Minimalism and Performance Art

In his article "Minimalist: Aesthetic, Style, or Technique," Timothy Johnson discusses these three concepts as they apply to minimalist in the compositional world.  At first glance I had difficulty seeing what the distinctions would be, but upon reading it became clear.  It is essentially a question of whether minimalism is a toolbox, or a tool in a toolbox.  It asks whether a composer must choose for their palette to be a minimalism-specific set of methods, or whether minimalist methods may form just a part of their compositional style.

Before reading this article, I didn't realize this was a question.  I grew up in a world where minimalism already existed, and had for decades.  I grew up in a world where I heard Philip Glass via one of his film scores before I knew what minimalism was.  It never seemed radical or boundary-pushing to me.  Mark Swed wrote the following of composer Michael Torke:

"Torke represents a generation of young American composers who take Minimalism for granted and who came of age in an environment where the distinctions between pop and so-called serious musics did not have to be observed rigidly.  It is a generation for whom the tonality and atonality wars had already been fought, a generation as unselfconsciously at ease with the metric complexities of Stravinsky as with the repeated formulae and radiant harmonies of Philip Glass or with the brazen energy of Madonna."

The same applies to me.  As a result, I didn't know there was such strong debate about minimalism until well after I had acquainted myself with some of the music.  I also didn't know that Glass or Reich objected to the title until I already know some of their music.  When I learned that they hated the title, I was confounded.  I couldn't understand what was objectionable about being called minimalist.  Dr. Johnson's article clarified this for me, finally.  Evidently, minimalism was once seen as a very specific aesthetic.  Soon, this evolved into the notion of a self-contained style of composition.  I can see why a composer would have a problem with being labeled as such.  Glass and Reich were labeled into a box. They composed some music, then people told them that that exact music was what they were doing with their lives.  That leaves no room for growth or change, and it also was such a narrow definition that it even excluded some of their work that they had already written.

As a result, we came to see minimalism as a technique.  It is one tool in the compositional toolbox, which any composer may call upon, or use in whole or in part.  This is how I have always seen it, and I didn't know it was once seen another way.  Are there still musicians and scholars who view minimalism as a distinct and self-contained style or aesthetic?  I have listened for so long to so many composers who use elements of traditional, classic minimalism without emulating it outright.  I've heard such strong influences of classic 60s minimalism in the film scores of Clint Mansell and Michael Nyman; the meditative beauty of Arvo Pärt and John Luther Adams, the Bang On a Can scene populated by founders David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, and their comrades Evan Ziporyn and Ken Thomson; and the percussion writing of most percussion composers (Glenn Kotche, Paul Smadbeck, Eckhard Kopetzki, even Gordon Stout at times).

John Luther Adams, "Red Arc / Blue Veil"

Just one example of a work that definitely uses minimalist techniques,

without obeying all the attributes of the style or aesthetic.

Apparently some people would object to such works having the "m"-word attached to them.  This is crazy.  It just means that they share some influence and characteristics with the classic Reich/Riley/Young/Glass scene of the 1960s.  Now, decades later, even Glass and Reich go against the original definition of the minimalist style in the majority of their works.  Take a listen to a popular recent Reich work, his Mallet Quartet.

Mallet Quartet (2009), performed by So Percussion

Almost the entire duration of the work utilizes lengthy melodies, of anywhere from 2-16 measures in length.  Listen to the start of the work: the marimbas enter in a classic minimalist texture, interlocking pulses to create an aggregate framework or near-constant 8th notes.  Then the vibraphones enter, playing what is unmistakably a long melody.  This goes against the inside-the-box definitions of minimalism as aesthetic or style, neither of which allows for melodies of any real scope.

As a listener, I hear this in a completely different way from how I listen to Piano Phase or Music or 18 Musicians, for example.  Instead of wallowing in one tiny melodic/harmonic cell for a long time, I listen as a melody gradually unspools, then as soon as it finishes, another one takes its place.  This is a compositional world of change, not stagnation -- both this piece and the world of minimalist composition.

Similarly, take note of Glass's opera Einstein on the Beach.  It may not have a traditional dramatic narrative, but it definitely does have a sense of program.  It has something to say beyond the pure musical notes.  As Glass himself says, "What I saw in fact that we had done with Einstein was that, we had taken a person and made it the subject of the piece. It was a way in a certain way of: the person replaces the idea of plot, story.  In other words, the character of the person becomes what the piece is about."  This clearly goes against one of the tenets of early minimalism, which was strongly non-narrative, and never "about" anything other than the pure music.

As such, even the inventors of minimalism don't use it as a singular aesthetic or style.  Even for them, it is a technique.  Hasn't everyone always seen it that way?  If not, then I am proving my youth here, because I didn't realize we could see it as such a small box.  Perhaps Johnson's article was useful in its day for proving this point, but today, it seems redundant to my long-held absolute assumptions.


This brings me to the matter of performance art.  Performance art is arguably the most directly, strongly, and consistently political artistic medium.  Such a strong percentage of performance art has a political agenda.  Frank Skinner points this out with such instances as the Dada Manifesto as a way to subvert societal assumptions in a corrupt society, or Stuart Bristley's study of endurance called And for today…nothing, which apparently protested something about the governmental establishment.  This point of politics in music keeps arising, over and over again.  John Cage and HPSCHD; Cardew and The Great Learning; etc.  As Skinner says, "At the heart of performance art is strong social critique.  It asks important questions about how we perceive the world around us and our place within it."  Something I keep wondering, and always have, is this: Does this ever accomplish anything?

These artworks are not being used in governmental debates; they are not repurposed for politician campaigns; they are not evidence in arguments held in courts, international tribunals, environmental conventions or legislation meetings.  So why do we keep making such political art?  Is it simply because the artists feel so strongly about their opinion that they have a need to express it via performance?  To this, I say NO, because these political opinions are being expressed in aggressive and confrontational ways much of the time.  So can they accomplish anything, when they are only works of art viewed in artistic spheres?

The natural argument here, I think, would be for you to tell me that they cause people to think about the issues at hand, so that they will have more thought to bring to the table when the time comes for such discussion, debate, legislation, and governmental jurisdiction.  However, who is seeing these artworks? The educated and thoughtful.  These people don't need Nam June Paik to tell them to think about feminism, or Cage to tell them to think about environmentalism.  They are already thinking deeply about these and nearly any other important topic worthy of political discussion.  So who is being affected by the political nature of these works?  I can't think of anyone, but I sincerely want to here the contrarian opinion.  I feel like I am missing something here.  How can political art actually DO anything political?

"Mood Swing" (2014)

Today, I present to you my most recent composition, a graphically notated work for my American Avant Garde class.  Entitled Mood Swing, it is based around a game of frisbee.  The frisbee we will be using will function in four capacities, to be explained later:

1) to instruct method and vague details of sound production
2) to create of real-time, spontaneous, interpretive scoring via flight patterns
3) as a "found" graphic score
4) as an instrument in the work

The skeleton of the piece is fairly simple: 3 or more people throw the frisbee to one another, in any order.  Each person produces vocal sounds to interpret the frisbee's flight pattern as real-time score (#1) (for example, height = pitch, speed = intensity).  When the frisbee is thrown, each person makes sounds as it flies to represent the flight, then repeats these sounds when it is in the catcher's hands.  The types of sounds each person produces are determined by the notation on the frisbee when they catch it (#2).

The frisbee contains two types of instructions: emotions, represented by facial expressions, and types of vocal production (hum, shout, etc.)  Before the piece begins, each person tosses the frisbee in the air several times, choosing an emotion and a vocal production method by the randomized pictures near their hand where they catch the disc.  For the entire piece, each person has an emotion and a vocal production method.  Each time a player catches the frisbee, he or she changes their emotion or vocal method to whatever symbol is closest to his or her right thumb or index finger.  They use these emotions and vocal methods to vocalize the real-time notation of the frisbee's flight.  Each time it is thrown, everyone vocalizes.  Then, it is caught, and while the catcher examines his/her new result, the others repeat the same vocal flight path.  Next, that person throws it to the next person, and the process repeats.

There's an additional wrench thrown into this piece/game format.  There is one additional symbol on the disc: three exclamation points surrounded by a spiky bubble.  If you land on this symbol with a catch, then you perform a very brief solo.  To do so, toss the disc to yourself quickly.  Wherever your right thumb or index finger lands, look at the printed design on the frisbee in that area.  Use this as a small chunk of graphic score to perform, using any vocal production method, as well as the frisbee as an instrument (#3 / #4).  This printed design is thus being used as a "found" graphic score, as I realized after beginning to conceptualize this piece that the design on this particular frisbee is RIFE with capabilities as an interesting graphic score.

The person performs this bit of score as a solo, using the frisbee instrument and their voice however they want (approx. 3-10 seconds).  Next, the other players mimic the solo while the player starts to throw it to the next person, and the game continues.

When a player has performed 2 solos, he or she will sit down.  They have finished performing the piece, and wait for all players to finish.  When only one remains, he or she must continue to throw it to him- or herself until they too have performed two solos.  They must vocalize each of these throws on their own, making the ending of the piece likely to be a long solo by one person.  As such, the work begins with all players, then gradually peters down to just one, until all are sitting and the game is over.

I'm sure some of this is a tad unclear.  All will be clarified with the work's performance in class today.

the frisbee, before adding my additional notation 

detail, "found" graphic score 

Completed frisbee: note emotions (faces), vocal production methods (words),

and exclamation points to signal a solo

In Defense of Minimalism

I speak here on behalf of minimalism.  Typically, when I use the term, I am referring to minimalist, post-minimalist, totalism, and various strong minimalist tendencies outside the strictest sense of the genre.  That said, today I will be discussing the classic meaning of the term, referring to the innovations in the 1960s and 70s of major figures such as LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich.

A warning: this blog post is about to be biased.  Sure, all of mine are; but this is discussing some of my truly favorite music.  This is the music that I listen to when I want to relax; when I want to do some good active listening; when I want something for listening while going for a run; when I go for a long drive; when I want to procrastinate listening to music I should be studying.  This is music that I often prepare with chamber groups and as soloist, and program on recitals.  I have rarely had more fun playing music than when I've played In C, Clapping Music, Music for 18, and more.  In fact, when I was writing my previous blog post (on Cage's HPSCHD), I was listening to two of the assigned listening pieces for today's blog: Reich's Piano Phase and Music for 18 Musicians.  This was pure coincidence--I had no idea that the next blog would be about minimalism; I just wanted to listen to Music for 18 and Piano Phase (well, it was Marimba Phase, but it's just the same piece with different instrumentation).

(Go here for my favorite video of Marimba Phase.  I was at this performance, and it was spellbinding.  In a small but massively echoey church, the shifting pitch combinations resonated far longer than usual, and the result was beautiful.)

As Kyle Gann writes in his article "Minimal Music, Maximal Impact," minimalism gets a bad rap from the high-brow, academic music field.  This is not remotely fair.  In my experience, this is because it is "simple" and "tonal," instead of impenetrably complex and wildly atonal, and therefore does not help to push music forward.  In response, I would argue that just because it tends to have a sense of pitch centricity does not mean that it is not innovative, boundary-pushing, and worthwhile.  In addition, minimalist is, more than any other concert-based classical music, the music that can and does reach out to atypical audiences--and this is a very good thing.

Generally (with definite exception), minimalism tends to be "pretty"--that is to say, tonal/modal without an awful lot of chromaticism.  However, this is only an examination of pitch material--what about every other parameter of music? Texture, timbre, rhythm, meter, time, form, instrumentation, and so much more are massive aspects of music, but so often we only discuss pitch material when defining and discussing areas of music.  LaMonte Young innovated in form, timbre, tuning and instrumentation with The Well-Tuned Piano; Reich innovates in time with most of his works, such as Piano Phase, Clapping Music, all the way to his most recent works; Terry Riley hugely innovated in form with In C; Glass innovates in texture in all his oeuvre.  Why, then, should they be seen as composers of music that is less worthwhile than Boulez and Stockhausen?  Just because they have a fondness for repeat signs?

It is also important to note that minimalism is massively effective at reaching audiences who would not typically listen to concert music, much more so than any other area of concert music.  Could Babbitt have found himself composing a piece for Sesame Street?  Certainly not--but Philip Glass did, and it's awesome.

Glass, "Geometry of Circles," as aired on Sesame Street (1979)

Sure, it doesn't fit in with the general vibe of the show, but I'm betting that the kids who have seen this segment on this show during any of the multiple times it has aired have had a much more positive response than if it had been 20th century cutting-edge classical music of a different sort.  How often does cutting-edge contemporary music reach out to young children?  Almost never, and I love that minimalism has that power.

A personal anecdote: years ago, in freshman or sophomore year of high school, I was riding in my good friend Adam's car, and I was controlling the music.  Adam was always interested in the arts, but leaned more toward film, theater, and various areas of popular music.  He did not have much interest in "classical music."  I put on a recording of Reich's Vermont Counterpoint.

 Reich, "Vermont Counterpoint" (1982)

Adam was instantly transfixed.  It was groovy, fun, intense, and intelligent but followable.  I hooked him.  We didn't even finish the piece before arriving at our destination, and he was asking me everything about where he could find more like it.  Since then, I have taken him to Bang on a Can Concerts; we have seen the BSO premiere a new work at Tanglewood; I have seen Reich in concert with him twice; he has gone on his own accord to see So Percussion concerts; and he is an avid listener of Cage, Xenakis, Reich, Glass, and more.  Minimalism was the gateway drug for him into concert music, and he hasn't looked back.  I again attribute this to minimalism's power to reach out, without compromising its artistic integrity.  Some musicians seem to think that one has to pander, to lower one's art to reach the masses.  Minimalism negates this outright.

One more quick example.  Last year, I went on tour with the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra to Long Island and NYC.  We made a stop at a Long Island High School to play a concert, and the next morning we had an informal session with the high school's musicians where chamber groups from the ICSO played works for the high schoolers.  The percussion section decided to play Clapping Music.  Our section leader, Chris Demetriou, quickly summarized the compositional process at play so that they could listen for the phasing and the re-syncing at the end.  The result?  The kids loved it.  All around the band room, they all were clearly enthusiastic about their applause, and a bunch of them came up to me afterward to talk about how cool it was.  Sure, at this point it's a bit of a novelty gimmick for us trained musicians, but for them it was new, it was understandable, and it was cool.  All from one of the earliest works in the genre of minimalism.

Another argument that the over-arrogant members of the music establishment often have against minimalism is that it has little variation.  I could not disagree more.  I look at the diversity between works like Music for 18 Musicians and The Well-Tuned Piano, and while both are pretty, they are different in nearly every other way.  One is rhythmic, metric, and groovy; the other ametric and improvisatory.  One is intense and driving, the other meditative.  One is six hours long, the other is one hour.  The differences are huge; they just both have enough common traits that they are both minimalist.  Minimalism only lacks variation if you don't listen for anything other than pitch material (though even then, the variety of scales, modes, and other devices can vary widely).

To conclude, in short: minimalism IS innovative, varied, intelligent, and worthwhile; and it reaches out to new audiences without compromising this, which adds infinitely more value to it.

Just for fun, I'll end this post with this: Clapping Music as you've never heard (or seen) it before.

HPSCHD: Cage as Social Activist, Anarchist, Wagnerian, and Anti-Wagnerian

On May 16, 1969, John Cage's event work HPSCHD occurred for the first time, in the Assembly Hall at the University of Illinois (an arena generally used for the university's basketball team).  This was one of his largest undertakings to date, if not his largest, encompassing a vast array of harpsichords, electronic recordings and fixed media, projections, and more.  The audience moved as they wished around the performance space for the four hour duration, such that each person experienced the work differently, and took his or her own ideas to it and away from it.  In Sara Heimbecker's article "HPSCHD, Gesamtkunstwerk, and Utopia," she (hereafter referred to as Sara Haefeli, her present name) argues that the work was an example of both Cage's peaceful anarchist beliefs and activism, and of a full-on Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, albeit with minor differences.

In general, I agree with most of her assertions, and would like to take this blog post to pull out some points from the article for discussion, argument, etc.  For better or worse, these thoughts will run generally stream-of-consciousness in terms of organization, but hopefully different thoughts will be separated enough to avoid confusion.

Haefeli notes that the "narrative," in a broad, modern sense of the term, revolves around space travel.  This is certainly true, and links in with the avant garde's long-held fascination with science--from Cowell's piano tinkering to Varese's electronics to Partch's inventions.  This work occurred in the midst of the highest point of tensions in the space race, and its timing could not have been better.  In fact, only two months and four days after the HPSCHD event, the following event occurred:

Apollo 11, the mission that brought the first landing of humans on the moon, followed only 65 days after HPSCHD.  Indeed, it took off from Cape Canaveral exactly 2 months after Cage's work.  So this is one case of the avant-garde being highly in tune with major world events (even if Cage was not in tune with every major issue in the world--more on that later).

Cage described himself as a "Thoreauvian anarchist." He believed in a peaceful road to peaceful anarchy, wherein people live in such a way that everyone is free to live however he or she wishes, and experience life and the world however he or she wishes.  This requires the end of human-imposed ethical systems, such that all are free from judgment by others.  Toward that end, Cage said the following in an interview in the Chicago Daily News, 5/10/69:

Haas: But until people are ready for it, aren’t ethical systems needed?

Cage: Yes, but if we wait until that time, that time will never come.  Therefore we begin with that time in the fields where it is possible to do without such standards, such value judgments, to prepare the way—and art is one of them.

At first, I looked at this and thought, "Yes, that makes perfect sense."  Indeed, it's one of the first times I've been swayed to view art as something that could effect any real change with legitimacy.  Then, after some thought, all I could find was a question: In what other fields is it possible to remove value judgments?  One could argue for science, but in modern society it is inextricably linked with the attached ethics guiding every move.  I cannot think of any field other than art in which value judgments and ethical systems can be removed, and I do not think that doing so in art paved the way to allow for any other fields to follow suit.  As a result, while this quote seems soundly logical on the surface, it argues for paving the way for events that cannot follow.

That said, I'm all for removing value judgments in art.  It creates further uniqueness of individual experiences interfacing with the artwork.  It just doesn't seem to accomplish a goal set forth by Cage, to lead the way in removing ethical judgment from any other fields.  In art, such removal of imposed judgment can be seen in Cage's earlier collaborations with Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg.  In these collaborations, he would write a piece, Cunningham would create a dance, and Rauschenberg would create an art installation (such as the one below).  The dancer(s) would dance near and around Rauschenberg's artwork, set to Cage's music.

one such art installation by Rauschenberg

The three artists would not consult with each other regarding their individual works or artistic processes.  They simply created their works separately, then put them in the same place at the same time for the performance.  It was up to audience members to see connections (or not) between the works, which were all unintentional and dependent on the viewer's psyche to add to the scene.  In this way, they remove judgment of each other's work, as each one would make his or her part of the creation without judging how to connect it or disconnect it with the other two's works.  The pieces simply existed together, instead of containing built-in intention of artistic connection.

HPSCHD differs drastically from these artworks, as it was constructed under the overseeing and guidance of one artist, Cage, and every part centered around common themes.  It's a giant artwork where every piece of the puzzle comes together to say or be something about space.  This is antithetical to the nature of the Cage-Cunningham-Rauschenberg experiments, as everything has built-in intention from one artist's standpoint.  Even though he uses chance operations, they are chance operations of his devising in order to determine how exactly the details of the space theme should come together.  This is where we reach the beginning of the conclusion that Cage is creating his own Gesamtkunstwerk, as every facet of this massive multimedia work is working together toward one common goal.

Haefeli notes that one of the major differences between HPSCHD and the classic German Gesamtkunstwerk is that such works isolated people in a dark room and gave them all nearly identical perspectives on the work, whereas Cage's work allowed everyone to walk around individually to shape their own experience.  In this way, Cage was creating his artistic "anarchy," as all were free to live the experience as they saw fit.  As Charles Hamm noted,

“Each person made what he wanted of the piece and, thus, it was a different event for everyone who attended; each saw and heard it from the standpoint of when he was there, where he was in the hall, how long he stayed, whom he saw and talked with while there, what mood he was in, and what attitude he had about such events.”

I appreciate the Hamm is bringing into the equation an aspect of experience that I think members of the artistic community often ignore: "what mood he was in."  Too often we forget that a huge part of experiencing art is contingent upon what mood you are in already before the art is presented.  For example, I know that when I am in a bad mood, some works can clear that away, but usually it has a large effect on the art, either causing me to have a more aggressive or depressing interpretation of the work, or just causing me to pay less attention, as my mind is filled with other, negative thoughts.  I find that artists rarely ever discuss this in their studying of art, and this is an issue, as it is a huge part of how I experience the world of art.

That said, I disagree that any true anarchy of experience was achieved in HPSCHD--close, but not quite.  As Haefeli paraphrases of Yvonne Rainer, "The meaning of [the] work is set by the artist--not the audience, as participatory as that audience may be--'just as surely as any monolithic, unassailable, and properly validated masterpiece.' "  Indeed, Cage is controlling everything here, and guiding it toward certain vague messages (glorifying science, vaguely utopianizing space, etc.).  Cage's guiding motive in composing, in Haefeli's words, is as follows: "Instead of creating works that communicate a given message, Cage created opportunities for experience, opportunities to explore the multiplicity of intersections in which we live."  How can HPSCHD be true anarchy when it is not only a set of preconceived preconditions, but preconditions set by one man with messages in mind?  Can it really be truly, fully unique to each experiencer when Cage is behind every facet of it with preconceptions in his mind?  All are not free to have whatever experience they create--all are free to have whatever experience they create that concludes in the glorification of space as seen by John Cage.

Cage may have been aiming at true, full anarchy, but I think he missed his mark a bit.  I'd bet he could have reached it if he had made several more works of this scale and general formula (large, multimedia, wandering audience); however, this one does not truly reach the true anarchy of experience he may have envisioned.