# Minimalism



## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

I was wondering what some people's opinions were about minimalist music.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I would probably have an opinion (I have a lot of them) if I understood just what makes a music 'minimalist'. What is required to be there, and what must _not_ be there?


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

Well, I think what makes a piece of music minimalist is an opinion too. I have a pretty broad view of what minimalist music is. I think that Minimalist music has a number of requirements: repeated musical structures over a period of time, simple structure.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

What do you believe makes a piece of music minimalist?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I find the repetition boring. It can be quite atmospheric, but it doesn't hold my attention.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Good minimalism is _good_ bad minimalism is _bad_.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I'm terribly sorry, I'm turning into one of those members that just pops into a thread to say some stupid thing and then leave. I'll actually contribute this time.

I like minimalism quite a bit when I am in the right mood for it. The good minimalist composers can create the most incredible buildups...but you have to be in one of those super focused or calm and patient moods to appreciate them.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Erik Satie, Morton Feldman, Giacinto Scelsi, Valentin Silvestrov, Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki, Steve Reich, John Adams, Philip Glass, etc... have all composed music that I like... some more than others. I suspect that having listened a good bit to medieval music and Persian, Arabic, and Indian music, that Minimalism made sense to me immediately.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

I find that I really enjoy post-minimalism, or minimalist composers who have changed their style a bit. As much as I enjoy minimalism listening to Glass' "Einstein on the Beach" can be a bit grating during the final hour.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

violadude said:


> Good minimalism is _good_ bad minimalism is _bad_.


 Isn't this the case with everything?


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2012)

pluhagr,

There have been several threads on minimalism here.

Scroll down a bit and you'll see a list of them.

Somewhere in there, there's a reference to Tom Johnson's article on minimalism, which answers hilltroll's question among other things.

For those without the patience or the time to find it, here's the url:

www.editions75.com/Articles/Minimalism%20in%20music.pdf

For those without the patience or the time to read Tom's article (he's one of the few composers who self-identifies as a minimalist), here's quick repeat of points I've made in other minimalism threads. (You're welcome.)

The term "minimalism" applied to music came from art, meaning sparse, bare, stripped down, spare. The popular idea is that minimalism means repetition. There is one branch that uses repetitive phrases, but that's only the most publically visible branch. It's not even the oldest one. There are several types of minimalism, and most of them have nothing to do with repeating phrases.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

pluhagr said:


> I was wondering what some people's opinions were about minimalist music.


Some minimalism can get old really fast.
Some minimalism can get old really fast.
Some minimalism can get old really fast.
Some minimalism can get old really fast.
Some minimalism can get old really fast.
Some minimalism can get old really fast.
Some minimalism can get old really fast.
Some minimalism can get old really fast.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

some guy said:


> pluhagr,
> 
> There have been several threads on minimalism here.
> 
> ...


Thanks, _some_guy_. That is an interesting, informative article. A lot of effort has been expended around the world to expand expression of... something. I was unaware of how much of it is completely unrelated to _sound_, let alone anything I would recognize as music. I actually get something from much of what Adams and Reich have done, but wandering tape recorders of apparently irrelevant speech breaks the elastic.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

I liked it for five minutes. Apologies to VD.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

I think that for minimalists the sound of the instrument alone is important. The recognition of this sound is achieved through repetition or minimal sound. Listening to minimalist music is not like listening to non-minimalist music. It has a trace-like quality that, I feel, alters one's mood and emotions in a subtle way.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

i am very fond of minimalism.


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## Polyphemus (Nov 2, 2011)

Apologies to all minimalist lovers but I am afraid that it bores me silly. In my humble opinion it serves no purpose whatsoever.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Polyphemus said:


> Apologies to all minimalist lovers but I am afraid that it bores me silly. In my humble opinion it serves no purpose whatsoever.


do you mean that minimalism serves no purpose in _your_ life? because in general you could probably define minimalism as reducing things to their primary function, or purpose, couldn't you...?


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

The only experience I've ever had with minimalism would be Laurie Anderson's "O, Superman," though I think that only counts as "almost minimalist," so I don't really have enough experience to form an opinion about minimalism in music. I do, however, admire minimalism in the visual arts.


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2012)

*The Many Faces of "Minimalism"*


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## NightHawk (Nov 3, 2011)

Olias said:


> Some minimalism can get old really fast.
> Some minimalism can get old really fast.
> Some minimalism can get old really fast.
> Some minimalism can get old really fast.
> ...


not if you do this
not if you do this
ot if you do this n
ot if you do this n
t if you do this no
t if you do this no
if you do this not

From first line (theme 1) to last line (theme 2) is one way musical minimalism transforms itself - boring in the hands of an unskilled composer, but I sometimes find it fascinating in the works of Reich and Glass.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

what i like most of minimimalist music is phasing, though conceptually i think it's almost the opposite of the idea of minimalism.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I'm obviously a maximalist because I can't get into the music of Part, or any of the new age/ambient stuff.


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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

I love minimalism, it brings fond memories of looking out the window at long road trips and look at the great expanses of America for me; it is an extremely American-type sound for people like Reich and Adams. I agree that the timbre of the sound is very important for minimalist music, as most composers use very peculiar ensembles in order to get the sound they want. 

I often find minimalism such a broad term because composers often use these repeated structures for completely different reasons; Steve Reich doesn't use harmonic variation at all for example, because he wants to focus on the rhythmic side of repetition; Arvo Part, on the other hand, uses it for spiritual transcendence. I would define minimalist music as wanting the listener to focus on one especially one aspect of the music (rhythmic complexity, slight harmonic variation) to the point where the composer thinks it is necessary to "ignore" (lack of a better term) another side in order to make sure his message gets across. I know Reich for example loved especially the rhythmic side of music. Anyway, I love minimalism very much, and I do think it is a type of music full of life and a love of primary colors (I always think of Mondrain)


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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

norman bates said:


> what i like most of minimimalist music is phasing, though conceptually i think it's almost the opposite of the idea of minimalism.


Phasing is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. It lets me look what is going on inside of my mind for me.


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## Polyphemus (Nov 2, 2011)

Philip said:


> do you mean that minimalism serves no purpose in _your_ life? because in general you could probably define minimalism as reducing things to their primary function, or purpose, couldn't you...?


Sorry Philip as I thought I had pointed out in my opening apology to minimalist lovers I was expressing a personal opinion. I have always been of the opinion that one should enjoy whatever makes one happy.
I wish you well in your listening.


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## Guest (Jan 16, 2012)

So minimalism means repetition. Period.

Interesting.

I'm seeing the incredible power of the fixed idea, here. And it depresses me.*

*Well, not really. More like it would depress me if I let it. Still, it is difficult to have a discussion about, say, canines, when all anyone wants to talk about are poodles. (But some guy, dogs ARE poodles. Poodles are the only dog there is!)


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Polyphemus said:


> Sorry Philip as I thought I had pointed out in my opening apology to minimalist lovers I was expressing a personal opinion. I have always been of the opinion that one should enjoy whatever makes one happy.
> I wish you well in your listening.


oh thank god you apologized, to think that i had put my week on hold thinking you hadn't


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

It depends on the piece really, I love listening sometimes if all i want is background atmosphere while i am working on something, i even have written some minimalist type music, though I don't know if it can truly be called minimalist.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

one interesting thing about minimalism, abstract art, etc., which might bother some people and critics, is that in some cases you can't tell if the work was done by a child or an acclaimed artist. as opposed to classical art where most of the time it is easily discernible. for example:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/n...-abstract-art-from-a-child’s-or-chimp’s-work/

a similar phenomenon is observed in pop/rock music, as countless artists have stated: "you don't need musical talent to become a rock star". i remember the reality show Rock School, where Gene Simmons basically took these kids from a british private school and put them in a band, regardless of their musical talent. very interesting.

more recently, the movie/documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) highlighted a related question: what is _genuine_ art? street art in that particular case. the inherent simplicity of these art forms seems to render them more accessible to the general public, so perhaps more approachable to the "bad" or beginner composer. at the end of the film, Banksy is very careful so as not to draw any clear conclusions...

back to minimalism, i think all of its forms are beautiful; when i google images of "minimalism", i like everything i see. and thinking about it, a lot of popular movements and successful companies seem to have embraced the concept: facebook, wikipedia, apple, ikea, ... all rely on very minimalist philosophies.

as stated in my thread about repetition, i think repetitive, and more generally, minimalist music explores a whole different realm of cognitive effects that classical music doesn't really address. it's probably not a coincidence if minimalism took off more or less at the same time as electronic techonology, new sounds are being explored at the expense of the traditional form.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Phasing was always interesting.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

One of the things I find most interesting about a certain type of Minimalism, the slow building and repetitive type, I'm thinking specifically of composers like Gorecki, is that there is so much the same in their music that it actually increases the impact of the changes. For example, the second movement of Gorecki's string quartet #2 consists almost entirely of fragments of a violin theme over this pounding chord in the rest of the strings. The chord (it's the same chord throughout the whole movement) pounds on and on relentlessly, but then in the middle of the movement everything just stops, and then the strings play two simple chords. However, because we've been hearing this pounding over and over throughout the whole movement, probably for 2 or 3 minutes straight, these chords, which would sound pretty ordinary in any other context, sound absolutely glorious. I think that is one of the values of much of the music we call minimalist music, it makes us really hear ordinary changes as extraordinary.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

This is also quite good:


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## lukecubed (Nov 27, 2011)

The term "minimalism" gets thrown around pretty loosely, so what I think of it depends on who I'm talking to...

To me, stuff like Pärt and Gorecki, while often minimalistic, isn't what I think of. That stuff still seems like "classical" music. Minimalism, to me, is the more explicitly process/theory oriented stuff like Glass/Reich/Riley/Chatham, etc. I enjoy all of them when I'm in the mood for that style, but I have a hard time considering it as "great" in the same way I'd consider Beethoven etc. I understand it's working from an entirely different concept, but, to me, it loses something important by letting go of melody. Terry Riley is probably my favorite of that crew.

I do like the influence those guys have had on non-classical musics, however, and I tend to feel that some of the most successful minimalism of recent years has been made within the broad sphere of "popular" music: I'm thinking here of some "post-rock," drone bands like Earth and SunnO))), some electronic guys, and the more artistic side of ambient music. Even some "heavy" music like doom and black metal sorta qualifies, though I think those guys get to the same place by going the opposite route.

I like Pärt quite a bit and consider him my favorite living composer. But, again, I can't really see how even later pieces like _Te Deum_ and the Passio qualify as having the same approach as _Music for 18 Musicians_. His style is sometimes stripped-down, but it doesn't seem to have the same relentless methodology to it, to me.


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