Minimalism

• An original American  genre of experimental or "Downtown music" named in the 1960's. It demonstrates a tendency towards a simple and more direct music
• Minimalism is based mostly in consonant harmony, steady pulse, static tonal structures, additive rhythms, and slow transformation
• Typically it is characterized by constant thematic repetition and reiteration of musical phrases

Examples

In C ~ Terry Riley 

(1935)

• semi-aleatory work
• "a group of 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work"
• Response to the academic abstract serialist techniques used by composers in the mid-twentieth century
• consists of 53 short, numbered musical phrases, lasting from half a beat to 32 beats
• Each phrase may be repeated an arbitrary number of times
• players are encouraged to play the phrases starting at different times, even if they are playing the same phrase
• The performance directions state that the musical ensemble should try to stay within two to three phrases of each other
• the Phrases must be played in order, although some may be skipped
• It is customary for one musician "traditionally a beautiful girl" to play the note c in octaves in repeated eighth notes. This is referred to as the "pulse"

Music for 18 Musicians ~ Steve Reich

(1974)

• all voices amplified
• vibraphone is the conductor
• violin, cello, 4 voices, 4 pianos, 5 marimbas, 3 zylaphones, metallophone, clarinets/ 2 bass clarinets, 2 maracas
• Rhythmically: two basic times are occurring simultaneously: a regularly rhythmic pulse in the piano and mallet instruments that continues  throughout the piece; the rhythm of the human voice on vocals and winds
• "The combination of one breath after another gradually washing up like waves against the constant rhythm of the pianos and mallet instruments is something I have not heard before and would like to investigate further"
• structure: cycle of 11  chords played at the very beginning of the piece and repeated at the end

Phrygian Gates ~ John Adams

(1978)

• The Gates in the title is an allusion from the electronic music gates, a term from rapidly shifting modes
• The work is written in a minimalist style and based on a repetitive cell structure but Adams decisively moves away from the conventional techniques of minimalism
• The work is set in the phrygian mode and cycles through half the keys, modulating in the circle of 5ths
• there is a constant shifting between modules in Phrygian mode and lydian mode
• Adams explained that working with synthesizers caused a "diatonic conversion" - a reversion to the belief that tonality is a force of nature

Indeterminacy/ Chance/ Aleatory Music

• Music in which the composer introduces elements of chance or unpredictably with regards to the composition and/ or its performance
• the terms aleatory, chance music, indeterminacy, have been applied to many works created since 1945 by composers who differ widely as to the concepts, methods, and rigor with which they employ procedures of random selection

Aleatory

• European: Meyer-Eppler, Darmstadt (1957) ~ "its course is determined in general but depends on chance in detail"

Indeterminacy

• American: Cage, early Ives, Cowell ~ an aesthetic that strives for a fluid process that eliminates traditional control of the composer over the material

In the composition process:

• pitches, durations, degrees of intensity and other elements may be chosen or distributed in time by dice throwing, interpretation of abstract designs, or according to certain mathematical laws of chance (Xenakis, stochastic music)

In Performance

• Chance is allowed to operated by leaving the choice or order of appearance of some elements to the performer's discretion (Earl Brown, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Henri Pousseur)

Examples

Projections for Solo Cello ~ Morton Feldman
(1950)

• timbre indicated
• relative pitch is indicated as a square or oblong written in one of three boxes which represent either high, medium of low registers
• Duration is indicated by the amount of space taken up by the square or rectangle within the dotted lines
• dotted lines represent four pulses at tempo 72 "or therabouts"
• Indeterminate parameters

1. pitch within each of the three registers
2. dynamics
3. expression
   

Zeitmasze ~ Stockhausen
(1956)

• Wind Quintet
• Indeterminacy in time - flute and bassoon playing in exact time quarter note 112, set against oboe playing "as slow as possible", english horn "slow quickening"; clarinet begins after a pause of imprecise duration
• Imprecision is made part of the structure in the overall tempo and in the relative tempos of the five players. The tempos are dependent less on notational precision than on limitations of techniques and feasibility
• "is an elastic play of five time-strands, each of which mixes passages in strict tempo with others whose speed is determined by the musician's capacity to play as fast as possible or as slow as possible

Music of Changes ~ John Cage
(1951)

• solo piano
• Based off the I-Ching, a chinese classical text used to identify order in chance events
• four "books" of music
• Chart system used with 8x8 cells to accommodate the 64 hexagrams
• charts for sounds, durations and dynamics

Folio "December 1952" ~ Earle Brown

• Expansive palate of cultural influences, especially abstract-expressionism and jazz
• immediacy of what comes next
• single notes
• "music is my material but art is my subject"

Corroboree ~ Earle Brown
(1964)

• for 3 pianos

Four Instruments ~ Morton Feldman
(1965)

• A sound world where coordinates are staked out by extremely reduced dynamics and "glassy" timbres
• piano, tubular bells, string harmonics
• slow tempos
• minimal density of events
• Indeterminate parameters

1. duration open (typically 12 minutes)
2. coordination of parts
3. Some coordinated vertical events
4. player must enter before the previous event from another performer has died away - forming a continuity of surface

• silence used to anticipate events

Electronic Music

• Genres of music that use electronic oscillators and other analog equipment to create, modify and transform acoustic waves
• sound that is synthetically generated by an oscillator and enhanced through electronic means

Early Electronic instruments

• Telharmonium
• Theremin
• Ondes Martenot

Example

Composition for Synthesizer ~ Milton Babbit
(1961)

• Mark II Synthesizer
  

Musique Concrete and early electronic music

Early Electronic Instruments

• Telharmonium
• Theremin
• Ondes Martenot

Music Concrete

• Music produced from recorded sounds of all Kinds
• Concept and term introduced in 1948 by Pierre Schaeffer on the basis of his work at the French Radio in Paris
• Schaeffer's view: The concept excludes sounds that are electronically synthesized

Capabilities of Tape Technology

1. altered playback
2. reversed direction
3. cutting and splicing of tape
4. creation of a tape loop
5. tape delay
   

The Rise of the Radio Stations

1. French Radio - Pierre Schaeffer, Herbert Eimert
2. German Radio - Loenig, Stockhausen (first electronic music studio 1952)
3. Italian Radio - Berio, Maderna, Pousseur
4. USA - Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center - Ussachevsky, Luening, Babbit

Columbia-Princeton

• First large music center in the USA
• Ussachevsky collaborated with Mauser to experiment
• Summer of 1952, recorded Sonic Contours
• October 28th, 1952, first electronic composition presentation at the Museum of Modern Art
• 1954-55 - small studio in the gatehouse of an asylum
• 1957 - permanent studio, but too small for teaching
• 1959 - music center founded
  

Examples

Etude aux chemis de fer ~ Pierre Schaeffer
(1948)

• recorded sounds of locomotives

Etude Noire ~ Pierre Schaeffer
(1948)

Sonic Contours ~ Vladimir Ussachevsky
(1952)

• superimposed tape loops of piano

Inventions in 12 Tones ~ Otto Luening
(1952)

• flute

Thema (Omaggio a Joyce) ~ Luciano Berio
(1958)

• Spoken/ sung text from Ulysses
  

Electroacoustic Music

1. Music that is produced, modified or reproduced by electronic means, including computer hardware and software, and that makes creative use of those technologies
2. Any music in which electricity has had some involvement in registration/ Production
3. More recently, much electroacoustic music has combined the use of such "concrete" sounds with wholly synthesized sounds as will as with live performance

Examples

Gesange der Jungling ~ Karlheinz Stockhausen
(1958)

• utilized both synthesized and vocal sounds
• speech sounds of children
• Song of the Youths in the Fiery Furnace from the Biblical passage of Daniel

Poeme Electronique ~ Edgar Varese
(1958)

• Written especially for the Brussels World Fair
• 400 speakers surrounding the audience
• uses both concrete and synthesized sounds
• Extremely sophisticated work

Imaginary Landscapes I ~ John Cage
(1939)

• important for being one of the first examples of electroacoustic pieces
• for performers
• muted piano, cymbal, two variable-speed turntables with amplifiers and frequency recorders
• all of the imaginary landscape works include instruments requiring electricity
• "It's not a physical landscape, it's a term reserved for the new technologies. It's a landscape in the future."

Textural Music/ Sound Mass

• a Trend of the later 1950's
• shaping music through its larger sonic attributes rather than as an accumulation of individual elements
• Sound Mass composition minimizes the importance of pitches in preference for texture, timbre, and dynamics as primary shapers of gesture and impact
• developed from the modernist tone clusters and spread to orchestral writing by the late 1950's
• Sound Mass obscures the line between sound and noise
  

Examples:

Makrokosmos I by George Crumb
(1972)

• Crumb combines conventional piano techniques to form a synthesis
• Each piece is associated with a sign of the zodiac
• Makrokosmos requires special techniques: pizzicato using both the finger nail and the finger tip, muted tones, production of harmonics on strings
• Strings should be clearly marked with bits of tape. Modal parts for harmonics should be indicated with tiny slivers of tape on the string
• mystic, surreal
• full range of piano, inside and outside, tried to use all possible techniques
• innovative, extended techniques combined with conventional techniques

Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima ~ Krzysztof Penderecki
(1960)

• String ensemble not organized in the normal five part groupings, each instrument has its own part
• traditional textural components such as melody and harmony absent
• chromatic bands/clusters - listener perceives undifferentiated mass of certain width and dynamic level
  
• form is thus primarily determined by the transformation and development of generalized shapes
• Penderecki ignores the distinctions between pitch and noise, drawing from a wide spectrum of available sounds
• Proportional Notation = the temporal placement of musical events is approximate
• Graphic Notation = nontraditional symbols represent musical information
• Extended Techniques = between the bridge and tailpiece, playing behind the bridge, striking sounding board with fingertips

Chamber Concerto for 13 Instruments Part I ~ Gyorgy Ligeti
(1969)

• four woodwinds, two brass, five strings, two keyboard instruments
• "micropolyphony" - a simultaneity of different lines, rhythms and timbers
• 4 movement work

1. cluster micropolyphony - polyphonic and contains "micropolyphonically interwoven lines that merge together to form a homogeneous texture"
2. homophonic and static
3. mechanical in the manner of clockwork
4. insainly virtuosic presto

• imperceptible entrances and exits

Atmosphere ~ Gyorgy Ligeti
(1961)

• 52 individual parts
• Formed clusters from separate components that changed constantly to produce subtly transforming internal patterns - micropolyphony
• Opening cluster chord that spans 5 octaves
• Slow changes in dynamics
  

I Left My Heart in a Cardboard Box

My encounter with those living with poverty or exceptionalities through my experience delivering lunches with the Hunger Coalition at Benedictine College struck a chord in me that I did not realize was so out of tune. I did not experience very closely during this time a great connection to persons with exceptionalities, but the reality which confronted me as I stepped into the homes of those whom I encountered filled me with a kind of sickeningly sorrowful sense of helplessness.

To perfectly amplify and clarify what I was feeling, at one of the houses where we stopped there was a box of very young kittens, beautiful and delicately small. I knelt and picked one of them up, petting its fur gently and feeling like I was in heaven they were so beautiful. Never mind that they were dirty, never mind that they looked desperately hungry, they were the most beautiful kittens in the world to me. The lady of the house looked at me and said “if you want em, take em! I can't care for em.” If there was a policy that let me take stray kittens into my dorm, I would have snatched that box up in an instant, but alas, it was with a sigh of dejection that I extracted the kitten from my sweater, where he had latched his claws as if to say “don't leave me!”and walked away.

I felt as though I were leaving part of my heart behind as we drove away, and as I reflected upon the rest of my day, I felt for the persons I met in a similar manner. I felt as though I were giving them something for a day, but who would be there tomorrow? I held that kitten for a minute, but what it needed was more than a minute, it needed a family to love and take care of it. I am not infinitely wealthy and I can not bi-locate, so I can not solve all of the world's problems through my presence and monetary support, but maybe that's the point. All I have to give in my own student poverty are my prayers, my time, and one meal a week. The potency of my prayers I leave in the hands of the Lord, but after witnessing the joy my time gave to Gloria, the excited faces of children who held my dinner in their hands, I could not possibly bring myself to do anything less than giving everything I can possibly give. It's intoxicatingly beautiful, and a much better feeling than walking away, feeling like you've left your heart behind in a cardboard box to starve.