-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Walker <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Dec 11, 2003 4:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Minimalists (was Re: Ives at first hearing)
<snip>
I wasn't talking about influence but complexity. [MW]
<snip>
True enough, but:
- to criticise minimalism for its lack of complexity seems a little
perverse: LaMonte Young's score for Cunningham's *Winterbranch* consisted
of only two notes, if I remember. There have been more complex scores
- the music of the !Kung isn't an influence (as far as I am aware); Riley,
Young & Charlemagne Palestine were influenced by a specific N Indian
musician: Pran Nath. Glass claims influence from Carnatic music, though
(as I hope my post made clear) I'm not impressed by this assertion. The
terms 'analogue' and analogy' figured more than once in my post
What I'd hoped to try to address was your misidentification of 'complexity'
as a marker of good music: '... you wouldn't say, presumably, that *poetry*
is about the deft syntactic ordering of the polysyllable...,' as I put it.
<snip>
Note that I used three very different examples. [MW]
<snip>
My point (choosing salsa for convenience) was that they were irrelevant,
not that they were indistinguishable. They are all, as it happens, notatable
using a standard stave. Early Reich simply isn't. (Cf whichever edition it
is of Harvey Matusow's *Source* magazine that published one of the early
scores, from which you can see how he uses dots to join up the various
rhythmic 'snapshots'.)
<snip>
I've been listening to Indian music since 1960. A lot more interesting
rhythmically than Reich or Glass. [MW]
<snip>
Does this mean that if I say I've been listening to, for example, M S
Subulakshmi or Palghat T S Mani Iyer since 1959, I pluck a year out of the
air, I'll have won?
'Indian music' (which incorporates two major, several subsidiary classical
traditions and an extravagant number of folk traditions) seems to me 'a lot
more interesting rhythmically' than the entire Western canon, or at least a
lot more sophisticated, than the music of most of the rest of the world.
('... put together,' I'm _almost_ tempted to add.) But so what? I still
think it may be possible to compare examples of 'Indian music' with examples
of Reich, Glass, Riley & Young. (I still think it may be possible to like
Dan Flavin without comparing him, adversely, to Rembrandt.)
<snip>
You seem to think that if only we all knew how to listen we'd all like the
same things. [MW]
<snip>
Not so. What prompted my post (and this further response) was a sense that
your criticisms were both too general and misdirected. We happen to agree,
as it happens, on Glass in general and on Reich's *Clapping Music* in
particular. So it's not simply a matter of taste.
CW
__________________________________________
'I might have known you'd choose the easy way'
(Franz Kline's mother)
You're setting up a straw man that last time I looked wasn't me. Permit me to be thoroughy bored by some of the music you like despite the fact that we agree to dislike some other music. To try to justify your own interest at length is merely beside the point. What I can say is god knows I've tried.
Not everyone who likes minimalist music is incapable of listening with pleasure and understanding to other concert music, but I'd guess that the bulk of the audience for minimalism can be so described. Some of those who program classical music added minimalist compositions to the schedule to try to entice in the unwashed. We'll see how many stick for other fare. Concurrently the impresarios scheduled neoromantic garbage to satisfy the subscribers. Even more dreadful.
The keyboard I'm using must have peanut butter in it--I have to pound to get gs and fs, and it's no fun. Hence my brevity.
Mark
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