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44-489: Electric Counterpoint is a minimalist composition by the American composer Steve Reich . The piece consists of three movements, "Fast," "Slow", and "Fast". Reich has offered two versions of the piece: one for electric guitar and tape (the tape part featuring two electric bass guitars and up to ten electric guitars), the other for an ensemble of guitars. The work shares similarities with Reich's New York Counterpoint . It

88-545: A brief period with Hans Werner Henze and met John Cage and David Tudor . In 1958, he attended Cage's courses at the New School for Social Research (now The New School ). In 1959 he taught classes there himself, becoming the first American to teach purely electronic music (as opposed to electroacoustic music based on musique concrète -style recordings with microphones). As a student at University of California and in Europe in

132-550: A doctoral dissertation on Maxfield at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Hartnett places Maxfield as a crucial contributor to the experimental art and music of the late 1950s and early 1960s, placing him in the context of Guy Debord, William Burroughs, and Samuel Beckett. Hartnett wrote about "...experimental, time-based, and technologically reproducible art objects produced between 1954 and 1964 to represent 'the real'... [in which] ...vectors of influence between art and

176-529: A kind of social pathology, as an aural sign that American audiences are primitive and uneducated ( Pierre Boulez ); that kids nowadays just want to get stoned ( Donal Henahan and Harold Schonberg in the New York Times); that traditional Western cultural values have eroded in the liberal wake of the 1960s ( Samuel Lipman ); that minimalist repetition is dangerously seductive propaganda, akin to Hitler 's speeches and advertising ( Elliott Carter ); even that

220-428: A long time. It includes pieces made exclusively from recordings of rivers and streams. It includes pieces that move in endless circles. It includes pieces that set up an unmoving wall of saxophone sound. It includes pieces that take a very long time to move gradually from one kind of music to another kind. It includes pieces that permit all possible pitches, as long as they fall between C and D. It includes pieces that slow

264-423: A lyrical melody in long, arching phrases...[It] utilizes repetitive melodic patterns, consonant harmonies, motoric rhythms, and a deliberate striving for aural beauty." Timothy Johnson holds that, as a style, minimal music is primarily continuous in form, without disjunct sections. A direct consequence of this is an uninterrupted texture made up of interlocking rhythmic patterns and pulses. It is in addition marked by

308-759: A sample from Steve Reich's work Electric Counterpoint (1987). Further acknowledgement of Steve Reich's possible influence on electronic dance music came with the release in 1999 of the Reich Remixed tribute album which featured reinterpretations by artists such as DJ Spooky , Mantronik , Ken Ishii , and Coldcut , among others. 22 Strickland, Edward, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001) 35 Strickland, Edward, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music (Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 46, quoted in Fink (2005), 118. Richard Maxfield Richard Vance Maxfield (February 2, 1927 – June 27, 1969)

352-534: A series of works that incorporated additive process (form based on sequences such as 1, 1 2, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 4) into the repertoire of minimalist techniques; these works included Two Pages , Music in Fifths , Music in Contrary Motion , and others. Glass was influenced by Ravi Shankar and Indian music from the time he was assigned a film score transcription of music by Ravi Shankar into western notation. He realized that in

396-515: A single page, this work has frequently been viewed as the beginning of musical minimalism." Inspired by his work with Terry Riley on the premiere of In C , Steve Reich produced three works— It's Gonna Rain and Come Out for tape, and Piano Phase for live performers—that introduced the idea of phase shifting, or allowing two identical phrases or sound samples played at slightly different speeds to repeat and slowly go out of phase with each other. Starting in 1968 with 1 + 1 , Philip Glass wrote

440-507: A string quartet in pure, uninflected C major. In the early 1960s, Riley made two electronic works using tape delay, Mescalin Mix (1960-1962) and The Gift (1963), which injected the idea of repetition into minimalism. In 1964, Riley's In C made persuasively engaging textures from the layered performance of repeated melodic phrases. The work is scored for any group of instruments and/or voices. Keith Potter writes "its fifty-three modules notated on

484-621: A work of art music in the Western classical tradition , and its innovations in the musical language of rock can be compared to those that introduced atonal and other nontraditional techniques into that classical tradition." The development of specific experimental rock genres such as krautrock , space rock (from the 1980s), noise rock , and post-rock was influenced by minimal music. Philip Sherburne has suggested that noted similarities between minimal forms of electronic dance music and American minimal music could easily be accidental. Much of

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528-429: A world of minimalism. All that junk mail I get every single day repeats; when I look at television I see the same advertisement, and I try to follow the movie that's being shown, but I'm being told about cat food every five minutes. That is minimalism." Fink notes that Carter's general loathing of the music is representative of a form of musical snobbery that dismisses repetition more generally. Carter has even criticised

572-488: The commodity-fetishism of modern capitalism has fatally trapped the autonomous self in minimalist narcissism ( Christopher Lasch ). Elliott Carter maintained a consistent critical stance against minimalism and in 1982 he went so far as to compare it to fascism in stating that "one also hears constant repetition in the speeches of Hitler and in advertising. It has its dangerous aspects." When asked in 2001 how he felt about minimal music he replied that "we are surrounded by

616-458: The 1950s, he composed instrumental scores in a neoclassical style and then adopted 12-tone techniques. It is however techniques for composing with magnetic tape that would prove decisive in the development of Maxfield's mature compositions. Among his innovations with tape music were the simultaneous performance of improvised instrumental solos with tapes based upon samples of the same soloist, re-editing of tapes before each public performance so that

660-449: The West time is divided like a slice of bread ; Indians and other cultures take small units and string them together. According to Richard E. Rodda, " 'Minimalist' music is based upon the repetition of slowly changing common chords [chords that are diatonic to more than one key, or else triads, either just major, or major and minor—see: common tone ] in steady rhythms, often overlaid with

704-516: The care of artist friend Walter de Maria . He moved to San Francisco , where he taught at San Francisco State College (1966–67). In 1969, he moved to Los Angeles . On June 27, 1969, Maxfield committed suicide in LA by jumping out a window of the Figueroa Hotel at the age of 42. The MELA Foundation currently maintains the archive of Maxfield's works. In 2017, art historian Gerald Hartnett finished

748-399: The charm of Steve Reich 's early music had to do with perceptual phenomena that were not actually played, but resulted from subtleties in the phase-shifting process. In other words, the music often does not sound as simple as it looks. In Gann's further analysis, during the 1980s minimalism evolved into less strict, more complex styles such as postminimalism and totalism , breaking out of

792-582: The cybernetic and computational sciences...responded to technological reproducibility in three ways. First of all, writers Guy Debord and William Burroughs reinvented appropriation art practice as a means of critiquing retrograde mass media entertainments and reportage. Second, Western art music composer Richard Maxfield mobilized chance techniques and indeterminacy to resist scientific and philosophical determinism’s pervasive influences upon post-1945 art and life. Third, author and playwright Samuel Beckett conjectured that ubiquitous recording might become problematic to

836-495: The development of an earlier style had run its course to extreme and unsurpassable complexity. Parallels include the advent of the simple Baroque continuo style following elaborate Renaissance polyphony and the simple early classical symphony following Bach 's monumental advances in Baroque counterpoint . In addition, critics have often overstated the simplicity of even early minimalism. Michael Nyman has pointed out that much of

880-433: The face of mass-production and The Bomb ". Steve Reich has argued that such criticism is misplaced. In 1987 he stated that his compositional output reflected the popular culture of postwar American consumer society because the "elite European-style serial music " was simply not representative of his cultural experience. Reich stated that Stockhausen , Berio , and Boulez were portraying in very honest terms what it

924-569: The few composers to self-identify as minimalist, also claims to have been first to use the word as new music critic for The Village Voice . He describes "minimalism": The idea of minimalism is much larger than many people realize. It includes, by definition, any music that works with limited or minimal materials: pieces that use only a few notes, pieces that use only a few words of text, or pieces written for very limited instruments, such as antique cymbals, bicycle wheels, or whiskey glasses. It includes pieces that sustain one basic electronic rumble for

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968-659: The filmmaker Michael Snow (as performers, in Reich's case). The music of Moondog of the 1940s and '50s, which was based on counterpoint developing statically over steady pulses in often unusual time signatures influenced both Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Glass has written that he and Reich took Moondog's work "very seriously and understood and appreciated it much more than what we were exposed to at Juilliard". La Monte Young 's 1958 composition Trio for Strings consists almost entirely of long tones and rests . It has been described as an origin point for minimalist music. One of

1012-428: The first minimalist compositions was November by Dennis Johnson, written in 1959. A work for solo piano that lasted around six hours, it demonstrated many features that would come to be associated with minimalism, such as diatonic tonality, phrase repetition, additive process, and duration. La Monte Young credits this piece as the inspiration for his own magnum opus, The Well-Tuned Piano. In 1960, Terry Riley wrote

1056-437: The first to develop compositional techniques that exploit a minimal approach. The movement originally involved dozens of composers, although only five (Young, Riley, Reich, Glass, and later John Adams ) emerged to become publicly associated with American minimal music; other lesser known pioneers included Dennis Johnson , Terry Jennings , Richard Maxfield , Pauline Oliveros , Phill Niblock , and James Tenney . In Europe,

1100-552: The guitar ensemble Forestare made the first recording of the lesser known second version, on ATMA Classique . The original recording, as included in the Works 1965–1995 box set, lasts slightly under fifteen minutes. As with other pieces by Reich, Electric Counterpoint has influenced many modern artists, such as the Orb , who sampled the third movement of the Pat Metheny recording as one of

1144-488: The hooks of " Little Fluffy Clouds ," and RJD2 , who sampled the piece's opening for his song "The Proxy" from his first release, Deadringer. In 2008 Joby Burgess' Powerplant arranged the work for Xylosynth , taking influence from Metheny and the Orb. Röyksopp released two remixes of the third movement in 2010 for free, one which follows Reich's original closely and another reinterpretation titled "Milde Salve". Since 2012, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has performed

1188-555: The latter influencing Cale's work with the band. Terry Riley's album A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969) was released during the era of psychedelia and flower power , becoming the first minimalist work to have crossover success, appealing to rock and jazz audiences. Music theorist Daniel Harrison coined the Beach Boys ' Smiley Smile (1967) an experimental work of "protominimal rock", elaborating: "[The album] can almost be considered

1232-944: The minimalist aesthetic was embraced by figures such as jazz musician John Lewis and multidisciplinary artist Julius Eastman . The early compositions of Glass and Reich are somewhat austere, with little embellishment on the principal theme . These are works for small instrumental ensembles, of which the composers were often members. In Glass's case, these ensembles comprise organs, winds—particularly saxophones—and vocalists, while Reich's works have more emphasis on mallet and percussion instruments. Most of Adams's works are written for more traditional European classical music instrumentation, including full orchestra , string quartet , and solo piano. The music of Reich and Glass drew early sponsorship from art galleries and museums, presented in conjunction with visual-art minimalists like Robert Morris (in Glass's case), and Richard Serra , Bruce Nauman , and

1276-534: The music of Louis Andriessen , Karel Goeyvaerts , Michael Nyman , Howard Skempton , Éliane Radigue , Gavin Bryars , Steve Martland , Henryk Górecki , Arvo Pärt and John Tavener exhibits minimalist traits. It is unclear where the term minimal music originates. Steve Reich has suggested that it is attributable to Michael Nyman, an assertion that two scholars, Jonathan Bernard, and Dan Warburton, have also made in writing. Philip Glass believes Tom Johnson coined

1320-459: The music technology used in dance music has traditionally been designed to suit loop-based compositional methods, which may explain why certain stylistic features of styles such as minimal techno sound similar to minimal art music. One group who clearly did have an awareness of the American minimal tradition is the British ambient act The Orb . Their 1990 production " Little Fluffy Clouds " features

1364-488: The organization, combination, and individual characteristics of short, repetitive rhythmic patterns into the foreground. Leonard B. Meyer described minimal music in 1994: Because there is little sense of goal-directed motion, [minimal] music does not seem to move from one place to another. Within any musical segment, there may be some sense of direction, but frequently the segments fail to lead to or imply one another. They simply follow one another. As Kyle Gann puts it,

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1408-563: The phrase. The word "minimal" was perhaps first used in relation to music in 1968 by Michael Nyman , who "deduced a recipe for the successful 'minimal-music' happening from the entertainment presented by Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik at the ICA ", which included a performance of Springen by Henning Christiansen and a number of unidentified performance-art pieces. Nyman later expanded his definition of minimal music in his 1974 book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond . Tom Johnson, one of

1452-537: The piece at several festivals and at concerts featuring the London Contemporary Orchestra ; he recorded the piece for a Nonesuch album of Reich works titled Radio Rewrite released that same year, the title piece of which was inspired by two Radiohead songs. The third movement was included in the Edexcel GCSE Anthology of Music , in the second area of study, "Music in the 20th Century". It

1496-433: The pieces were not fixed in a single form, and the use of the erase head of the tape machine as a sound source. In early 1961, Maxfield and La Monte Young co-curated proto-Fluxus events at Yoko Ono 's loft. Maxfield was also a friend of Terry Riley and participated in the publication Young and Jackson Mac Low 's An Anthology of Chance Operations in 1963. In 1967, Maxfield left his tape music, scores and equipment in

1540-484: The strongly framed repetition and stasis of early minimalism, and enriching it with a confluence of other rhythmic and structural influences. Minimal music has had some influence on developments in popular music. The experimental rock act The Velvet Underground had a connection with the New York down-town scene from which minimal music emerged, rooted in the close working relationship of John Cale and La Monte Young ,

1584-786: The tempo down to two or three notes per minute. Already in 1965 the art historian Barbara Rose had named La Monte Young's Dream Music , Morton Feldman 's characteristically soft dynamics, and various unnamed composers "all, to a greater or lesser degree, indebted to John Cage " as examples of "minimal art", but did not specifically use the expression "minimal music". The most prominent minimalist composers are La Monte Young , Terry Riley , Steve Reich , Philip Glass , John Adams , and Louis Andriessen . Others who have been associated with this compositional approach include Terry Jennings , Gavin Bryars , Tom Johnson , Michael Nyman , Michael Parsons , Howard Skempton , Dave Smith , James Tenney , and John White . Among African-American composers,

1628-595: The time. After the three composers moved to the East Coast, their music became associated with the New York Downtown scene of the mid-1960s, where it was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School. In the Western art music tradition, the American composers Moondog , La Monte Young , Terry Riley , Steve Reich , and Philip Glass are credited with being among

1672-542: The tonality used in minimal music lacks "goal-oriented European association[s]". David Cope lists the following qualities as possible characteristics of minimal music: Famous pieces that use this technique are the number section of Glass' Einstein on the Beach , Reich's tape-loop pieces Come Out and It's Gonna Rain , and Adams' Shaker Loops . Robert Fink offers a summary of some notable critical reactions to minimal music: ... perhaps it can be understood as

1716-421: The use of bright timbres and an energetic manner. Its harmonic sonorities are distinctively simple, usually diatonic, often consist of familiar triads and seventh chords, and are presented in a slow harmonic rhythm. Johnson disagrees with Rodda, however, in finding that minimal music's most distinctive feature is the complete absence of extended melodic lines. Instead, there are only brief melodic segments, thrusting

1760-505: The use of repetition in the music of Edgard Varèse and Charles Ives , stating that "I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times." Ian MacDonald claimed that minimalism is the "passionless, sexless and emotionally blank soundtrack of the Machine Age , its utopian selfishness no more than an expression of human passivity in

1804-807: Was a composer of instrumental, electroacoustic , and electronic music . Born in Seattle , Maxfield studied at Stanford University , University of California, Berkeley (with Roger Sessions ) and privately with Ernst Krenek in Los Angeles . A Hertz Prize travel scholarship allowed Maxfield to travel to Europe, where he met Pierre Boulez , Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono . In 1953 he studied at Tanglewood with Aaron Copland . In 1954-55 he studied at Princeton University with Sessions and his pupil Milton Babbitt . A Fulbright Scholarship allowed Maxfield to live in Europe between 1955 and 1957, where he studied with Luigi Dallapiccola and Bruno Maderna , lived for

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1848-467: Was first recorded in 1987 by guitarist Pat Metheny , who made extensive use of overdubbing , and was released along with Reich's Different Trains , performed by the Kronos Quartet , on Nonesuch Records (catalogue number 979 176-2). Guitarists wishing to perform the piece may use Metheny's pre-recorded ensemble part or opt to record their own, adding the 13th guitar part in live performance. In 2007,

1892-657: Was included in the video game Civilization V as one of the "great works of music" and was performed by during the Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps 2015 production "Kinetic Noise". Minimalist music The approach originated on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly around the Bay Area , where La Monte Young , Terry Riley and Steve Reich were studying and living at

1936-408: Was like to pick up the pieces after World War II. But for some American in 1948 or 1958 or 1968—in the real context of tailfins, Chuck Berry and millions of burgers sold—to pretend that instead we're really going to have the darkbrown Angst of Vienna is a lie, a musical lie. Kyle Gann , himself a minimalist composer, has argued that minimalism represented a predictable return to simplicity after

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