Saturday, November 16, 2019

The Minimalist Zone

A table of links to my blogposts on Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, and composers influenced by them. For an updated list, see my page The Minimalist Zone

The composers once called "minimalist," different as they were, shared certain traits. They embraced tonality and repetition at a time when serious composers disdained both; and they all rejected the label "minimalist." As a marketing tool, the label did its job for me in the 1980s. I was sold on the idea of composers who made a lot from a little.


[Photo: AKHNATEN, staged at the Metropolitan Opera, to be broadcast to theatres Live in HD this month.]

Preparing this list, I took an hour or so to listen again to Steve Reich's Variations for orchestra. The colors are bright and warm, the texture transparent. While much of the ensemble percolates with rapid little motifs, sustained chords in the brass loom and fall like stately arches over the action. When we focus closely, we hear each new motif emerge from the background patterns and recede.

Other Reich pieces, even those for small ensembles like Six Pianos, still share most of these traits. Sure, in one way, the music is static, certainly not telling a story or making an argument as Beethoven would do. But, it's a living organic active entity, performed with virtuosic concentration and precision by musicians in close concert, music that we can either let wash over us, or we can concentrate on the way minute shifts in the pattern readjust the whole texture. So focused, relentless, energetic, and connected, Reich's music can be, for player and listener alike, a musical representation of what athletes and creative artists call being "in the zone." (See my review of a live performance of Drumming.)

The other minimalists' compositions put us in the zone, though they have their own signature sounds.

On a purely personal note, I feel grateful to these composers for opening a new chapter in my life. Hearing music by Glass, Reich, and Adams was like watching a painter paint: the joy was in perceiving the process, and composition suddenly became something accessible that I could learn by doing. At age 26, I'd found through the minimalists a new avocation.

Here, then, are my appreciations of the minimalists, a list that I expect to update on my new page, The Minimalist Zone.







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