So here, O fictive reader, are answers to some of the questions that, over the years, I’ve heard you ask. These answers are the equivalent of a one-day tour of a major metropolis, pointing out a few highlights to give you a general sense of the landscape of living composers, hoping that you’ll return to visit, in depth, whatever grabs your interest. This is not a “best of” guide, but rather an aide to orientation: Whatever your individual taste, these are pieces worth exploring.
1.Why should I care about minimalism?
Minimalism is a frustratingly incorrect term for a compositional approach that developed in the second half of the 20th century and that, in hindsight, turns out to be the most important contribution the United States has made to the field of composition.
“Minimalism” is a flawed term because most of the composers associated with it — notably Steve Reich and Philip Glass — reject it. It’s also a term that inspires fear and loathing in the hearts of some listeners who think it describes works that simply do the same thing over and over and over and over again — like passages of Glass's seminal and divisive 1976 opera “Einstein on the Beach.” “It’s not music,” say detractors.
Ah, but it is. Even the earliest seminal works of so-called minimalism share a lyric freshness. They do indeed take a step away from the conventional narrative of traditional classical music forms. Rather than taking a theme and develop it, they put musical elements together and let them shift into different, ever-changing combinations, like images in a kaleidoscope. The classic example is Terry Riley’s “In C” from 1964, consisting of 53 numbered phrases that are played by any number of musicians, lasting anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours, creating a dreamy, beguiling, mutable colorscape in the process. Equally iconic is Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians,” which references influences all the way back to medieval chant in the way it revolves around the same 11 chords, played at different speeds, within the compass of individual human breaths.
And the real hallmark of so-called minimalist music is not its repetition but this way of approaching musical form. (Anton Bruckner, the 19th-century symphonic composer, has been called a proto-minimalist for the way he juxtaposes great blocks of sound.) As minimalist ideas have evolved, the genre’s sounds have become ever richer. Louis Andriessen, the maverick Dutch composer, has jokingly called himself a “maximalist” (check out his huge, powerful opera-oratorio “De Materie” to hear the way he creates powerful music out of layers of sound). John Adams, who used to be seen as a young minimalist, now writes scores with veritably Wagnerian overtones for full orchestra and/or opera. (My favorite introduction to Adams is “Harmonium,” a big, shining, early piece for chorus and orchestra that radiantly sets texts by John Donne and Emily Dickinson, ending in a whirl of taut, bright sound.)
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