Minimalism

From DIMA

Minimalism refers to those movements or styles in different forms of art and design, especially in the visual arts and music, where the work of art is reduced to its basic parts. In other art domains, minimalism characterizes the novels of Ernest Hemingway, the theatre plays by Samuel Beckett, films of Jean-Pierre Melville and Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carver and even the automobile sketches of Colin Chapman.

Minimalist music is a genre of experimental music and presents the following basic features which should make it easily discernable among the other categories (still some “experts” in electronic music have quite great difficulties in deciding upon the minimalism of a piece). So one can speak about the attributes of minimalist music and we have thus the emphasis in consonant harmony and sometimes even functional tonalities; the recurrence of musical phrases or smaller musical units such as figures, motifs and cells with a subtlety and a gradation and/or the un-frequent variation along a long period of time, the possible limitation to a simple repetition; and the use of the stasis often in the form of a drone, and/or long tones.

The notion of minimalist music was derived from the term of minimalism which was specific to visual arts. Subsequently such notions as process or system found their place in musical compositions.

The term “minimalism’ was used in connection with music in 1968 by Michael Nyman, who later extended its definition in the book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond in 1974.

In order to comprise the initial view of minimalist music we chose a quotation from Village Voice journal written by the minimalist Tom Johnson in 1989: “The idea of minimalism is larger than the great majority realize. This includes, by definition, any music realized with a limited or minimal material: pieces which employ only a few notes, pieces which employ only some words in a text, or pieces written for very limited instruments, such as antique cembalos, bicycle wheels, or whisky glasses […]. It includes pieces which take a very long time to gradually pass from a musical genre to another […]. Or those pieces which slow down the tempo to less than two or three notes per minute.”

The promoters of this style consider minimalist music as being less difficult to hear than serial music and other avant-garde music genres. The most prominent creators of minimalist music were: John Adams, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, Maryanne Amacher and Laurie Spiegel and the “father” of minimalism was considered La Monte Young. A famous example is Terry Riley who offered the musicians unlimited possibilities to enriching the texture through variations. This way the texture of minimalist music is based in canonic imitation, concrete examples in this sense being Glass Einstein on the Beach and Adams Shaker Loops.

• Critics brought to minimalist music

A first point brought against this movement is based on the fact that by simplification the musical process is approaching the kitsch. The second criticism is that minimalist music is shallow, repetitive and boring by lacking dynamics, a music that leads nowhere and which lacks inner consistency.

Renowned Minimalist composers are: David Behrman, David Borden, Gavin Bryars, Cornelius Cardew, Tony Conrad, Peter Garland, Jon Gibson, Philip Glass, Terry Jennings, Petr Kotik, Douglas Leedy, Richard Maxfield, Moondog, Robert Moran, Phill Niblock, Michael Nyman, Pauline Oliveros, Charlemagne Palestine, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Howard Skempton, Yoshi Wada and La Monte Young.