# your thoughts?



## fifty50matt (May 13, 2009)

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1715385/minimalist_music_advertising_and_lacan.html?cat=33

wrote this a while back. please let me know your thoughts. thanks


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## MEDIEVAL MIAMI (May 10, 2009)

I read it all and I would like to comment, but this feeling of anger is eating me inside.


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## LvB (Nov 21, 2008)

There are some intriguing ideas here (though also some rather awkward writing, which at times makes your argument hard to follow). I question one of your central points, though. You challenge Elliot Carter's concerns about propaganda by saying that


> I argue against his view that minimalist music reminds one of horrible repetition in advertising. I say that minimalism arose out of a response to this repetitive advertising and liberates us from the bombardment of advertising.


Well, perhaps you are right, but I don't see that you've supported the claim strongly enough. There are two parts to your discussion, broadly speaking: a) that minimalism grows from the same seeds as modern mass advertising; and, b) that minimalism somehow transcends its origins in a way that advertising does not. While the first claim is certainly open to being challenged, you do, I think, give some reasons for taking it as plausible (though I admit that I've never been convinced that Lacan's contributions to social analysis are as deep as many believe). But the concern over emotional stasis within a temporal art predates minimalism. The Wim Mertens assertion you quote early in your essay is very arguable; Theodor Adorno, for example, critiqued Stravinsky (certainly no minimalist) along exactly the same lines: "Stravinsky would like to go even further [than Mahler and Strauss] by banishing from music every element of representation including the sudden emergence of the composer's intentions, followed by their sudden extinction." One need not agree with Adorno to see that his point has to do with the claim that some types of music other than minimalism, which did not exist when he wrote his criticisms of Stravinsky), can be said to be "non-representational."

This said, I'd argue that it's your second point that needs considerably more detail. Minimalism may not be selling anything in a direct sense, but much of it is, whether intentionally or not, hypnotic in effect and thus opposed to, or at least subversive of, critical thinking. If we are to be liberated from commercial culture, I cannot see how this will be done without a significant increase in our capacity for critical thinking and our willingness to use that capacity. Modern commercial culture (in the social, the economic, and the political senses) depends upon our willingness to accept what we are told and (just as important) _to accept the character of the media by which that message is conveyed_ (recall here McLuhan's famous comment that "the medium is the message"). If, as you say, minimalism stems from the same roots as modern mass advertising culture, then you need to show the ways in which its fruits differ from that culture in order to succeed in convincing us that minimalism can liberate us from that culture. It seems to me that the contrary is true, and that your own words support such a claim, as per your analysis of the Glass piece:


> The shift can be interpreted as the shift that occurs each time a new advertisement is placed in front of the consumer. The piece doesn't end in a dramatic climax or fade off into a satisfying ending, it ends abruptly and loudly, much how it began; just as the bombardment of advertising never ends. The repetition and slight variations give the listener the subtle depiction of the fast paced, repetitious advertisements found in American culture.


The relation of which you speak is evident in your description; the liberation is not.


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## fifty50matt (May 13, 2009)

Thanks for everything LvB. very, very helpful.


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