Review: The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music (original) (raw)
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In this conference we will encourage new debates about the sounds and cultural meanings of minimalist music. We especially welcome work which - extends our understanding of minimalism as a sonic, social and cultural practice in the 21st century - offers new perspectives on the core minimalist repertory - opens new pathways to understanding minimalism as a musical and cross-arts phenomenon, especially how the style has migrated between genres, media and forms - offers new perspectives on the different traditions and influences on the style, including precursors of minimalism - sheds new light on minimalism in the Nordic region - discusses examples of postminimalism which have taken the style in new directions, including drone music and music that draws on alternative tuning systems - addresses the rich terrain of intersections of minimalism with popular music and culture, ranging from pop art to IDM. Proposals should be submitted using the online forms at the conference website: http://www.utu.fi/minimalism The conference is organised jointly by the Department of Musicology at the University of Turku and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. It is supported by the Society for Minimalist Music (http://minimalismsociety.org ) and the International Institute for Popular Culture at the University of Turku (https://iipcblog.wordpress.com).
Musical Minimalism and the Metaphysics of Time
Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 74 (4), 1267–1306., 2018
I defend in this paper the thesis that there is a complex relation between minimalist musical works and the metaphysics of time, involving ontological, epistemological and axiological issues. This relation is explained by means of three sub-theses. The first one is that minimalist musical works literally exemplify-in Goodman's sense-the properties ascribed to time by the metaphysical static view: 1) minimalist works intrinsically possess those properties by being composed according to the technique of minimal repetition; 2) they extrinsically refer to those properties in virtue of pragmatic processes of accommodation of disagreements on what is taken to be common ground in a particular musical context. The second sub-thesis is that, in exemplifying those properties, minimalist musical works are valuable from two perspectives: a formalist one, according to which minimalist works purify the concept of what a musical work is; and a cognitive one, insofar they allow us to obtain phenomenal knowledge of what it is like to experience time as the static view conceives it. The third sub-thesis is that each particular minimalist musical work is valuable insofar it achieves either the formalist or the cognitive goals in an original way.
Organized Sound. Klang und Wahrnehmung in der Musik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts (musik.theorien der gegenwart 6), hrsg. von Christian Utz, Saarbrücken: Pfau 2013, 11–46, 2013
A short perception-based analysis of Helmut Lachenmann’s Pression for cellist (1969/70) serves as point of departure for a general discussion of sound and perception as key methodological elements in the analysis and interpretation of post-tonal music and in their historical implications. Diverse perception strategies are applied to Pression: an »architectural« strategy, based on cross-references between salient cues in the sound surface, a transformation-oriented strategy, based on »categorical transformation« between noise and pitch, and strategies that emerge from the experience of presence and aspects of performance practice. From this analytical sketch emerges a provisional threefold definition of sound which tentatively suggests (1) that the term includes the entire spectrum between isolated sine waves and unpitched noises of maximal spectral complexity, (2) that there is no viable distinction between musical and non-musical sounds as it is not the property of an acoustic event, but only our interpretation of it that makes it part of a »musical« or »non-musical« context, and (3) that, consequently, our perception has the capacity to »organize« any acoustic event into a »sound«. Such a »liberal« and context-oriented definition motivates a historical review of the concept of sound and related perception theories since the late eighteenth century. Sound has been a prominent »Other« in nineteenth-century music theory and aesthetics, disciplined mainly by »form«, »structure«, or »logic«, supported by eye- and architecture-related metaphorical language. An early emancipation of sound, in contrast, was articulated through ear- and »wave«- or »stream«-related metaphors that profoundly influenced modernist music aesthetics (Herder, Richard Wagner). Facets of this discourse can be traced to the association of sound with the world of the unconscious and suppressed emotions as well as the discussion about the concealment or disclosure of a sound’s source. This debate expanded well into the later twentieth century including criticism of Wagner’s »objective sound« (Adorno), theories of »acousmatic listening« (Schaeffer, Scruton), »musique concrète instrumentale« (Lachenmann), and the twofold model of »hearing-in« (Hamilton). Music theory has yet to cope with the emancipation of sound as a primary category in the twentieth century as it was, and in part still is, limited by the persistence of a hierarchical »surface-depth metaphor« that places (sub-)structural relationships above »surface events«. The morphosyntactic analytical methodology, developed as part of the research project A Context-Sensitive Theory of Post-Tonal Sound Organization (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 2012–2014), in contrast, aims to place a bodily-perceptual experience of sound events at the centre of analytical attention, based on three principal preliminaries: (1) the theory assigns a prominent role to the interaction of morphological (Gestalt-oriented) and syntactic (time-oriented) perceptual processes based on syntactic archetypes (tension/release, call/response, presence etc.); (2) it does not idealize a particular listening strategy, but aims at a multiplicity of perception modes that provide the basis for »performative listening«; (3) it understands musical perception as an interaction of cognitive factors and social construction with a particular focus on the relevance of everyday perception. A concluding analytical sketch aims to demonstrate the interaction of the archetypes »tension/release« and »presence«. A short morphosyntactic analysis of the third movement from Giacinto Scelsi’s I Presagi (1958) demonstrates how the »flat«, non-hierarchical absence of a conventional »event structure«, provoking the perception of a timeless presence of sound, is juxtaposed with a breath-like, ritualistic phrase arching, suggesting a contemplative experience of sound transformed in time. »Performative listening« might be defined as a mode of perception that (consciously or intuitively) oscillates between such juxtaposed archetypes, allowing for an integration of a broad spectrum of meanings, associations, and emotions.
Steve Reich's "Musical Process": A Linkage with Postminimal Art
Aesthetics, 2012
Steve Reich (1936- ), in his essay “Music as a Gradual Process” (1968), wrote that “a compositional process and a sounding music [...] are one and the same thing.” His aesthetic creed of “perceptible processes,” indicated in these words, is known as the basic idea of minimal music. Although minimal music has been considered a counterpart of minimal art, this essay first appeared in the exhibition catalogue of Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1969), an exhibition recognized as a threshold of postminimalism in the plastic arts. In this paper, I would like to clarify a linkage between Reich’s music and postminimal art in view of his involvement in the Anti-Illusion show. The theme of the Anti-Illusion show was to refocus on the process of making art. By emphasizing the processes and materials of the works, the participating artists tried to deny illusion and expose the reality of art. Among these works, Reich performed his Pendulum Music, in which he made the sounding process visible as microphones’ swinging. This piece clearly demonstrates that Reich’s claim in “Music as a Gradual Process” was propounded in connection with postminimal art as an attempt to disclose musical processes and thereby reveal the real.