be good!! But, "oh, well." It is good.

(There's someone here who would censor the word *****? (I didn't put the word in, because y'all really should go to the website that Mark supplied.)

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:01 am

Chief id!ot, really? That's fun!

Cheers,
~Karl

karlhenning · Post by **karlhenning** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:02 am

Thanks for the alert, BTW; I actually thought that "chief uninformed person" was the Ur-text, and I was rather enjoying it ; )

Cheers,
~Karl

stenka razin · Post by **stenka razin** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 8:37 am

Do you like this piece? I do..Please enjoy the music and that cat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ELuO33NU4A

some guy · Post by **some guy** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 9:21 am

And here's some swell Tony Conrad.

ravel30 · Post by **ravel30** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 10:43 pm

stenka razin wrote:Do you like this piece? I do..Please enjoy the music and that cat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ELuO33NU4A

Thanks for the clip stenka razin. Very interesting indeed.

ChrisX · Post by **ChrisX** » Fri Dec 11, 2009 2:33 pm

Reading through this thread I have to thank Chalk for pointing me towards the Alina (ECM) disc. That really looks like something very special.

Slofstra mentioned Simeon Ten Holt earlier and although I don't regard him a true minimalist (more like a composer of repetitive music) he does fit in in some way. He writes large scale pieces mostly for piano and usually for piano-ensembles. In his earlier years whe was a staunch serialist but he returned to tonality in a proces he called "tonality after the death of tonality". His compositions are basically made up of short cells that can be repeated for as long as a performer wants. Furthermore he gives the performers lots of responsibility when it comes to shaping the dynamics of the piece and sometimes even when it comes to the choice of tempi.

His 'breakthrough' composition was Canto Ostinato that as far as I know can be performed by 2 pianos or 2 pianos + 2 marimbas or 4 pianos. But recently a enterprising harpist has made a transcription of Canto Ostinato for harp solo which has gotten the blessing from Ten Holt himself.

Here is a live performance of the 2 piano + 2 marimba version:

some guy · Post by **some guy** » Fri Dec 11, 2009 8:35 pm

Chris, now I'm curious. What do you consider "true" minimalism???

johnQpublic · Post by **johnQpublic** » Fri Dec 11, 2009 9:35 pm

How do I feel about Minimalism?

There's very little of Glass I like but I do enjoy most others.

ChrisX · Post by **ChrisX** » Sat Dec 12, 2009 4:51 am

some guy wrote:Chris, now I'm curious. What do you consider "true" minimalism???

I kind of knew when I wrote that down that someone might take me up on that but the thing is, I really can't put it into words. What I do know is that I perceive quite a difference between the music of Ten Holt and the music of Philips Glass or Steve Reich. Especially Reich's music is something that turns me off the more I listen to it with Different Trains and Electric Counterpoint being the exception. I perceive his music as very mechanical and I miss the human element.

I do have another example of what I would call true minimalist music and that is the soundscape / ambient music of people like Brian Eno and more importantly Steve Roach. Especially his longform soundworlds are to me the epitomy of what I would call minimal music.

MJWal · Post by **MJWal** » Sat Dec 12, 2009 9:05 am

ADNI
I hate Glass. So transparently repetitive.
I hate Glass. So glassily unfeeling.
I hate Glass. Glass Glass. So grassrootedly pprimitive so glaucously fffrangible so
Pppoor in Variation
(unlike Reich)~
no,not another Glass!
So singularly unspectacular, so glass-harmonically nerve-racking Glass. Glass lags way behind and can't kick ass. I hate Glass I hate Glass I hate Glass
I hate Glass. All notes are grass in Glass. All fashion only in a Glass, his ssounds leave me glassy-eyed.
So unfocused, so unreflective, so coolly congealed,
so chromatically threadbare, nay so colourless Glass,
so rigidly gelatinous, so microscopically monotonous,
so overblown Glass. Fillup Glass.Ever half-empty Glass.
So Glass. So Glass.Sglass. Slass. Ass. Ssol. So la la. Sol fa la la. La la la. Gla. Gaga. Ga.
I hate. Aye I. Hate.Glass. Blast Glass. Ghastly Glass.
Glass Glass.
(Ad Dei Nauseam Infinitam)

BWV 1080 · Post by **BWV 1080** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:15 am

some guy wrote:And here's some swell Tony Conrad.

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And some swell Conrad with the equally swell Keiji Haino.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KD2j5p1bTPI&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KD2j5p1bTPI&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>[/youtube]

No nice kitties, though. Sorry!

that is really cool, had not heard of Conrad before

here's an interesting bit of trivia:

Conrad is known as being indirectly responsible for the name of The Velvet Underground, although he was not an actual member of the famous group. (Lou Reed and John Cale found a book entitled The Velvet Underground, which had belonged to Conrad, after moving into his old apartment in New York City.)

BWV 1080 · Post by **BWV 1080** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:31 am

The most attractive thing about minimalism, is that its an aesthetic rather than a movement and is not confined to classical music.

Post by **Corlyss_D** » Tue Dec 15, 2009 3:44 am

MJWal wrote:ADNI
I hate Glass. So transparently repetitive.
I hate Glass. So glassily unfeeling.
I hate Glass. Glass Glass. So grassrootedly pprimitive so glaucously fffrangible so
Pppoor in Variation
(unlike Reich)~
no,not another Glass!
So singularly unspectacular, so glass-harmonically nerve-racking Glass. Glass lags way behind and can't kick ass. I hate Glass I hate Glass I hate Glass
I hate Glass. All notes are grass in Glass. All fashion only in a Glass, his ssounds leave me glassy-eyed.
So unfocused, so unreflective, so coolly congealed,
so chromatically threadbare, nay so colourless Glass,
so rigidly gelatinous, so microscopically monotonous,
so overblown Glass. Fillup Glass.Ever half-empty Glass.
So Glass. So Glass.Sglass. Slass. Ass. Ssol. So la la. Sol fa la la. La la la. Gla. Gaga. Ga.
I hate. Aye I. Hate.Glass. Blast Glass. Ghastly Glass.
Glass Glass.
(Ad Dei Nauseam Infinitam)

Post of the Day Award to ya MJ, with the coveted pink noodle cluster for clever satire.

MJWal · Post by **MJWal** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 11:45 am

Thanks, Lance. I have never before or after written any poems in such a style!
I have tried Glass over & over again. Es geht einfach nicht. Oh well.

Chalkperson · Post by **Chalkperson** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 3:46 pm

MJWal wrote:Thanks, Lance. I have never before or after written any poems in such a style!
I have tried Glass over & over again. Es geht einfach nicht. Oh well.

Actually, it's Corlyss you have to thank...

MJWal · Post by **MJWal** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 11:37 am

Chalkperson wrote:
MJWal wrote:Thanks, Lance. I have never before or after written any poems in such a style!
I have tried Glass over & over again. Es geht einfach nicht. Oh well.
Actually, it's Corlyss you have to thank...

Oh, right, thanks - I got confused about the names, which I somehow took for one rather than two. The older I get the more I have a name problem. So, dear Corlyss, thanks for the kind words.

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