# First minimalist piece



## Aurelian (Sep 9, 2011)

"Minimalism" is associated with the 20th century...yet could the first prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier be considered the first? It repeats the same simple motive with very little change.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

It's not that different from a lot of Baroque music, except that it's very "blank", without any real ornamentation, just a series of arpeggios. I think the Prelude to Das Rheingold is a lot better candidate for the title.






The harmony is entirely static, all E-flat major.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Erik Satie's Gymnopopedoppalopsadies and most of his other works strike me as the first.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

So who are other famous minimalists along John Adams, Alan Hovhaness and Philip Glass?


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Satie's _Vexations_ is the best candidate I can think of for the root of Morton Feldman's minimalism, and it quite obviously had a profound influence on John Cage's minimalism as well. Pulse based minimalism (Terry Riley, Steve Reich etc.) seems to me to come largely from outside the Western tradition, African and Indonesian folk and traditional music being the most obvious roots I can think of.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Arsakes said:


> So who are other famous minimalists along John Adams, Alan Hovhaness and Philip Glass?


Terry Riley
Steve Reich
La Monte Young
Michael Nyman
Louis Andriessen
Gorecki.....

depends how you look at it really. Definitely the first 3 and Glass.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

'Minimalism,' the term coined, first attributed to Michael Nyman wearing the hat of musicologist or critic, was, like so many other musical style tags, labeled after the fact. It does, like other tags, have in its definition a little matter of several important compositional traits which make it 'minimalism.'

The static quality of (only a few of) a handful of Satie's works, the extreme sparseness of some Cage, and the later work of Morton Feldman are now being 'lumped in,' and technically, do not fit the qualifications. The are precursors, certainly, of a later general aesthetic and approach, but technically, go about achieving an only somewhat similar effect with very different means.

The grand-daddy with all the requisite traits of 'minimalism' is Terry Riley's 'In C.' There you have the short cells of pitch material, repeated, varied, overlapped; modulation, or at least frequency thereof, is a completely different consideration if compared to just about any prior classical style; and the repetition, Phasing, additive technique, modulation by 'assertion,' etc. --are the most shared traits between these composers, as different sounding as their work may be. It is the 'hallmarked minimalist' sound of Mssrs. Tom Johnson (student of Feldman's), Riley, Reich, Adams, Glass, etc.

Those earlier Minimalist pieces which sound as 'hallmarked minimalist' music, are very much 'process pieces.' The materials, and how they behave, create both the sound and form, of course the composer still in command at the wheel of the Vehicle.

That sound is most plainly "In C" (Riley), earlier John Adams (Shaker Loops, Phrygian Gates, Grand Pianola Music) and Steve Reich's fully developed "Music for Eighteen Musicians." Glass had the traits from the beginning with "Einstein on the Beach."

Satie, Feldman, the occasional Cage piece, are more a matter of 'use of a minimum amount of materials.' which is very different from 'minimalist technique and procedure.' It could be said those 'sparse' works owed maybe a little tip of the hat to Webern (Satie excepted by dates, of course), and the game being played is "sparser than thou."

Later Feldman works are extremely preoccupied with brief ideas repeated in slightly different contexts, and running at length, while having no relation at all to later 'minimalist procedures.' Feldman, most remarkably, seems to have been operating with a great deal of intuition in the act of writing itself as well as 'making the form', a good deal of his sense relying upon what he thought of 'what memory does / how it behaves' within the listener.

The 'drone' premise is perhaps a better tag with which to attribute Wagner's xx number of minutes of one sustained orchestrated E-flat Major triad, and I believe that idea would not have occurred to Wagner if Luigi had not composed that outrageous and super-extraordinary and extended drone introduction to his ninth symphony... a long sustained open fifth: _(Beethoven was first, then; Wagner, second.)_ Third in this lineage could be the opening bars of Bartok's ballet, "The Wooden Prince."

Part of what triggered Glass in coming up with his sound and procedure is, as mentioned by the composer, a deep admiration and love of the works of Pérotin... again, a melodic line so extremely rhythmically augmented it becomes a slo-mo drone (pedal point) for note activity on, over, around, or below it: _(then it was Pérotin who was first; Beethoven second, Wagner third; Bartok fourth.) -- Quick! 'Who is on first.' _
Pérotin ~ Viderunt omnes





_Crudblud mentioned 'the other' highly important influencing factor, those earlier 20th century American composers (Lou Harrison, primarily) who 'looked east' to Indian music and even more pointedly, Indonesian Gamelan musics - which most directly have a very like point of departure and procedure, pitch materials, handling thereof, rhythm, 'process.'_

Terry Riley ~ In C / Rainbow in Curved Air








Tom Johnson (studied with Morton Feldman) 'Study for Player Piano; / 'An hour for piano' ; & 'Nine Bells'












Philip Glass (via a Fulbright scholarship, studied with Nadia Boulanger.)
Steve Reich ~ Music for Eighteen Musicians




John Adams ~ Shaker loops




Louis Andriessen ~ Passeggiata in tram in America e ritorno (not nearly 'wholly' but a piece here and there, and still then 'mixing it up' as he wishes.)




Graham Fitkin (studied with Andriessen) ~ Curcuit




Michael Nyman

~ The 'slavic' contigent, many of whom are now lumped under the very weird and ambiguous category, "Spritual Minimalism," and whose procedures as much apart from 'minimalism' as they are close -- there is often something 'else' going on with these composers' works.
Gorecki
Part
Nikolai Korndorff
[Alan Hovhaness, other than as per some one's fancied notion of 'spiritual,' imho has nothing to associate him with 'Minimalist.']

I think picking up on a slightly static pedal point in the Bach C Major Prelude is good conscious listening, while making a connection of that to minimalism is a virtual non-connect.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Aurelian said:


> "Minimalism" is associated with the 20th century...yet could the first prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier be considered the first? It repeats the same simple motive with very little change.


_As far as "proto-minimalists," everybody always forgets Carl Orff's Schulwerk.









But beyond that, everybody is pretending that Minimalism is "Western" in inspiration, and has Western-inspired predecessors. Balinese gamelan music inspired everybody; and Glass studied with Ravi Shankar, Riley with Pran Nath, and Reich in Africa with drum ensembles. The "hypnotic repetition" is more a result of meditative ritual..._


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> ... everybody is pretending that Minimalism is "Western" in inspiration, and has Western-inspired predecessors. Balinese gamelan music inspired everybody; and Glass studied with Ravi Shankar _*& Nadua Boulanger*_, Riley with Pran Nath, _*&, o.a. Seymour Shifrin and a bunch of American teachers in California,*_ and Reich in Africa with drum ensembles _*& Darius Milhaud*_. The "hypnotic repetition" is more a result of meditative ritual...[/I][/FONT]


Be American, look in and out all sorts of places, stir, cook, digest, add a dash of creative genius, tons of really labor intensive work, "et Voila." 

Thanks for the (sorely) overlooked 'other aspect' of the recipe, music made often by community for community, the aimed to inducing in both player and listener 'meditative or ecstatic' states.


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## Zauberberg (Feb 21, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> Balinese gamelan music inspired everybody


Canadian composer Colin McPhee was very influenced by Balinese gamelan. I'd like to see this documentary:


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## oogabooha (Nov 22, 2011)

Satie was the one who bridged the gap between romanticism and minimalism (although he was very "anti-romantic", a lot of his music was able to condense the same amount of emotion into an extremely minimal amount of notes.) This allowed for composers to not just focus on what was going on in their pieces, but also make sure that the notes were _exactly_ what they wanted to say, because they then repeated it many times.

The _Gymnopedies_ are exactly what I'm talking about, although this isn't really what we would consider minimalism today (more ambient, I guess). Riley's _In C_ was very influential as well, but I think that modern rhythmic minimalism started when Reich started focusing less on variety and more on African rhythms, carefully documenting the atmosphere as opposed to melodic content.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I first heard minimalism in conjunction with Satie, actually. I have no idea if this is typical or strange, but it made perfect sense to me. And boy do those little piano pieces make a good case for minimal music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

PetrB said:


> Part of what triggered Glass in coming up with his sound and procedure is, as mentioned by the composer, a deep admiration and love of the works of Pérotin...


And Glass wasn't the only composer influenced by him. I remember that the first time I heard the music of Perotin I thought immediately of Reich, and then I discovered that he actually knew and considered him an influence on his music.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

clavichorder said:


> I first heard minimalism in conjunction with Satie, actually. I have no idea if this is typical or strange, but it made perfect sense to me. And boy do those little piano pieces make a good case for minimal music.


You know, John Cage greatly admired Satie, and I think Satie's influence on modern music is oft overlooked. Both Satie and Cage brought a conceptual, "art" dimension to music which it seemed to lack. Of course, many traditionalists hate and resent this, calling it "arty nonsense."

The French are where it's at on art. Americans see everything as sport.


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## Zauberberg (Feb 21, 2012)

last minimalist piece


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

^^^^^
Its officially done, everything there is nothing left to be said in minimalism.


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## Bone (Jan 19, 2013)

Riley "In C" as a performer. Loved it.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Zauberberg said:


> last minimalist piece


Did you composed that yourself ? very striking !! I like the ending.....


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