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Minimalism:Origins

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In Strickland's previous book, American Composers, he demonstrated a broad knowledge of various musics (he had written extensively, for example, on Glenn Gould and John Coltrane)in lively conversations with leading composers. His book on Minimalism is primarily first-rate cultural history, with more technical and formal analysis, curiously, in the sections of art than in the central section on music. His style is fluid and often witty, occasionally turgid only in some of the more technical passages, perhaps inevitably.

One thing missing in the book is reproductions of the art and music (there is one at the head of each section), possibly because Strickland seems to be trying to create a Minimalist work of art himself here--from the bare buff cover (in the hardback; the revised paperback edition includes the ISBN code, laudatory reviews and a synopsis on the back cover) to the naming of chapters by letters and sections by a single word ("Paint, Sound," "Space" and "End"). There is nothing minimal about the documentation, however, for the book relies on an abundance of primary sources.

The section on painting is probably the most controversial. Strickland has lengthy chapters on Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly, Ad Reinhardt et al. in redefining Minimalism as a movement developing WITHIN Abstract Expressionism. Many of the 60s painters normally identified as FOUNDING the movement he treats as academizing the movement. His viewpoint is equally debatable and thought-provoking, defended on empirical rather than conceptual grounds.

The section on Minimalist music is the liveliest as Strickland traces in remarkable detail its development from LaMonte Young through Terry Riley to Steve Reich to Philip Glass. His attribution of a chain of influence seems just, though the last composer has discounted it in favor of acknowledging Indian music as the central influence on his early work. Strickland discusses the influence of that music and Indonesian music, earlier classical music (from Leoninus and Bach to Debussy to Webern) and jazz (Coltrane is referred to again and again by the composers and the author).

The best sections may be the first and last, and those are the ones to read for those uninterested in studying the subject in depth. Strickland's interdisciplinary delineation of Minimalist characteristics in "A" is masterly; his discussion of the philosophical implications of the movement in "W" is thoughtful and occasionally poetic.

Mr.Stricklands' essays are very insightful with regard to the rise of minimalist music. I was intrigued enough about Terry Riley after reading about him that I went to his website and purchased "In C". I am a fan of Reich, Glass, Young, and Adams, but had somehow let Mr. Riley slip through the cracks. The 25th Anniversary reissue of "In C" is well worth the effort. It was very refreshing to read about these people, and Mr.Strickland shed some new light on a sometimes confusing era. The same cannot be said for his handling of the minimalist painters. His essays were often repetitive, and he seemed to be struggling to find metaphor behind every zip and brush-stroke. I am not a fan of minimalist sculpture, and so recuse myself from entering into a discussion about the third, and last, section of his book.

Very unusual volume: stark cover; Table of Contents consisting of "Paint," "Sound," "Space" and "End" with chapters named A-Z; no Preface--though quite extensive Bibliography. Symmetrical structure--about 135 pp. each on music and art, with the central "Sound" flanked by shorter sections on painting and sculpture, flanked in turn by an engagingly lucid intro and suggestive conclusion: the resonant last words of the book are "no one, by definition, knows."

"Paint" is organized by artist while "Sound" is mainly chronological, since Strickland argues for musical lineage from Young to Riley to Reich to Glass, while his heterodox view of Minimalist painters, most Abstract Expressionists in any other book, presents Newman, Reinhardt et al. as working independently and at philosophical odds with one another. Strickland's sympathy is clearly with Reinhardt's anti-manifestos and against Newman's high-flown theorizing, though he praises his art.

In fact the author seems to have an ingrained suspicion of theorizing in general. An excellent cultural historian, he is no philosopher, unless maybe a Sceptic confronting the conventional wisdom of art critics. As a music prof, he gets A+ for chutzpah with his "Emperor's New Clothes" approach to mainstream art critics and the commerce of the art world, which he describes on p. 2 as a "futures market." By the time he gets to the sculpture, Strickland's scepticism extends to the artists themselves. That section leads to a conclusion verging on a retraction in its ambivalent review of the Minimalist enterprise.

His views and often droll style are refreshing. His formal dissections of the painting are more detailed than those of the music--establishing his bona fides?--and I'd like some more of the structural analysis he devotes to the transitional Glass Quartet, and more repros of the art and scores--but downloads are generally easy to find, so no big deal. I'd even like some more philosophy, e.g., a discussion of the work in terms of Jamesonian postmodern depthlessness. Since Strickland dismisses the very term postmodernism as "vulgarity" by p. 3 (along with Glass' commercials on "the boob-tube," ersatz-Minimalist advertising and "well-heeled culturophages") you get the feeling that's not on his agenda any more than campaigning for Mr. Congeniality. There are fine books by other music profs dealing mainly with their subject (Potter musicologically, Fink sociologically), but this remains far and away the most comprehensive survey of the artistic/musical movement as a whole, and you can't ask for everything...from A to Z?.

Strickland has situated Minimal Music within a vigorous and complex context here finding useful parallels with the minimalist canons and credos in the visual arts, and the bridges found there I think are many times tenuous and self-congradulatory for it is not a proven affinity, as Badiou might have found in the consistent modality within artistic movements.Within the visual arts that considers itself "minimal" began their gestures toward the search for a "purity",a "spirit" an "unadulterated" concept in the form of reducible shapes and geometries many years prior as with Barnett Newman(working simultaneously within the mileau of the maximal gestures of Jackson Pollock)and Ellsworth Kelly.So there has been a longer shall we say "gestation" period for it in the gaze,not the "ear".Although LaMonte Youngs long-sustained lines from his "Brass Octet" dates from the early Sixties, as other Fluxus expressions of the "minimal" event but that is more Dada in effect. The visual arts scene however was an early enthusiastic supporter to this repetitive music,more so than academia or the established concert venues,until it became popular.
So the "minimal" in music slowly made pathways into establishment venues,opera,and performance art,and it was well-suited with the post-modern canons of the apolitical passivity(only Fredric Rzewski bridged this gap to the political subject) and today it is commonplace,the fashionable circuits mixed with the strains of expression of the popular avant-garde, obsessed with the market and popular culture, the buzz and being loved.
Interestingly the structure of this book is divided for this emphasis into Paint, Sound, Space, and Strickland keeps this dialogue intact. So we find such geometrical creations by Donald Judd,identical size boxes descending downward along a wall,or simply cubes of varying shapes or the aluminum,plexi-glass,cubes,boxes situated as for eternity in Marfa Texas, a minimalist shrine in an old Army Base he purchased has no real equivalent in music. Likewise the powerful impersonal spirituality of the florescent lighting schemes of Dan Flavin or the shaped steel plates, and torqued ellipses of Richard Serra or floor covering, and fifty yards long wood planks and floor steel tiles of Carl Andre, not to mention the committed painters as Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, or Bridget Riley. All are here as Sol Le Witt.And again the equivalents in music areless than adequete,it isn't possible to speak of the two fields as sharing a focus.I beleive there are useful equivalents but it is on a case by case basis. I consider the first piece of musical minimalism,around Picasso's time and Stravinsky to be Erik Satie's "Vexations, a 9 Hour work of the same thorny quasi-chromatic phrase for piano solo, repeated incessantly at the same tempo or Cage's "Etudes Australes" a piece of minimalism for its static-ness,even orchestral pieces of Xenakis have a "stasis" dimension to it,that certainly has a more orthodox affinity for the term than the what became therather surface simplicity,the market concoctions of Glass,,Reich and Adams. These diverse kinds of works(that Strickland doesn't mention) are really never viewed from this perspective.
Strickland however keeps his narrative close to this visual world.But as close as one got to vigorously conceived works when all this began in the Seventies was Philip Glass who went by way of opera and that was a good vigorous start to place the minimalist musical canons within establishment venues,with a great structural pallette in place now to test its scope and longevity/ With text, theatre, peformance art and concept all now were burdened within the minimalist context.As important as these in-roads were Glass hadn't the theoretical ambition to nurture its implications further ,so he found facile route the most exciting and lucretive form for minimalism,now with electronification and augmented decible levels,trying to find affinity with the magnetic force of the rock genre/venue to some degree. He then simply fell prey to opera's complaisant seductions relying on tried and tested forms within opera's clostered structural genres, as duets, trios,intrumental interludes as in "Aknahten", and latter works the one with the simplistic use of the text of Doris Lessing.His works then after the operatic periods simply saw greater exhibitions of minimalist homogenizations of concept,surface flashes, reduced down to its lowest accessible form,without obviously jumping into another genre,as style=lized rock.
Where is the affinity for innovation and musical experimentalism? so prevalent in Glass's early ensemble Farfisa Organ works. So minimalism in ascendancy was quickly left to the market to consume it, Hollywood,wealth and power were safe havens for its musical language.And film scores abounded as the "Exorcist" in parts. Again Strickland adheres to the visual arts in order to buffer a safe zone within it, and to see where the two meet. They never really do,for music is more a collective experience,"let's groove together" whereas minimalist visual art is never hardly that it is an intense personal experience of contemplation. For these parallels,finding painterly concepts of tone, and gradations of colour distributions are largely useful if you examine the "origins" the original repertoire of minimal music, as lesser known composers as the late Terry Jennings and Tom Johnson. But as time wore on past the Seventies and Eighties minimalism found fewer and fewer similar conceptual and expressive features with the hardcore visual arts and theoretical paradigms of reference. Musical minimalism became homogenized, where even rockers found service in its (now-obvious)percolating rhythmic pulses,as Blondie,Devo,and the Techno studio layering cadres,there is even an "elevator music" minimalist jazz.The "minimal" canon in music became simply a reproducible language crossing borders as an oil-slick approaches distant shores. Strickland here thinks these "migrations" was one of minimalism staying powers, a longevity factor which proves its profound content, when in fact it was part of its dilution and demise into greater forms of homogenizations, and now fodder for least common denominators of expression subjected to it.
La Monte Young however,is given good space here, a post-Cage artist long a recluse creator,who found pleasure in listening to telephone generators, and motors, the inherent drones embodied in what we simply refer to as a "noise" also found an affinity for Just Intonation and the music of the East(as Reich,Riley,Glass) and mounted hours/days long performance of electronic drones, with Marian Zazeela,at blasted decible levels. He however was never a market icon, (no commercial potential as Frank Zappa would say)but in fact came closest toward finding equivalents to the visual arts conceptual world as Strickland searches for here.He did this in the Nine Hour "Well-Tuned Piano".
The concept of the long durational length is something that minimal music should have found from its start, not at the end of its demise. Of course the late Morton Feldman has been a rescuing agent here with his 6 Hour "Second String Quartet", the various piano solos "For Bunita Marcus", and "Triadic Memories", and the hours log "For Philip Guston, and "For Christian Wolff", for Flute and Piano are surely masterworks within musical minimalism. Length by itself is not the component that makes minimal music find itself with its visual arts brethren, no in Feldma's latter works you have also the incessant repetition of music materials, sometimes with self-defeating breaks, as in Feldman, where predictable almost Stravinskian moments come to the surface.

I think minimalism ended long ago,it does however still nourishes a pleasure in pure form and space, the "miniature" work is also a form neglected here.We speak now of a "post-minimalism" largely represented by the orchestral works and operas of John Adams. It is still a language that produces a music but why search for an experience already experienced.