TWO: MINIMALISM
In episode fourteen, we talked about atonality and serialism, and we pretty much agreed with the rest of the world that this music is strange, alienating, hard to listen to, and apparently composed to scare the living daylights out of most audiences.
There’s a theory that says most people are hard-wired to prefer simple tonality. Research has even showed it. For example, a couple of studies suggest that infants prefer consonant intervals, like a major third, which is two notes, separated from each other by two whole steps from each other. We don’t much like dissonant intervals, like two notes separated by just a half step, or even a whole step.
Like 12 tone music before it, Minimalism uses only a limited number of musical materials. In it, you’ll hear repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones, consonant harmony, and re-use of musical phrases or smaller units. Phillip Glass, a composer we’ll talk about today, describes it like this: “What you hear depends on how you focus your ear. We’re not talking about inventing a new language, but rather inventing new perceptions of existing languages.” Since it’s start in the mid-1960s, minimalism’s audience has grown and the music itself has massively influenced the composition of new American, and actually world-wide music. It’s become the “common musical language” of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Welcome to episode 15 – The Celestial Pulse of Minimalism.
Music for 18 Musicians
In the world of American art music, Minimalism was another push away from what was traditional. It’s earliest beginnings are found in the 1950’s again, with two American composers; Steve Reich (b.1936) and Philip Glass (b.1937). Reich, Glass, and another minimalist, John Adams, were all heavily influenced by mid-century popular music. Together, they’re known as the ‘big three’ in minimalist music. Reich’s mother was a singer-songwriter who wrote tunes for Broadway shows during the 1930s and 40s. Growing up in New York City in the 1940’s, you can imagine why his first passion would be jazz. This was the day of the hot jazz night clubs where guys like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and the bebop drummer, Kenny Clarke were making music history! The great scat-vocalist, Ella Fitzgerald was also an early influence. For a while, Reich wanted to be a jazz drummer himself. You can hear a strong groove in most of his later minimalist works. A young genius, Steve entered Cornell University to study music and philosophy at the tender age of 16.
Around the same time, west of New York, in Chicago, Phillip Glass was also finding his own musical center. He started college even younger than Reich, at the age of 15 when he entered the University of Chicago. Also like Reich, Glass studied philosophy, as well as math. And, again like Reich, he hung out at night in Chicago jazz clubs, listening to bebop giants like John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk.
First by listening to jazz, and then starting in the late 1950’s to rock, Reich, Glass and Adams were all convinced that regular pulsation was music’s heartbeat, repetition its lifeblood, and harmonic consonance its food and drink. All three of these composers had opportunity to hear atonal/ serialist music like we heard in the last episode. None of them liked it. I guess that makes all of us, now. In fact, in an interview with the composer Robert Ashley in 1976, Glass said that the European avant-garde scene was (quote) ‘dominated by these maniacs, these complete creeps, you know – who were trying to make everyone write this crazy, creepy music.’ Thinking back to the examples we heard in the last episode, I’d have to agree.
By some crazy twist of fate, Reich and Glass both showed up at the doors of Juliard music school at the same time and studied music together for a period. Ultimately, in 1961, Reich headed to California to continue his studies with Luciano Berio, an avant-garde composer. Berio sensed dissatisfaction in Reich and told him ‘if you want to write tonal music, why don’t you?’ Reich was interested in beat and tonality and decided to pursue it within the heritage of African music. It proved to be a watershed moment for him. African music was the inspiration for some of Reich’s early breakthroughs such as minimalist compositions Drumming (1971) and Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973).
Music with Changing Parts (1971)
While Reich was studying African music, Glass had gone East and was studying in Paris with thee greatest expert in musical theory and counterpoint, Nadia Boulanger. She challenged Glass and he drank it in.
Glass drew musical inspiration from a totally eclectic range of sources, including a visit to the Indian town of Kalimpong, located in the foothills of the Himalayas, a visit with the Wixárika Indians in the mountains of central Mexico, and the four spiritual paths of yoga, Buddhism, tai chi and the Toltec tradition.
In addition, Glass worked with the great Indian sitar player and composer Ravi Shankar – and this experience was a turning point in his musical development. Exposure to non-Western music changed all the rules for him. Out of this set of experiences, Glass was inspired to develop a new music, based on combining small rhythmic cells and cyclical patterns. Examples of this include , as heard later in compositions written specifically for the composer’s own ensemble of electric keyboards, saxophones, flutes and voices, such as the colourful, dynamic and the epic, mesmerising Music in Twelve Parts (1971–74).
Reich – Music for 18 Musicians
As we’ve seen, the founders of minimalist music absorbed a wide range of sonic influences – African rhythms, Indian ragas, bebop, rock and roll, and they continue to do so today. For instance, Steve Reich is a confirmed Radiohead fan. Phillip Glass is Bach-like in his output and the range of compositions he has produced. In total, he’s composed over 30,000 pages of written music, including 27 operas, 11 symphonies, 8 string quartets, 20 piano études and 50-odd film scores. In his 80’s now, he’s not showing any signs of slowing down.
It naturally follows that minimalist music has leveled the walls between high and low art that you see in so many other aspects of classical music culture. It abounds in film scores, pop albums, jazz riffs, and other forms of more experimental music.
Besides the fact that the most important composers of the genre - Glass, Reich and Adams are American, I think these other aspects, the melting pot nature of the music and the class-leveling aspect, make minimalism a very American form of music.
Next, let’s turn our attention to John Adams. Adams studied serious music composition at Harvard, but at night he was deep into the heavy rock music of the late 1960’s, like The Doors and Cream. Just as both Glass and Reich had found themselves at musical inflection points, torn between their love for the beat and tonality, and also in love with classical composition, Adams pursued his interests by heading to San Francisco where he started finding his own, authentic musical voice.
American Standard
His early works blended collage, quotation and experimentation. An example is what we’re listening to now, a piece called American Standard (1973).
Besides the earlier minimal works by Glass, and Reich, Adams has said that he also draws from impressionist composers, such as Debussy and Ravel, but while he’s inspired by these French composers, his own works have a very clearly American sound to them. It’s not the historic, western frontier, America sound that we hear in composers like Copland though, instead, Adams mainly reflects a late 20th/ early 21st century type of America – it’s “right here, and right now”. You can hear that in his operas, such as Nixon in China. His On the Transmigration of Souls was one of the earliest reponses to the 9/11 tragedy from a major composer. Dark, haunting, tragic – just like the event itself – “Transmigration” opens with the word ‘missing’, and a roll call of all who died in the event is woven throughout the 25 minute opus.
Many of Adams’ other compositions are also rooted in America’s news or America’s people, history, politics and landscape. An early piece, Shaker Loops, is a musical regret over the loss of America’s strong religious communities that once were the core of our culture. Specifically, in this piece, Adams focuses on the nineteenth century Quaker village of Canterbury, New Hampshire, which is near where he grew up.
Alike in many other ways, Glass, Reich and Adams also have a common perspective on the American psyche. Maybe it’s because they each grew up in a period where America’s culture was experiencing so much change; it’s still continuing, I’d say, and I’m not sure it’s for the better. Glass has a special talent for revealing the doubt in our collective psyche – underneath all the Rambo-esque posturing, he shows us to be uncertain, and fragile.
In his autobiography, Adams also brings up the same issue. He says, ‘America loves its heroes [and] thrills at their triumphs … [but] we love even more to bear witness to their weaknesses, to see them fall from their pedestals, suffer humiliation, even degradation. In this way their eventual rehabilitations can be all the more bittersweet and inspirational for us. If they die before they are forgiven, we raise them up posthumously. It is part of the psychic drama, the dark, nether side of fame.’ There was a time when American heroes were forged in action, taming the wild west, astounding acts of bravery in war, and so on. It took time for their heroism to circulate into our collective imagination. Today, our heroes rise and fall on the internet, and cable network news that is everywhere, all the time. In fact, to me, it seems like the media set these heroes up, only to pull them down when it suits their purposes.
Instead of having real events where real heroes rise to astounding occasions, we have ‘pseudo events’ and our heroes are only paper-thin. I mean, are the Kardashians and their ilk really heroes?
John Adams’ compositions evolved beyond minimalism though. His later works have progressed to include influences from Romanticism (think Brahms and Mahler) and neo-classical composers like Stravinsky. So, with Adams, you get huge sound palettes and huge orchestration. An excellent example of this is his fanfare, “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” from 1986. It’s like minalism, because it has its undulating pulses, but it also references earlier styles since it has four clearly defined sections.
Minimalism reflects the uncertainty a lot of us are feeling about the future; the feeling of the age. It’s one thing that it does share with atonality, which, we saw, was a reaction to and a reflection of the horrors and anxiety of modern times.
Like atonality, minimalism has also received a lot of rough criticism. One critic, Robert Fink, is past chair of the UCLA Musicology department, and now Chairs the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music's Minor in the Music Industry. About a recent piece, Fink wrote, “perhaps it can be understood as a kind of social pathology, as an aural sign that American audiences are primitive and uneducated (Pierre Boulez); that kids nowadays just want to get stoned (Donal Henahan and Harold Schonberg in the New York Times); that traditional Western cultural values have eroded in the liberal wake of the 1960s (Samuel Lipman); that minimalist repetition is dangerously seductive propaganda, akin to Hitler’s speeches and advertising (Elliott Carter); even that the commodity-fetishism of modern capitalism has fatally trapped the autonomous self in minimalist narcissism.”
In defense of his own music, and the work composed by his peers, Reich has said that minimalism reflects the popular culture of postwar American consumer society. More, the "elite European-style serial music" did not reflect how people were living in America. He looks back on the 1950’s and 60’s and remembers big cars with tailfins, Chuck Berry and millions of burgers sold. Pretending that we were, also, picking up the pieces of WW II would have been a musical lie.
The minimalists influenced a number of very important jazz musicians
during the 1950’s and 1960’s. First on the list is Miles Davis. On his album, Kind of Blue, he pioneered the use of modality in jazz. This gave jazz musicians a much more liquid medium to play in and they were able to invent more interesting melodies and rhythms because of it. Modes have been used in Western music for hundreds of years; church music is filled with them. But the modes that Miles was playing with were very different than the ones Bach used. They’re more based on Indian and Spanish modes. You can totally hear this on Sketches of Spain, check out this track from that album called Solea.
John Coltrane’s version of My Favorite Things also uses modality. First released in 1961, the track remains one of the classic jazz recordings of all time. You can learn more about John Coltrane from an earlier episode on jazz in the American Song podcast series.
Jazz’s interest in minimalist music has continued right up to more modern times. Check out this piece, from 2005, composed by guitarist Pat Matheny, and jazz pianist, Lyle Mays – both Americans again – called The Way Up. Steve Reich’s minimalist approach is all over this music. For instance, the way Matheny and Mays uses pulsing repetitive notes to structure the piece and also the use of the Reich’s phase shifting technique. It’s also pretty obvious that these jazz geniuses were drawing from the harmonic techniques Reich used on his Electric Counterpoint, Six Pianos, and Music for Eighteen Musicians.
Rock and alternative rock have also drawn inspiration from the minimalists.
In Dark Trees (Brian Eno)
Unlike serialism, we do see the influence of minimalism in many places in popular music.It’s in Brian Eno’s solo albums, including Another Green World, Discreet Music, and Ambient Music for Airports. You’ll probably recognize Eno from his work with Roxy Music and other places. Eno has released a series of music loosely grouped as ‘ambient music’ and minimalism is hugely felt there.
You can hear minimalism in Bowie’s 70’s, Low and Hero’s albums, especially on the tracks, Subterraneans, Weeping Wall and Warszawa. Towards the end of his career, Bowie returned to minimalism in 2013’s The Next Day album, and the James Murphy remix of the song, Love is Lost.
Peter Gabriel fans may recognize the minimalist touches on his album, Security, especially on the eerie track, San Jacinto. The Who were early to introduce the synthesizer and used it on their track Baba O’Riley; that arpeggiated keyboard that runs through the song has Phillip Glass’ technique all over it, I think. Prog rock/ concept album genius, and the youngest engineer in the studio during the Beatles recording of Abbey Road, Alan Parsons echoes minimalist music on his album, I Robot. The seminal, Krautrock band, Kraftwerk walked in the shoes of minimalist giants, and you’ll hear it on their album, Computer World. Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay literally got down with Tangerine Dream’s minimalist spattered track, Love on a Real Train, in the movie Risky Business.
The list of more or less popular music that’s been influenced by minimalist music wouldn’t be complete without discussing the band, Radiohead. Art rock musicians to the core, Radiohead have given a new take on 21st century classical music, integrating it into their dissonant soundscapes, harmonies, motifs, and orchestrated arrangements. One great example is their song “Burn the Witch”.
Most of the time, Radiohead is a guitar-based band. Until this 2016 track, they’d never used a classical string instrument. But on ‘‘Burn The Witch,’’ they suddenly turn their sound on its head, and the track is dominated by strings! Enter the minimalist element now; using a ‘col legno’ bowing style – actually bashing the strings with the back of the bow, the strings drone on a three-chord structure, F#, E, B.
In the verse, there is a constant repeat of three diatonic chords: F# Major, E Major, and B. The simplicity of the chord progression is also unique to Radiohead’s canon. They’re widely known for varying, complex chord progressions. Using col legno produces a sound recognizable as strings, but it’s icky, and disturbing. The sound is menacing, yet playful.
Our discussion about the art music that was developed after WWII will continue with episode sixteen, which you can actually listen to whenever you’re ready. Just go to your favorite podcast carrier. And like always, if you’re curious to dig deeper, my entire list of references and sources can be found at this podcast’s Facebook page, American Song Podcast. Hope you’ve enjoyed this exploration of minimalist music!