Minimalism: favourite works

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells
Ravel's Bolero
Shostakovitch's Leningrad Symphony - first movement.

[MrGongGong]

Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells

Care to explain why that is "minimalist" ?

[burning dog]

John Coltrane - "My Favorite Things" (1960)

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for that, BD - my intro to La Monte Young!

The fact that there's percussion but no explicit pulse is a year ahead of Joe Harriott's "Abstract" and two ahead of Cecil Taylor at the Cafe Montmartre, so if this is in any way describable as jazz we have to revise our precedents, perhaps.

From the Minimalism point of view that absence of pulse let alone rhythm is markedly at variance with popular definitions, but I don't think of many of the pieces people have cited on this thread as being classically Minimalist: they're too goal-oreintated for the most part, whereas Minimalist music returns you to where it starts.

[burning dog]

"not goal orientated" that's it..!

[MrGongGong]

"not goal orientated" that's it..!

According to Wim Mertens (American Minimal Music) two key aspects are

1: "The replacement of the work-as-object by the work-as-process"
and
2: "The unity of form and content"

Which makes sense to me

[burning dog]

According to Wim Mertens (American Minimal Music) two key aspects are

1: "The replacement of the work-as-object by the work-as-process"
and
2: "The unity of form and content"

Which makes sense to me

Yes

[Serial_Apologist]

According to Wim Mertens (American Minimal Music) two key aspects are

1: "The replacement of the work-as-object by the work-as-process"
and
2: "The unity of form and content"

Which makes sense to me

Www...ell. As Professor Joad used to say, "It all depends what you mean by............."

Webern's 12-tone works for example might be described as unities of form and content. There's nothing surplus to the rows, in various combinations and transpositions, making them up: the form is the content; but I think it would be stretching a useful definition to include these works under Minimalism. As for 1., by virtue of being framed in some way or other, any work of art is an object, surely, or so I would have thought.



I'm getting in deep waters here!

[Lento]

Have just caught up with a recorded radio interview with Michael Nyman, and learned that he apparently was the first to use the term Minimalist Music during his days as a critic. Also that he superstitiously wondered whether he had somehow jinxed Hillsborough by writing a work inspired by the Heysel Stadium disaster.

[amateur51]

Www...ell.

I'm getting in deep waters here!

**Lobs S_A a pair of galoshes**

[Don Petter]

**Lobs S_A a pair of galoshes**

Might be too minimalist. He needs wellies!

[Serial_Apologist]

(snorkel, snorkel)

[Quarky]

Www...ell. As Professor Joad used to say, "It all depends what you mean by............."

Webern's 12-tone works for example might be described as unities of form and content. There's nothing surplus to the rows, in various combinations and transpositions, making them up: the form is the content; but I think it would be stretching a useful definition to include these works under Minimalism. As for 1., by virtue of being framed in some way or other, any work of art is an object, surely, or so I would have thought.



I'm getting in deep waters here!

Jumping in at the deep end, with no life support mechanism, there seems to me a difference between music that is minimal, or minimally expressed, and "minimalism".

It further seems to me that another key aspect of minimalism is its very repetitive nature, with slow variations occurring across the repetitions.

[Serial_Apologist]

Jumping in at the deep end, with no life support mechanism, there seems to me a difference between music that is minimal, or minimally expressed, and "minimalism".

It further seems to me that another key aspect of minimalism is its very repetitive nature, with slow variations occurring across the repetitions.

The way I'd distinguish Minimalism (capital M) in its original (up to mid-1970s) definition, from what many of its practitioners do today, would be by emphasising the stress it gave to rhythmic and/or metrical generating principles over those of harmony. Once harmony - and of a relatively conventional type - re-entered the picture, its subliminal cultural associations re-assumed precedence, masking whatever had been seen as innovative, in terms of reactive against the serial and post-serial orthodoxies of its time.

[Beef Oven!]

I was a big fan once, went off it and now feel like going back.

I wouldn’t say I was a big fan, but I feel like going back. Reich is my favourite. I’ve started to listen to Music For 18 Musicians, 6 pianos and Music For A Large Ensemble on my portable player at the gym. Works very well on the jogging machine!

Anyone got any suggestions for other minimalist composers?