A Technically Definable Stream ofPostminimalism, Its Characteristics andIts Meaning.

Sign in

�

Enter keywords, authors , DOI etc

Search History

Metrics

Views

1.1k+

In This Chapter

A Technically Definable Stream ofPostminimalism, Its Characteristics andIts Meaning

IntroductionOriginsProcessesQuotationLimitation of MaterialsConclusion

A TechnicallyDefinable Stream ofPostminimalism, ItsCharacteristics andIts Meaning

Authored by: Kyle Gann

The AshgateResearchCompanion toMinimalist andPostminimalistMusic

Print publication date: November 2013 Online publication date: March 2016

Print ISBN: 9781409435495 eBook ISBN:9781315613260 Adobe ISBN:9781317042556

10.4324/9781315613260.ch2

Download Chapter

Abstract

As scholars, we strive to efface ourselvesin favour of the phenomena we study; asmusic historians, we shape history, butonly after we let the data we take in shapeus. 1 1

Add to shortlist Cite

Recommend to a f riend

The author wishes to thank the USA’sNational Endowment for the Humanities fortheir support towards the researchcontained in this chapter.

Working as a music critic in the 1980s and1990s, I became aware of a new repertoireof music whose stylistic commonalitieswere too striking to ignore. The music,mostly American in the concerts I heard,was overwhelmingly diatonic in its scalesand harmonies. A grid of steady beats wasalmost always maintained – oftenthroughout an entire work or movement –and without change of tempo. Dynamicstended to be monochrome or terraced,with little of the expressive fluidity oneassociates with music of the late Romanticor modernist eras. In its circumscribedmaterials and emotional staticness (whichis not to say that it was unemotive, butrather that it tended to maintain one affectthroughout), the music was analogous tocertain genres of Baroque music,particularly German and Italian instrumentalmusic of the late Baroque, though using aharmonic syntax that was in no wayconventional. One of the most intriguingaspects of this repertoire was that itranged in typology from highly structuredto completely intuitive, with every nuancepossible in between these two polarities.

A Technically Definable Stream of

Postminimalism, Its Characteristicsand Its MeaningIntroductionAs scholars, we strive to efface ourselvesin favour of the phenomena we study; asmusic historians, we shape history, butonly after we let the data we take in shapeus.

The author wishes to thank the USA’sNational Endowment for the Humanities fortheir support towards the researchcontained in this chapter.

Working as a music critic in the 1980s and1990s, I became aware of a new repertoireof music whose stylistic commonalitieswere too striking to ignore. The music,mostly American in the concerts I heard,was overwhelmingly diatonic in its scalesand harmonies. A grid of steady beats wasalmost always maintained – oftenthroughout an entire work or movement –and without change of tempo. Dynamicstended to be monochrome or terraced,with little of the expressive fluidity oneassociates with music of the late Romanticor modernist eras. In its circumscribedmaterials and emotional staticness (whichis not to say that it was unemotive, butrather that it tended to maintain one affectthroughout), the music was analogous tocertain genres of Baroque music,particularly German and Italian instrumentalmusic of the late Baroque, though using aharmonic syntax that was in no wayconventional. One of the most intriguingaspects of this repertoire was that itranged in typology from highly structuredto completely intuitive, with every nuancepossible in between these two polarities.

1

From the beginning, it seemed clear thatthis music was, on the most obvious level,a collective response to the somewhatearlier style known as minimalism. Thedifferences, however, were decisive. Manyof the major minimalist works of the 1960sand 1970s seemed to embody a newperformance paradigm. Minimalist workswere often evening-length and suited to alistening mode more ambient and lessformal than that of the standard classical-music concert; audience members might liedown or sit on the floor and could comeand go as they pleased. Instrumentationfor these works was often open and variedfrom one performance to another.Composers sometimes formed their ownensembles, dedicated to performing theirmusic alone. Works were sometimes notset at a composed length, but couldstretch on longer depending on theperformance circumstances.

The subsequent repertoire that imposeditself represented a return to theconventional classical-music concertparadigm. It was almost always written instandard notation, though with a minimumof expressive markings. The duration ofworks returned to more conventionalconcert-music lengths of, say, 5 to 25minutes. Most of the music was forchamber ensembles or solo instrument,occasionally involving electronicinstruments such as guitar or synthesizer,but rarely with much emphasis onelectronic timbres. However, certainaspects of minimalist music, in particularthe phase-shifting and additive processesfound in Steve Reich’s and Philip Glass’searly compositions, were often taken over

Use of cookies on thiswebsite

We use cookies , see our privacy and

cookies policy for more information.

If you are okay with cookies click

below or continue to browse.

Accept

as structural devices. In minimalist music,these devices were generally meant to beobvious to the listener; it is one of theprimary changes wrought by this newrepertoire that it used them in a moreunderlying, even occult manner.Minimalism, moreover, was not the onlymusical influence. Beneath a patina ofstylistic homogeneity, this music madereference to a panoply of genres: Balinesegamelan, folk, pop, jazz, eighteenth-century chamber music, Renaissancemusic, and even national anthems andspecific tunes and compositions. It was aremarkably eclectic body of music –ironically so – beneath its seamlessly evensurface.

The number of works encountered atconcerts and on recordings in the 1980sand 1990s that conformed to these criteriawas too copious to ignore. Ubiquitoussimilarities made comparisons inescapable.It was as though an entire generation bornin the 1940s and 1950s (thus a littleyounger than the original minimalists) waswriting chamber works that wereconventionally classical in format but withharmonies, processes and texturesinspired by the more unconventionalminimalist works that had emerged fromthe Manhattan and San Francisco avant-gardes. No survey of eighteenth-centurysymphonies could have revealed morestriking overlaps and consistencies of styleand method.

A word was needed to encompass thisnew musical language in which so manycomposers were working. The word‘postminimalism’ was floating around,especially among musicians in

conversation. The critic John Rockwellstarted using the term ‘postminimalists’about music in the New York T imes at leastby 1981,

John Rockwell, ‘News of Music; 1982Festival to Honor Cage’, The New YorkT imes, 1 October 1981: p. 24.

and in 1982 he could start off a review bymentioning that ‘[o]ne hears a good dealabout post-Minimalism these days’. John Rockwell, ‘Avant Garde: Johnson’, TheNew York T imes, 13 June 1982: p. 69.

In 1983, he referred to John Adams as a‘Post-Minimalist’, describing his idiom as ‘asteady rhythmic pulse and a shimmeringadumbration of that pulse by the otherinstruments and voices’. John Rockwell, ‘Concert: New Music ofCalifornia’, The New York T imes, 6 June1983: p. 13.

Just prior to that article, and in the samenewspaper, Jon Pareles – reviewingcomposers James Irsay, Amy Reich andsome other lesser-known names –attempted a capsule definition ofpostminimalism as ‘using repetition fortexture rather than structure, andembracing sounds from jazz and theclassics’. Jon Pareles, ‘Music: Six at La Mama’, TheNew York T imes, 6 March 1983: p. 64.

There is, indeed, a strong continuitybetween the latter definitions in particularand the usage proposed here.

My own earliest use of the termpostminimalism, at least in the VillageVoice, was five years later on 26 March1988, in an article that mentioned the

2

3

4

5

6

composer Daniel Goode as an example.

Kyle Gann, ‘A Tale of Two Sohos’, VillageVoice, 33/4, 26 January 1988: p. 76.

I made my first attempt at a full definition ofthe style on 30 April 1991, in a review ofthe Relâche ensemble (perhaps the mostimportant commissioning ensemble for thisstyle of music) performing Mary EllenChilds (b. 1957), Janice Giteck (b. 1946) andLois Vierk (b. 1951). Kyle Gann, ‘Enough of Nothing’, VillageVoice, 36/18, 30 April 1991: p. 82.

A week later, the critic Joshua Kosmanapplied the term to Paul Dresher’s music inthe San Francisco Chronicle’ Joshua Kosman, ‘“Pioneer” Boldly Goes intoSatire’, San Francisco Chronicle, 7 May1991: E3.

later using it to describe the Englishcomposer Steve Martland (b. 1959) Joshua Kosman, ‘Steve Martland – Headyand Eclectic’, San Francisco Chronicle, 16October 1994: p. 42.

and David Lang (b. 1957). Joshua Kosman, ‘“Modern Painters” a BoldStroke’, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 August1995: p. C1; and ‘Kronos Picks Up a TheaterCredit’, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January1996: p. 31.

Then, in his 1996 book Minimalists, K.Robert Schwarz mentions that the term‘post-minimalism’ had ‘been invented’(presumably by Rockwell, though he givesno citation) to describe the Neo-Romanticpostmodernism of John Adams’s music. K. Robert Schwarz, Minimalists (London,1996), p. 170.

At the end of that year, Keith Potter used

6

7

8

9

10

11

the term postminimalism in TheIndependent newspaper in a review of theIcebreaker ensemble performing music byLang and Michael Gordon (b. 1956). Keith Potter, ‘Classical Music: Icebreaker;Queen Elizabeth Hall, SBC, London’, TheIndependent, 4 December 1996: ReviewSection, p. 23.

The exact typesetting of the term hasbeen applied in each case in order to bringout the curious coincidence that those(especially Rockwell) who used the term inthese early years to describe Adams’smusic, and also the post-1980s music ofReich and Glass, tended to spell it with ahyphen, post-minimalism (and often with acapital first M). Those who applied the termto younger composers who had not beenamong the original minimalists tended touse the non-hyphenated form. It is asthough, on whatever conscious level,those who described the later music ofpreviously minimalist composersseparated the term into post-minimalist,emphasizing the connotation of ‘post’ as‘after’; those who referred to a new styleby younger composers applied to it thesleeker, more unified postminimalist. Fromthis tendency I will take licence, then, forthe purposes of this chapter, to use un-hyphenated postminimalism to denote onlythe repertoire of music whose stylecharacteristics I have described. Perhapsultimately some further restricting term willbe necessary: for instance, ‘gridpostminimalism’, referring to the music’stendency to place every note on asemiquaver or quaver grid and to eschewexpressive or expansive rhetorical modelsof any kind in favour of stepped contrasts

12

(if any). No new musical term is everintroduced without controversy, and thereare always those who protest that themapping of a word to a variety of musicalpractices is never literal enough. Thiscannot be helped. I may lack a preciseterm, but I can define the body of music Iventure to write about here with theutmost specificity.

I may have to beg the reader’s indulgencefor my circumscribed definition; but therepertoire I describe was a widespreadand clearly recognizable idiom of the 1980sand 1990s, and it can be established byevidence too voluminous to contradict.

Orig insThe catalogue of similarities that follows isnot designed to give the impression thatpostminimalist music was in any wayconformist or derivative. Its paradigmaticconventions (due perhaps to whateverpersonal proclivities on the part of itscreators, ranging from a desire to sit inchairs to a lack of interest inhallucinogenics) remained those of theconcert hall. Within these conventions,however, a new musical languageappeared in full bloom almost overnight.The valorization of idiosyncrasy hasbecome so prevalent in the arts that oneforgets how much advantage can accruefrom large numbers of people speakingthe same language. Differences betweenworks that shared this language could besubtle and distinctive. Composers workingon the same problems could learn fromeach other and push the language’sevolution to a new level. Listeners werefreed from having to confront a new set ofexpectations from concert to concert or

record to record. Continuous innovationcan be excitingly mind-opening, butdevelopment of a common language alsopromotes depth in terms of the public’sdiscourse with it.

Not that any of the above happened byconscious intention. The first works thatused minimalist harmony and processes inan abbreviated and fully notated formatappeared in the late 1970s fromcomposers who were unaware of eachother’s work. One could count, amongthose works, William Duckworth’s T imeCurve Preludes (1978–79) and SouthernHarmony (1980–81), Ingram Marshall’s FogTropes (1979–82) and Gradual Requiem(1979–81), Janice Giteck’s Breathing Songsfrom a Turning Sky (1980), JonathanKramer’s Moments In and Out of T ime(1981–83), Daniel Lentz’s Wild Turkey andThe Dream King (both 1983) and PeterGena’s McKinley (1983).

In addition to these composers, othershave written notated music withinpostminimalism’s diatonic harmonies andgrid-like tempo constructs, including (inalphabetical order) Thomas Albert, BethAnderson, Eve Beglarian, Dan Becker,David Borden, T im Brady, Neely Bruce,Gavin Bryars, Giancarlo Cardini, Mary EllenChilds, Lawrence Crane, Paul Dresher, PaulEpstein, Graham Fitkin, Kyle Gann, PeterGarland, Daniel Goode, Judd Greenstein,Jean Hasse, Melissa Hui, Dennis Kam, GuyKlucevsek, Joseph Koykkar, Jeremy PeytonJones, David Lang, Paul Lansky, ElodieLauten, Mary Jane Leach, Bunita Marcus,Steve Martland, Sasha Matson, JohnMcGuire, Beata Moon, Maggi Payne,Belinda Reynolds, Stephen Scott, James

Sellars, Howard Skempton, BernadetteSpeach, Kevin Volans, Renske Vrolijk, PhilWinsor, Wes York and many others. Whensuch a large body of music can becharacterized both in technical andcontextual terms, to refrain from applying acommon terminology would seem like aperversely ideological nominalism. This isclearly a larger repertoire of music thancan be even cursorily digested in anintroductory chapter such as this one; I willtherefore select examples based primarilyon relevance to certain generic technicalfeatures, as well as on the availability ofscores and recordings.

One might add parenthetically that there isanother repertoire of music, consisting ofthe 1940s output of John Cage and thelater output of Lou Harrison, AlanHovhaness and others, so similar to 1980spostminimalism that I have sometimesjocularly referred to it as ‘proto-postminimalist’. Examples would certainlyinclude Cage’s In a Landscape, Dream (both1948) and Three Dances for two preparedpianos (1945), as well as Harrison’sSerenade for voices, harp and gamelan, LaKoro Sutro (1972) and quite a few others.Since composers whose styles wereformed prior to the advent of minimalismwrote this music, it would be misleading toattempt to include it within thepostminimalist rubric. Moreover, thoseworks themselves were clearly amongseveral such examples of influences onthe postminimalist movement.

As the term is used here, a compositioncan be understood as being only partlypostminimalist, and there are phases inwhich one can identify a transitory state

from minimalism to postminimalism orbetween postminimalism and somethingelse. The former is especially clear inworks that retain some of the strictprocesses associated with minimalism:most notably, phase-shifting and additive(or subtractive) process. (As we havealready noted, Jon Pareles usedpostminimalism in 1983 to connote ‘usingrepetition for texture rather thanstructure’; likewise, we could also say thatit uses phase-shifting and additive phrase-lengthening for structure rather than asaudible process.) In addition to SteveReich’s Come Out (1966) and Piano Phase(1967), the phase-shifting tendency canalso be traced to Henry Cowell’s book NewMusical Resources (1930), in which Cowellsuggested basing works on a ‘harmony oflinks’, by which he denoted differentrhythmic cycles running concurrently andgoing out of phase with each other.

Henry Cowell, New Musical Resources(Cambridge, 1996 [first edition: New York,1930]), p. 77.

ProcessesAs a seminal example, T ime CurvePreludes (1978–79), by William Duckworth(1943–2012), exhibit, in their 24movements, a stunning variety ofpostminimalist techniques, some moretransitional than others. Prelude XI, forinstance, is one of the examples closest toits minimalist roots. It consists of 15successive melodies, with occasionalrhythmic augmentations and pauses. Therelation between the melodies is probablymore obscure than could be analysed byear, but it is noticeable on some level thatall the melodies use the same pitches, and

13

use them each the same number of times;the not-completely-diatonic pitch set aidsthis perception, since within the general E-minor mode there are two G�s per melodythat change their position within eachiteration.

Analysis reveals that the melodies resultfrom one 16-note melody (itself based onthe shape of the ‘Dies Irae’, one of thework’s recurring references) going out ofphase with itself. (Example 2.1 providesthe unchanging melody with downwardstems and the moving melody with upwardstems.) It should be observed that theprocess is not carried out with completestrictness and this is a telling departurefrom minimalism, ultimately with majorconsequences. Within each pair of notes,sometimes the moving melody noteappears first, sometimes the unmovingmelody’s note, and such decisions weremade intuitively with melodic and pianisticcriteria in mind. Yet the work is a clearexpansion of the idea of Steve Reich’sPiano Phase, with different and lessobvious effect.

Example 2.1 Actual and UnderlyingPatterns in William Duckworth’s Prelude XIfrom the T ime Curve Preludes, Book 1

Piano Phase also had a major impact onanother composer, Paul Epstein (b. 1938),whose ‘Pattern Structure and Process inSteve Reich’s Piano Phase’, analysingReich’s opus in great detail, was publishedin 1986.

Paul Epstein, ‘Pattern Structure andProcess in Steve Reich’s Piano Phase’, TheMusical Quarterly, 72/4 (1986): pp. 494–502.

Epstein subsequently based much of hisown composing techniques on the insightsgained from this study. The first

14

movement of his much later piano work,Interleavings (2002), is similar toDuckworth’s Prelude XI in principle. Themovement is titled ‘15×16’, and again it isan inscrutable melody that keeps comingback to all the same notes and similarrhythmic patterns, over and over againwith some apparent underlying logic thatappears almost impossible to decode byear. Again, analysis reveals that the overallmelody results from two other melodies,one 15 quavers long and the other 16,offset by one semiquaver (see Example2.2). Whereas Duckworth’s Prelude XIphases a melody against itself, Epsteinuses two different melodies for a morecomplex process.

Example 2.2 Paul Epstein’s ‘15×16’ fromInterleavings (bars 1–4)

This idea is greatly expanded in otherEpstein works. His Palindrome Variations,for flute, cello and piano (1995) is based

entirely on phase relations in one 12-note,palindromic melodic figure using only five

pitches. Within the 64

metre, this figure is

rotated to every possible position (Epsteincalls the version that begins on the thirdquaver Rotation 3, that which starts on theseventh quaver R7 and so on), and at anygiven moment certain pitches are ‘filtered’out on a given instrument. It becomesaudibly clear that the five pitches of thatmelodic figure are the only ones in thework, and some underlying logical orderingseems apparent. The attraction ofEpstein’s music, in particular, is that itmakes one think that if one could listenhard enough, one might figure out whatthe process is, so it irresistibly encouragesvery close listening. The range of texturesand subsidiary figures achieved with thatone 12-note figure as source material over20 minutes is quite dazzling.

In fact, the chamber version of PalindromeVariations is greatly reduced from a 22-minute version for synthesizer based onthe same principle.

One might refer to Epstein as ‘the MiltonBabbitt of postminimalism’ due to thefanatical rigour of his structures.

From the works of Philip Glass,postminimalism also inherited a tendencytoward additive as well as subtractiveprocesses. Duckworth’s T ime CurvePrelude IX uses as its basis a pitch rowtaken from the bass line of Erik Satie’sVexations. The row appears first in minims,then in double-dotted crotchets, thendotted crotchets, then crotchets tied to asemiquaver and so on, speeding upgeometrically with each repetition until it

15

seems to disappear in a spirallingacceleration. Likewise, Music for Piano No.5, by Jonathan Kramer (1942–2004),employs both additive process (more inthe manner of Reich, keeping the metricunit constant) and subtractive process.

The composition opens in 1116

metre, with

only one note per bar, repeating over andover. A second note is added within thebar, then a third, and so on until a steadyeleven-note pattern is built up. Then,underneath a freer right-hand melody,Kramer begins subtracting notes from the

ostinato, also shortening the metre to 1016

,

916

, 816

and so on.

Dan Becker’s Gridlock for mixed ensemble(1994) is virtually a manifesto forpostminimalist formalism. Born in 1960,Becker mentions in the programme note tothe work that he attempted to make avirtue of the ‘male’ tendency (though wewill find that female composers do it too) tomap out everything onto a grid. The entirecomposition is drawn from a 20-notesequence (given in Example 2.3a) thatroughly traces the circle of fifths (Example2.3b reproduces bars 59–63 of the fullscore). Then, in semiquavers, he creates alonger series by taking groups of notes inan additive pattern based on the Fibonacciseries: 1; 1, 2; 1, 2, 3; 1, 2, 3, 5; 1, 2, 3, 5, 8;1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13; 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 – andthen starting over similarly on the secondnote, later on the third and so on. Theharmony, then, tends to cluster for a whilearound one area in the circle of fifthsbefore systematically progressing to

another, and the accompanying lines picknotes out from the sequence, withaccented rhythms resulting from wherecertain pitches fall in the semiquavercontinuum.

Example 2.3a Pattern Structure in DanBecker’s Gridlock

Example 2.3b Becker’s Gridlock (bars 59–63)

My own works frequently use phase-shifting as an underlying principle. DesertSong for orchestra (2011, based on a 2006piano composition) is grounded on anostinato 83 beats long, interrupted by anorchestral tutti every 149 beats; certainforegrounded melodic elements recur atequally regular intervals. I had beeninterested in this type of structure eversince my Satie for soprano and mixedensemble (1975), in which lines go out ofphase with each other within a C-majorscale, with the additional structuralprinciple (known to British bell-ringers as a‘change-ringing’ pattern) that pitch dyads

within each phrase are switched in thenext phrase: ABCDEFG, BADCFEG, BDAFCGEand so on. (I later learned that thecomposers Jon Gibson and Barbara Benarywere also using similar patterns.)

While the minimalist roots of such strict-process composition are quite evident,much, perhaps most, postminimalist musicis not so highly structured. It is one of thefeatures of the style that strict process andfree composition can coexist in the samecomposer’s output, and indeed within thesame work. Duckworth’s T ime CurvePreludes provide, once more, a tellingexample. In Prelude VII, we find a trace ofadditive process, but harnessed to a freeroverall structure. This languorous dance ismade up of only three elements: a slowlyarpeggiated bass line whose final dyadsometimes gets extended (A); a melodythat here-and-there breaks the continuity(B); and a set of six chords that create animpression of bitonality by wanderingconjunctly through scales from variouskeys, though the lower two lines are notactually diatonic (C) (see Example 2.4).There is some inheritance from Glass’sadditive minimalism here in the systematicway in which the phrase lengths expand atfirst according to lengths proportional tothe Fibonacci series, but even thisstructural element recedes as the ‘B’melody intrudes more and more.

Example 2.4 The Three Elements inDuckworth’s Prelude VII from the T imeCurve Preludes, Book 1

Mountain Echoes (1987), by Mary JaneLeach (b. 1949), is based on a strictevolving process. The music, written foreight female singers staged in two squareconfigurations, opens with a single pitchechoing from singer to singer – fromsinger 1 to singer 8 and back again. Otherpitches are introduced, and gradually newechoes start up on new beats until, withineach two-bar phrase, three pitch-echoesstart with singer 1 and three more fromsinger 8 (see Example 2.5). Other pitches,increasingly echoed, fill in the gapsbetween the main echo lines as they crossthe texture. At maximum density in thisprocess, all the pitches are echoed at acrotchet’s delay. Gradually, Leach beginsomitting pitches until two different lines ofechoes are moving in a ‘double braid’, fromsinger 1 to 3 to 5 to 7, and from singer 8 to6 to 4 to 2. Step by step the melodic linesexpand in length, and so do the echodistances, from four beats to five to six toeight.

Example 2.5 Mary Jane Leach’s MountainEchoes, illustrating the linearconfigurations between singers 1–8 (bars51–53)

The entire pitch content remains on aseven-pitch, non-diatonic scale within oneoctave: F, G�, A�, A, B�, C, D�, F. Theprocess, taking 11 minutes, soundsdeceptively strict and at certain momentsrepetitive, and is impossible to disentangleby ear, creating a sense of mystery.

QuotationFor whatever reason, quotation of othermusic and styles is common in this vein ofpostminimalism; the style’s unvaryingtempo and adaptability to any repertoire ofharmonies seem to invite the abstracted,sometimes ironic or playful quotation ofearlier tonal music. Mary Jane Leach’sBruckstück for six female voices (1989)slowly works its way through the opening

harmonies (plus a few melodic motives) ofthe Adagio from Anton Bruckner’s EighthSymphony; assuming the singers performtheir rhythms accurately, one might evenpick that fact up from the pulsing of theopening multi-voice drone on D�. Themusic proceeds in rhythmic ostinatos thatchange every few bars, inflecting thepitches to move from, say, an opening D�-minor triad to a German-sixth chord to theunexpected (in both Bruckner and Leach)key of B major. William Duckworth’s T imeCurve Preludes are partly unified by thequotations that recur in variousmovements, including the ‘Dies Irae’ chantand the bass line of Erik Satie’s Vexations,as well as references to bluegrass banjostyle and the piano style (greatlyabstracted) of Jerry Lee Hooker. Likewise,Sara’s Grace for orchestra (1999) byBelinda Reynolds (b. 1967) is couched in afully-notated and slightly restrainedboogie-woogie style, and is largely basedon the old hymn ‘Amazing Grace’,

reworked into 44

metre from the original 34

. A Maze with Grace (1975) by ThomasAlbert (b. 1948) is another postminimalist(or possibly pre-postminimalist?)composition based on the same hymn.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell for voiceand mixed chamber ensemble (1994), byEve Beglarian (b. 1958), is a setting of textsof William Blake, including one of hisProverbs from Hell: ‘You never know whatis enough unless you know what is morethan enough’. Just before this text entersnear the end, a four-note ostinato beginsin the piano and bass and repeats 150times: E�–F–G–A. These are the first four

notes of J.S. Bach’s chorale ‘Es ist genug’ (Itis enough). The work smoothly segues, inits final bars, into a quotation of the entirechorale. A similarly scored composition byBelgarian, The Bus Driver Never ChangedHis Mind (2002), makes reference to thediminished-seventh chords of GustavMahler’s Second Symphony because thetext includes the words ‘Keep going’, alsoused by Luciano Berio in his Sinfonia, whichis based on the third movement ofMahler’s symphony.

The most quotation-prone postminimalistis Daniel Lentz (b. 1942), whose music iswilder and more wide-ranging than that ofany other composer mentioned here.Scored for female voice and orchestra withmultiple electric keyboards and digitaldelay, his The Crack in the Bell (1986) is anextended setting of e.e. cummings’ poem‘next to of course god America i’. On thelines ‘oh / say can you see by the dawn’searly my / country ‘tis of …’, Lentz quotes,in the voice, the melodies of both thesongs referred to. (Duckworth, in his Musicin the Combat Zone for soprano andchamber ensemble (of the same year),uses the same poem and does the samething.) More unexpectedly, though, wherecummings mentions beauty (‘why talk ofbeauty what could be more beaut- / ifulthan these heroic happy dead’), Lentzworks two passages of pure Renaissancecounterpoint into his bouncy, repeated-note texture (see Example 2.6). Certainparts of the composition apply digital delayto the voice and keyboards, so that therepetition of phrases builds up to a thickerand more layered texture than the notessung and played in the score.

Example 2.6 Daniel Lentz’s The Crack inthe Bell (bars 235–40)

Lentz’s WolfMass (1986–87) is perhaps thebiggest quotation-heavy work in thepostminimalist repertoire; the collage-like

Credo contains extracts from GuillaumeMachaut’s ‘Ma fin est moncommencement’, the ‘Battle Hymn of theRepublic’, ‘Yankee Doodle’, ‘Battle Cry ofFreedom’, ‘Johnny Comes Marching HomeAgain’, ‘Off We Go into the Wild BlueYonder’ and ‘America the Beautiful’, withmany of the lyrics altered or replaced withthe Latin Mass text, all more or lesssmoothed into Lentz’s trademarkrepeated-chord textures.

Limitation of MaterialsMoving further along the continuum fromstrict to intuitive, one may findpostminimalist works devoid of any strictprocess but greatly limited in theirmaterials. The fourth movement of OmShanti (1986) by Janice Giteck (b. 1946),couched in a pelog gamelan scale andaudibly indebted to gamelan music,revolves around a continuous melody insteady quavers that runs through thepiano and clarinet for almost the entireduration of the movement. The melody’slimitation to the pitches E, F, G, B and Ccreates an impression that it must berepeating or systematically permutative insome way, but in fact there is no repetitionat all of any phrase longer than five notes,and no systematic transformation.Likewise, the accompanying stately, slowermelodies on those notes in the voice, fluteand vibraphone come back over and overto the same motives, but without anylogical or rational arrangement, entirelyintuitive.

What such works reveal as the essence ofpostminimalism is its reliance on a small,circumscribed set of materials. The secondmovement of Jornada del Muerto for piano

(1987) by Peter Garland (b. 1952) is anextreme case. The entire movementemploys only five chords in the right hand,with no transpositions or octavedisplacements, plus the pitches B, D and Ein the left hand, usually as octaves and inone section as single notes. No process orcontinuity device informs this music; it isentirely and intuitively melodic inconception, if chordal in execution. Yetdespite its extreme paucity of material, thislovely five-minute movement goesthrough seven sections touching on fourdifferent textures and rhythmic styles,undulating between two tempos. Likewise,the first movement of Garland’s I Have Hadto Learn the Simplest Things Last, for pianoand three percussionists (1993), goesthrough nine varied sections using onlytriads on B�, C, D, F and G as its harmonicmaterial.

This aspect of postminimalism, inparticular, is hardly limited to Americanworks. Cicada for two pianos (1994) by theSouth-African born Kevin Volans (b. 1949)is a tour-de-force in its use of limitedmaterials. The two pianists alternatechords in each hand throughout, eachchord almost always immediately echoed inthe other piano. The entire work takesplace on a scale of B�, C, C�, D, E, F, G, A,with a low F as a bass drone, and B� heardas a tentative tonic. There are subtleexceptions: in bar 53, less than halfwaythrough, an E� is introduced, and B� ismomentarily the lowest note; at fourpoints, in bar 114 (just past the halfwaypoint) and bars 150, 155 and 174, thechords are interrupted by a single line ofnotes in mid-register. Top notes,

perceived as the melody, are restricted toD, E, F, G and A. The composition is notquite in a single tempo throughout as thephrases weave subtly among tempos ofcrotchet = 138, 126, 112, 108, 120, 96 and132, thus resulting in a small repertoire ofrecurring tempos. The single-notesections are considerably slower. Many ofthe phrases, bound on each side by briefpauses of varying lengths, are repeated asmany as 11 times. Dynamics range, byphrase, from ppp to mf, and in a couple ofplaces are differentiated between rightand left hands. There are no landmarks inthe work’s impressive 20-minutecontinuum, no way to form expectationsexcept that the sonority – with itsundulating scalar melody – will continue,ever unpredictable in its details.

The Serbian postminimalist Vladimir Tošić(b. 1949) has written a series of works –Varial for piano (1990), Dual for flute andcontrabass (1992), Voxal for piano andstrings (1995) and Altus for baritonesaxophone and piano (2001) – all basedentirely on what might be called an‘overtone scale’ based on C: C, D, E, F�, G,A, B�, B. All four compositions remainwithin an uninflected semiquaver grid.Voxal, in particular, has the pianist play amoto perpetuo of up-and-down arpeggiosover which the strings move limpidlyamong phrases that add and subtractpitches one at a time: GCD, GDF�, GB�F�,AB�F�, AB�E, ABE, CBE, CB, C, CD and thenrepeating the progression.

For more on Tošić and other Serbianminimalists, see Dragana Stojanović-Novičić’s ‘Musical Minimalism in Serbia:emergence, beginnings and its creative

16

endeavours’ in this volume.

The Italian composer Giancarlo Cardini (b.1940) has written piano compositions thatmove between recurring harmonic orarpeggiation figures, often with a steadilyflowing quaver or semiquaver motion. HisLento Trascolorare dal Verde al Rosso inun Tralcio di Foglie Autunnali [Slow Changefrom Green to Red in a Bough of AutumnLeaves] for piano (1983) is based almostthroughout on undulating alternations ofquavers with a slowly changing harmony,giving way to crotchets and finally minimsat the end (see Example 2.7).

Example 2.7 Giancarlo Cardini’s LentoTrascolorare dal Verde al Rosso in unTralcio di Foglie Autunnali (bars 4–9)

William Duckworth’s music at times seemsto limit the use of materials in orderexplicitly to mimic a strict background

structure. T ime Curve Prelude XV takesplace entirely within a non-diatonic seven-pitch scale: E�, F, F� (or G�), G, A, B�, D. Byswitching back and forth between dronepitches E� and D in the bass (stabilized bytheir fifths, B� and A), a sense of shiftingtonality is created. When the drone is onE�, the melody seems to be based on aLydian scale with major–minor ambiguity;when on D, it seems to be a quasi-Arabicscale with a flat second and major third.Given the Fibonacci structuring of many ofthe preludes and a free tendency towardsubtractive rhythm at the end of thecomposition, one is tempted to assumethat the drone pitches outline somepredetermined structure, but analysisshows that this is not the case. Wheresome of the preludes obscure a strict pre-compositional pattern, this one seems topoint to a pre-compositional pattern that isin fact not there.

One could say something similar about DanBecker’s Fade for flute, piano, vibraphoneand cello (2003). This starts in a diatonicscale with three sharps, moving by stagesto two sharps, one sharp and then, after achromatic transition, to five sharps.Repeated phrases create a sense ofgradual process that turns out to beentirely illusory as the music wends itsslowly changing rhapsodic way. Slowtransformation is its modus operandi, buteach transformation is eventuallyabandoned for a move in anotherdirection.

Like Becker’s Gridlock, the title of JosephKoykkar’s (b. 1951) Expressed in Units forchamber ensemble (1989) implies a senseof composing within a grid. The first and

last of the three movements begin byreiterating melodic/harmonic figures inrhythmically unpredictable arrangements(a Stravinskian as well as postminimaliststrategy). One by one, other figures areintroduced and take turns dominating thecontinuity. The opening figures of the firstmovement use only the pitches D, E, F, F�,G, G� and A, with undulating shiftsbetween F and F� or G and G� particularlyprominent. The first eight pages of thesecond movement flow entirely within thescale D, F, G, A�, B and C, with otherpitches introduced in succeeding figures.The work is a rather wild rhythmic ride,though loud figures are supplanted byquiet ones, which results in a thoughtfuloverall shape.

Beth Anderson (b. 1950) is an interestingcase study, a composer of music so simpleand mellifluous that someone unawarethat she studied with John Cage, TerryRiley and Robert Ashley might not suspectminimalist influences. Her Piano Concertowith strings and percussion (1997) uses asteady dotted-crotchet beat throughout, in

metres ranging up to 218

and 278

. Flowing

melodic figures and rhythmic ostinatosrecur with an almost stream-of-consciousness insouciance, often with longperiods of static harmony; the keysignature is mostly two sharps, but somepassages suggest the Mixolydian mode onA more than D major. One could almostsuppose that the work was an earlytwentieth-century British compositionbased on English folksong sources, a signof how easily postminimalism can simulateearlier, less self-conscious historical styles.

Anderson’s breezy Net Work for piano(1982) is more process-orientated, butplayfully free. The opening spells outchords in a thirds-descending sequenceon A, F, D, B�, G, E�, E and back to A, afterwhich a simple, syncopated theme arrives.The theme then appears in a successionof all of these keys, going through themtwice with variations of metre and rhythm,and then modulating through the samekeys again, phrase by phrase. She also hasa series of compositions called Swales,denoting a kind of meadow in which manydifferent kinds of flowers grow, andmarked again by a stream-of-consciousness technique within verysimple tonalities. Rosemary Swale forstring quartet (1986), for instance, isalmost entirely within the A-minor scale,with a few isolated patches ofchromaticism.

Although his operas are hardlypostminimalist, Robert Ashley (b. 1930)often bases his works on a quasi-minimalist structure and resorts to aclassically postminimalist style in his lateinstrumental works. One such work isOutcome Inevitable, scored for the Relâcheensemble (flute, oboe, saxophone,bassoon, electronic keyboard, percussion,viola and bass) (1991). This is grounded inan insistent repeating middle C in the bass,in constant semiquavers. The structure isset by repeating rhythms tapped out softlyon a bass drum in odd groupings: first a7+10 pattern (counted in semiquavers),then 3+3+3+3+5+3+5 and so on. Becausethe number of semiquavers in eachpattern is odd, the repetitions have tooccur in multiples of four so that the

section will end at the end of a bar. Theserhythms create a seven-part structure,each part of which accompanies a solo by adifferent instrument, as shown in Table2.1. The oboist doubles on cor anglais, theclarinettist on soprano saxophone and theflautist on alto flute.

Table 2.1 The Structure of RobertAshley’s Outcome Inevitable (1991)

Soloist Drum Pattern PatternLength

Section

No. ofRepetitions

Length

Oboe 7+10 = 17 × 28 119

Flute 3+3+3+3+5+3+5 = 25 × 24 150

Clarinet 3+3+4+5+8 = 23 × 28 161

Alto Flute 3+10+2+8 = 23 × 28 161

Cor Anglais 4+4+5+2+2+4 = 21 × 32 168

SopranoSaxophone

9+4+2+3+7 = 25 × 24 150

Bassoon 17+5+3 = 25 × 32 200

The melodic aspect of these solos issimple and elegant in conception. Almostall of the melodies consist of rising scalesinterrupted by occasional leaps (or steps)

downward to keep the line within a fairlynarrow range. Each phrase consists of anumber of semiquavers (from 0 to 6)leading to a sustained note, the sustainednotes’ last durations divisible by a dottedcrotchet, from 1 to 7. The sustained notesare also accompanied by chords in theelectric keyboard, and ‘shadowed’ by anote in the viola that starts in unison in thefirst section and moves a step furtheraway in each section. Lasting 16 minutes,the work is a lovely evocation oftimelessness, drawn from a clear andendlessly elaborated idea, but quiteunpredictable in its details.

Some of my own microtonal compositionsuse a limited repertoire of chords partly tokeep the number of pitches from gettingout of hand. Charing Cross for electronicinstruments (2007), for instance, uses onlysix chords on the 1st, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13thand 17th harmonics of C. A simple, quasi-pop, eight-beat ostinato runs through thework, increasingly altered in rhythm bysubtraction of beats.

In certain postminimalist compositions, wehear the style begin to bleed intosomething else. The first 25 bars ofBelinda Reynolds’s Cover (1996) certainlyseem to be postminimalist. Only six pitchesare used – E, F�, G, A�, B, D� – with E in thepiano as a low drone note, and a certainobsessive reiteration of characteristicfigures, particularly the competing fifths E–B and D�–A�. However, the musiccrescendos to a sudden new chord at bar26 and subsequently every few bars themusic ups the energy by shifting to a newscale. There might be no reason to call thiscurvaceous, quasi-organic composition

postminimalist except that, within each‘moment’ (to use a Stockhausenesqueterm), it tends to build up pitch sets andmelodies additively, starting as anundulation of two notes and adding inothers, almost like a memory ofminimalism. Ultimately, Cover’s form is notpostminimalist – there are no more impliedlimitations on where the music could gothan there are in Mozart (fewer, in fact) –but its technique remains postminimalist.One of the advantages of definingpostminimalism (or any style) in terms ofits central idea is that we can treat the styleitself as an ideal form, and talk aboutdegrees to which a particular workparticipates in that style. Just as the T imeCurve Preludes lies slightly on one side ofpostminimalism, coming from minimalism,Cover evolves from postminimalism,leaving it behind toward something else,but with its origins still much in evidence.

ConclusionSo insistent is this grid-rhythmed, diatonic,flat-dynamic paradigm in minimalist-influenced (but not conventionallyminimalist) music in the quarter-centuryfollowing 1978 that the observer andlistener are tempted into a realist, asopposed to nominalist, position: thatpostminimalism, in this specific definition,was not simply a set of qualities drawnfrom a widespread coincidence ofoccurrences in a diversity of compositionsbut virtually a self-contained paradigminspired by minimalism in many minds,which became instantiated in hundreds ofdifferent works. This is not in the least toimply that those compositions are identicalin meaning or content, any more than any

group of eighteenth-century symphoniesare identical, but that some ideal styleconception seems to have occurred tomany people in the same period of time.

One should also perhaps note a differencebetween what is being described here as‘postminimalism’ and another style, alsowith an inheritance from minimalism, thathas been called ‘totalism’. Totalism is amore rhythmically complex style, and itsharmonies are often more dissonant. Incertain works and with certain composers,postminimalism and totalism can blend intoone another. The music of John LutherAdams (b. 1953), in particular, seems tostraddle the two styles, and I myself havewritten examples of both genres. For me,postminimalism is distinguished by thefeeling of a unified rhythmic grid in aconsistent tempo, whereas totalism ischaracterized by a feeling of differenttempos superimposed in layers.Postminimalism’s diatonic language oftencharacterizes the music of John LutherAdams, but with the tempo layering oftotalism, though (unlike in the totalist musicof Michael Gordon and Art Jarvinen, forinstance) the temporal dissonance is notalways perceptually obvious. In short,there is no real line separatingpostminimalism from totalism (just as thereis no strict divide between minimalism andpostminimalism), though most of thecomposers involved tend toward one styleor the other.

For more on totalism see Kyle Gann,‘Totally Ismic’, Village Voice (20 July 1993),reprinted in Kyle Gann, Music Downtown(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2006), pp.127–9; Gann, ‘Downtown beats for the

17

1990s: Rhys Chatham, Mikel Rouse, MichaelGordon, Larry Polansky, Ben Neill’,Contemporary Music Review, 10/1 (1994):pp. 33–49; Gann, American Music in theTwentieth Century (New York, 1997), pp.352–86; also David D. McIntire,‘Terminology and Meaning in a Post-Minimalist Style: the case of Totalism’,paper presented at the First InternationalConference on Minimalist Music (31August–2 September 2007), BangorUniversity, North Wales; and McIntire,‘Totalist Methods as Expressive Means inMikel Rouse’s Failing Kansas’, paperpresented at the Second InternationalConference on Minimalist Music (2–6September 2009), University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA.

So what, in the restricted definitionprovided above, does (‘grid’)postminimalism mean? More precisely,what does it say about the world? What isimplied in the act of limiting one’s materialsand creating a structure that does not stepoutside its opening parameters? Why didthis particular form of expression come toappeal to such a diverse group ofcomposers in the 1980s and since?

First of all, postminimalism was an explicitacknowledgement that, as Igor Stravinskyput it, ‘All art is artificial’. (In certain areas ofpostminimalism, particularly among Dutchcomposers, the Stravinsky/minimalistinfluences seem inextricably mixed.)Throughout the Romantic and modernisteras in the history of music, the sonicmeans employed expanded in diversityand scope; and early minimalism, with itsdrones and tape loops, continued, in asense, that expansion, if along a narrow

plane. The phenomena to whichminimalism asked us to attend, such asslow phase-shifting, expanding form andunintended resultant acoustic effects,were genuinely new to composed music.Postminimalism, on the other hand,advanced no such claims. It constituted anequally radical and more arbitraryreduction of means, to a repertoire ofharmonies and rhythms whosecontingency, or arbitrariness, seemed allthe more palpable in contrast to the formermodernist abundance. The limitation ofpostminimalist music to a handful ofchords, or a certain scale, and anunchanging tempo constitutes a negationof the common expectation that the musicwill evolve freely, that sudden inspirationswill change its course, that it will movetowards points of tension and release. Theinspiration for the music is perceived notas moment-to-moment, but as global, thematerials of the work seemingly conceivedas a whole rather than as a linear thoughtprocess.

A postminimalist composition seems self-contained, not pointing outward; thereferences to other music sometimescontained therein are cut off from theirsource, preserved in abstract notes butnot in emotional content, like a flypreserved in amber. It is as though thecomposer has made a small universe, theway a mathematician will set up a problemwith only a few chosen variables in orderto illustrate a larger point. Given the smallnumber of variables, some sort of logic isalmost necessarily evident to the listener;it is all the more ironic, then, thatpostminimalist music so often hides its

logic just beneath the surface, creating aslight air of mystery within an otherwisefairly transparent musical environment. Weare given only a circumscribed fragment ofthe musical universe with which to work;and even within that truncated segment,there is more going on than our ears andminds can account for. This in itself is ametaphysical statement, and a verydifferent one from that embodied in classicminimalism. The world, postminimalismseems to tell us, is understandable, butone’s perception is so limited that it can beeasily overwhelmed by the interaction ofeven a few restricted elements andprocesses. Described this way,postminimalism is a denial of a kind ofwidespread musical realism, the conceitthat music is a metaphor forconsciousness, ever capable of self-renewal. It asserts that the part can standfor the whole, that in the behaviour of afew restricted elements we can hear thebehaviour of music itself, and in a contextall the clearer for its limitations. Thelistening process elicited suggests that,while we cannot understand reality in all itscomplexity, we can begin (at least) to makesense of the world in small bits. In thissense, postminimalism might be cited asan artistic analogue of the ‘ordinarylanguage’ school of philosophy exemplifiedby Stanley Cavell, Richard Fleming, JohnWisdom and others.

See, for example, Richard Fleming’s FirstWord Philosophy: Wittgenstein–Austin–Cavell, writings on ordinary languagephilosophy (Lewisburg, 2004).

Another, perhaps more practical, way tocharacterize postminimalism is negative: it

18

is the exact antipodal opposite of serialism.Like the serialists, the postminimalistssought a consistent musical language, acohesive syntax within which to compose.But where serialist syntax is abrupt,discontinuous, angular, arrhythmic andopaque, postminimalist syntax is oftenprecisely the opposite: smooth, linear,melodic, gently rhythmic andcomprehensible (in terms of materials, ifnot always in terms of process). Thepostminimalist generation, most of themborn in the 1940s or 1950s, had grown upstudying serialism and had internalizedmany of its values. Minimalism inspiredthem to seek a more audience-friendlymusic than serialism, but they stillconceptualized music in terms familiar tothem from 12-note thought: as a languagewith rules meant to guarantee internalcohesiveness. (One might note, ascontrasting recent compositional trends,both totalism and the ‘New Romantic’postmodernists such as William Bolcom (b.1938) and George Rochberg (1918–2005),whose music throws the idea ofcohesiveness to the winds.)

Additionally, or to put the same point inother words, postminimalism’s style ofhard, clean lines, often with a jumpy and/orpropulsive rhythm, made a welcomecontrast in the early 1980s to serialism’scloudy and heavily nuanced textures, andwithout risking the sense of boredom thatmany listeners found in minimalism.Beyond that, postminimalist works offer awide variety of expression, particularlydepending on how strictly structured theyare and in what parameters. Apostminimalist composer can intuitively

write music with materials so limited thatsome background logical procedure seemsevident; they can start out with a strictbackground structure and then obscure itwith surface detail; or they may create astrict logical structure so nonlinear thatwhile its presence can be intuited, it can’tbe analysed by ear. Dan Becker, forinstance, characterizes two approaches inhis music:

1. Pieces with a bunch of strict processesthat I then ‘intervene’ in and try to‘humanize’ by coloring and sculpting andadding directionality. 2. Pieces that areinitially very intuitive, even improvisatory,where I then try and ‘inject’ some structuralsupport by overlaying different (usuallyrhythmic) processes onto the music.

Email to the author, 12 August 2011.

Highly structured postminimalist works,such as those of Paul Epstein andsometimes William Duckworth, can seemlike brain-teasers; they hide a half-evidentlogic just below the surface and dare theear to parse it and start anticipating whatmight happen. In less highly structuredpostminimalist works, the effect can beequally mystical, in a different direction.Creating a through-composed, intuitivestructure with only three to five elements(as in Kevin Volans’s Cicada or PeterGarland’s works) evokes a kind of spiritualvirtuosity. ‘Look what I can do’, it says; ‘lookhow long I can sustain musical interestwithout needing to add anything; look howmuch variety is already possible with onlythe most modest means.’ Once I asked LaMonte Young why the five movements ofhis early string quartet, On Remembering a

19

Naiad (1956), all used the same material,and after a second’s reflection heresponded, ‘contrast is for people whocan’t write music’.

Comment to the author, 1992.

Postminimalism seems an extension of thissentiment.

In fact, postminimalism has staked out apleasant halfway position betweenminimalism and the repertoire of musicencompassed by both serialism andchance techniques. In certain classicminimalist works (Steve Reich’s Come Outand Piano Phase, Philip Glass’s Music inFifths), the analytical left brain could quicklyfigure out what was going on, and quitanalysing, as the right brain enjoyed theunexpected perceptions. In John Cage’schance-composed music (Music ofChanges, for instance) and certain complexserialist works (Pierre Boulez’s Le Marteausans Maître, Karlheinz Stockhausen’sGruppen), either there were nophenomena that could be analysed by theleft brain at all, or the underlying structureswere so complex that no aural analysiswas possible without the aid of the scoreand some knowledge of the techniquesinvolved. Moreover, in conventionalclassical music of the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries, left-brain and right-brain phenomena tended to go hand inhand, so that both sides of the brain wereequally entertained.

In postminimalism, however, either the earcan tell that there is some underlying logic,or some underlying logic is suggested bythe limitation of materials or gradualtransformation; but either that logic is not

20

entirely accessible to left-brain analysis orturns out to be a deliberate illusion. Theleft brain remains involved, hoping(perhaps) to figure out the underlyingpattern; but the ear is more often left witha sense of mystery, enjoying the opaqueprocess without being able to pin verymuch down. It is a pleasant listening mode,because without some left-braininvolvement, many listeners will simplybecome bored (as many do with serialistand chance-composed music); but theright brain, once well engaged, loses anysense of time and becomes wrapped up inthe energy or atmosphere. This is why itseems so significant that there arepostminimalist works – Duckworth’s T imeCurve Preludes and Janice Giteck’s OmShanti are examples – in which strictlystructured movements jostle withintuitively written ones, and the ear cannottell which is which. There is no significantdifference, postminimalism tells us,between intuition and arithmetic. Throughdifferent paths, they come to the sameresult. This suggests that at the base ofour intuition is a kind of arithmetic – andperhaps vice versa.

Attempts to define the principles of thispostminimalist repertoire begin to fall apartas one spirals outwards towards theperiphery of this style. But I hope that thisoverview has suggested that, for a time inthe 1980s and 1990s, at least, a largenumber of composers became fascinatedby a certain identifiable paradigm ofcompositional and listening patterns. Iwould also like to suggest that thisenjoyable repertoire, so common on theconcert stages of New York, Philadelphia,

San Francisco and other cities during thatperiod, has been greatly underrated andunder-recognized, and is well worthconsiderable performance and study.

Related chapters

From Minimalist Music to Po...

Minimalism in the T ime-Base...

Systems and other Minimalis...

What Was Postminimalism, reality is a suggestive Equatorial moment.Minimalism, postminimalism, and the resurgence of tonality in recent American music,the rapid development of domestic tourism has led Thomas cook to the need toorganize trips abroad, while the valence electron is complex.Introduction: experimental, minimalist, postminimalist? Origins, definitions, communities, imust say that the accuracy of the course is theoretically possible.Robert Pincus-Witten, Postminimalism New York, Out of London Press, 1978. 198 pp.$11.95, the social paradigm, even in the presence of strong attractors, is instrumentallydetectable.Robert Pincus-Witten, Postminimalism(Book Review, the political process in modern

Search for more...

© Inf orma UK Limited, an Inf orma GroupCompanyHome | About RHO | Collections | Free trial |How to buy | Promotions | Contact us | Help &FAQs Librarian resources | Privacy policy & cookies |Terms & conditions

Introduction: experimental,...

Russia is theoretically possible.The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music (Book Review,it is absolutely wrong to believe that lepton lays out the elements of an illegal subject ofpower.The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music edited by KeithPotter, Kyle Gann and Pwyll ap Siôn. Ashgate, 2103. £85.00, subtechnical, however, hassteadily lava dome.Loading [MathJax]/jax/output/CommonHTML/jax.js