Minimalism: favourite works

[Richard Barrett]

Orlando Gough: Buzz Buzz Buzz Went The Honeybee
Andrew Poppy: The Object Is a Hungy Wolf
Man Jumping: Belle Dux On The Beach
King Crimson: Discipline

Yes, good choices, particularly the Man Jumping one, which reminds me of the related group The Lost Jockey, both produced some excellent music but unfortunately not much of it was released.

edit: although... I was just reacquainting myself with the Gough piece you listed and it strikes me as highly derivative of both Glass (variation by addition and subtraction of notes from a repeating module, as in much of Mi12P) and Reich (strings playing slow harmonic changes, as in Mf18M). The MJ and Poppy examples are more original I think (as is the King Crimson one of course).

[MrGongGong]

Simon Limbrick (who was in Man Jumping) is still making some interesting things

http://www.marimbo.com/cds.html

as is Jeremy Peyton Jones

http://www.jeremypeytonjones.com/regular-music-ii.html

and so on

[Richard Barrett]

Simon Limbrick (who was in Man Jumping) is still making some interesting things

as is Jeremy Peyton Jones

and so on

True. Although (maybe this is just me being nostalgic) I remember the richness of activity going on in this area in the UK in the early 1980s as highly inspiring, with the aforementioned groups among others, not forgetting the Michael Nyman Band in its original form, the early work of Steve Martland, and the more minimalistically inclined of the Scratch Orchestra generation. I was very taken with it all. It seemed to me that this direction, plus the "complex" music, plus free improvisation, were collectively so much more promising and vital elements in contemporary music in the UK than the middle-of-the-road efforts of Knussen/Bainbridge/Turnage/Benjamin et al, and that the latter would necessarily fade from view. In fact the opposite happened! I blame Thatcher.

[MrGongGong]

True. Although (maybe this is just me being nostalgic) I remember the richness of activity going on in this area in the UK in the early 1980s as highly inspiring, with the aforementioned groups among others, not forgetting the Michael Nyman Band in its original form, the early work of Steve Martland, and the more minimalistically inclined of the Scratch Orchestra generation. I was very taken with it all. It seemed to me that this direction, plus the "complex" music, plus free improvisation, were collectively so much more promising and vital elements in contemporary music in the UK than the middle-of-the-road efforts of Knussen/Bainbridge/Turnage/Benjamin et al, and that the latter would necessarily fade from view. In fact the opposite happened! I blame Thatcher.

This would be worth going to

http://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/events/events-calendar/2017/march/emc2-the-experimental-music-catalogue-past-present-and-future.aspx

[Richard Barrett]

This would be worth going to

It would indeed. I would certainly have planned to go along if I were anywhere near.

[Beef Oven!]

I first heard 'The Desert Music' at a Prom - I've just looked it up and am amazed/horrified that it was in 1985 (can I be that old?). It was done again in 1991, converting at least one person I know to not just Steve Reich but any music composed post-1960. Having been thrilled last week by the LPO's performance of 'Music for Eighteen Musicians' (the choreography of the marimba-swapping was something to be seen, as well as the concentration of the musicians), I think that most other supposed 'minimalists' pale by comparison with Reich, even John Adams, whom I once accosted while I was out running in the hills above Berkeley (he was walking his dog). A very sweaty HD: "Excuse me, are you John Adams?". JA: "Yes". HD "Ooerr, guv. I heard that, 'Nixon in China' at the BBC Proms. It was really good. Can I have your autograph?". OK, I made that bit about the autograph up but he was very approachable. And had a very nice dog (it was a German Pointer, I think). Not minimalists in any way but I'm increasingly fascinated by the music of Olga Neuwirth and Jürg Frey, which I feel sure Beefy will know.

Must say I agree with you about Reich, he is IMV something special. Not sure how The Desert Music escaped me all this time (notice taken about other views on this piece, but as I’m new to it, I can listen to it free of its chronological/developmental context).

Olga Neuwirth is known to me, but I’ve only knowingly heard one composition - Lost Highway, which I think is excellent.

[Richard Barrett]

I think I'd have found The Desert Music tedious whenever I first heard it!

Jürg Frey is for my money the most interesting of the "Wandelweiser" group of composers, who I guess come under the "minimalist" umbrella; Olga Neuwirth doesn't though, by any stretch.

But if we're straying that far I would take this opportunity to recommend Tim Rutherford-Johnson's new book Music After The Fall (of the Berlin Wall, that is, nothing to do with Mark E Smith) which is a whistle-stop guide to almost everything that's happened in contemporary composition since 1989. Quite an achievement to say the least. I mention it because I learned much more about the Wandelweiser people from it than I previously knew. Everyone with even a slight interest in informing themselves about the richness of 21st century music should read it, especially perhaps those who've read Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise and are interested in what happens next. (Not that it's in any way a sequel.)

[Bryn]

I think I'd have found The Desert Music tedious whenever I first heard it!

Jürg Frey is for my money the most interesting of the "Wandelweiser" group of composers, who I guess come under the "minimalist" umbrella; Olga Neuwirth doesn't though, by any stretch.

But if we're straying that far I would take this opportunity to recommend Tim Rutherford-Johnson's new book Music After The Fall (of the Berlin Wall, that is, nothing to do with Mark E Smith) which is a whistle-stop guide to almost everything that's happened in contemporary composition since 1989. Quite an achievement to say the least. I mention it because I learned much more about the Wandelweiser people from it than I previously knew. Everyone with even a slight interest in informing themselves about the richness of 21st century music should read it, especially perhaps those who've read Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise and are interested in what happens next. (Not that it's in any way a sequel.)

Duly ordered from the Wordery. However, re. The Desert Music, blunted blade rather than cutting edge, so I won't "give it foive", but will still allow it three.

[Beef Oven!]

I think I'd have found The Desert Music tedious whenever I first heard it!

Jürg Frey is for my money the most interesting of the "Wandelweiser" group of composers, who I guess come under the "minimalist" umbrella; Olga Neuwirth doesn't though, by any stretch.

But if we're straying that far I would take this opportunity to recommend Tim Rutherford-Johnson's new book Music After The Fall (of the Berlin Wall, that is, nothing to do with Mark E Smith) which is a whistle-stop guide to almost everything that's happened in contemporary composition since 1989. Quite an achievement to say the least. I mention it because I learned much more about the Wandelweiser people from it than I previously knew. Everyone with even a slight interest in informing themselves about the richness of 21st century music should read it, especially perhaps those who've read Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise and are interested in what happens next. (Not that it's in any way a sequel.)

I was trying to falsify your statement about The Desert Music, but found that I couldn’t.

Thanks for the heads-up on the Tim Rutherford-Johnson, book. I’ve used the 'Look Inside' facility on Amazon and it’s certainly a whistle-stop tour, and written in an easily understandable way. So I’ve downloaded it as an e-book.

[Maclintick]

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.

You've hit it here, S-A. In essence I feel the same way re "Minimalism" as Stravinsky felt about Wagner, apropos of the principle of "endless melody" -- for which we may substitute "endless repetitions" a la Reich, Nyman, Glass -- "It is the perpetual becoming of a music which has no reason for ending, just as it had no reason for starting in the first place". Once harmony enters the picture, definitions are less easy to come by.

A truly "Minimal" composition will end abruptly, since the compositional process negates the possibility of it doing otherwise, short of fading out as per 3 min singles - difficult to perform live without bathetic anticlimax. While genuflecting towards the canonical "In C" "Drumming" "Music for 18 Musicians" and so forth, I admit a guilty fondness for the following:

Desert Music
Harmonium
Coptic Light
Tubular Bells
Shhh/Peaceful
Cantus In memoriam Benjamin Britten (if Holy Minimalism is allowed as a valid subset)
Tabula Rasa

[gurnemanz]

"It is the perpetual becoming of a music which has no reason for ending, just as it had no reason for starting in the first place".

Presumably "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" by Gavin Bryars is M/minimalist.