<snip>
The early-work-is-better syndrome afflicts both Reich and
Glass, I'd say, but I guess a lot of that is due to the fact that
commissioning
plays so large a part [Hal J]
Reich, and especially Glass, get bigger fees. I think the
issue is more that the very simple means they employ didn't carry them
very far. Tho it's I think amply clear that I have little use for their
earlier work, and minimalism in general, either. [Mark W]
<snip>
Glass strikes me as having been derivative from a very early stage, starting
with early minimalists. (I never walk out of things but I _have_ walked out
of Glass.) He's also none too honest; compare Michael Nyman on Purcell.
Reich's case is rather different, with good and bad things appearing
_throughout_ his career. Thus *Clapping Music* is an example of the
early(ish) bad. (I go back to *O Dem Watermelons*.) However, the equally
spare jazz paradiddles of *Piano Phase* are actually rather good.
It's more (or different, I think) than their not being carried very far.
Compare Rzewski's bitter *Coming Together* with Reich's vapid *Come Out*,
both composed in the sixties, the era of 'civil rights'. The entire text of
the Reich piece is, 'I like had to open up the bruise to let some of the
bruise blood <come out to show them>', with the <brackets> marking the
phrase that's then looped and phased. The process is interesting, to some
degree, but does nothing for the text. By contrast, Rzewski repeats
sentences drawn from letters written from Attica prior to the 'riot' (and
the death of the prisoner who wrote them) to build up a structure, stepwise,
first one, then one and two, then one two and three, and so on, which is
then taken apart. Here is the bravery and inarticulate bombast of the
opening sentence: 'I think the combination of age and the greater coming
together is responsible for the speed of the passing time.' Rzewski's very
simple add/subtract process allows ironies to develop which are simply
smothered in the Reich: the effect is of a drowning man commenting on his
swimming ability.
When minimalism is not programmatic in this way, it can become quasi
religious. I'm thinking here particularly of how LaMonte Young seems to
operate, with respect to microtonalism. But the same is true of, say, the
eccentric worldview created and promoted by Charlemagne Palestine.
CW
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'We are empowered by being constrained' (Norman Fairclough)
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