{"id":49783,"date":"2018-05-22T10:52:09","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T17:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/?p=49783"},"modified":"2023-05-09T13:07:39","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T20:07:39","slug":"the-story-of-minimalism-part-two-from-minimal-to-maximal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allclassical.org\/the-story-of-minimalism-part-two-from-minimal-to-maximal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story of Minimalism \u2013 Part Two: From Minimal to Maximal"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Special Note: If you are new to this blog, click here<\/u><\/a> to first read Part One of this series.)<\/em><\/p>\n

New Horizons: Postminimalism <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/strong>In our last post, we left off with a broader conception of minimalism as a music which creates a listening experience that is meditative, non-teleological, and process-oriented. It is through this broader lens in which minimalism has expanded and evolved in more recent years. After the first wave of minimalist music in the 1960s and ’70s, the early 1980s brought about a trend music critic Kyle Gann calls the \u201cpost-minimalism,” arising from a new generation of up-and-coming composers which included William Duckworth, Janice Giteck, Daniel Lentz, Ingram Marshall, Jonathan Kramer. Early minimalist pieces were frequently very long (over 30 minutes) and had open instrumentation, with composers using their own flexible ensembles to perform the music. Postminimalist pieces, on the other hand, were notably shorter and often scored for a specific instrument or chamber ensemble.<\/p>\n

Postminimalist music still retained minimalism\u2019s core value: a usage of limited materials. New to postminimalism, however, was frequent quotation of other styles of music, both classical and non-classical. Daniel Lentz\u2019s The Crack in the Bell<\/em> (1986), for example, based on an e.e. cummings poem of the same name, utilizes minimalism\u2019s repetitive arpeggios and chords, but references everything from patriotic tunes to Renaissance motets. Another striking aspect of The Crack in the Bell<\/em> is the way the piece constantly shifts between different keys and tempos, creating a feeling of turbulence that departs from the steady beats of early minimalism. William Duckworth’s Time Curve Preludes<\/em> (1978-9), a cycle of 24 pieces for piano, is another example of an early postminimalist work. Like minimalism, the movements feature clean, non-modulating tonalities, but occasionally a sharp dissonance obscures the texture. Phase-shifting rhythmic patterns and ostinatos dominate the texture, a nod to the additive and subtractive processes of minimalist composer Steve Reich. Exactly these processes work, however, remain unclear to the ear – the structure cannot be figured out by simply listening.<\/p>\n