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?
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