Director: Benjamin Whalley
Title: Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism (2018)
Where: YouTube, Streamed
Tones, Drones and Arpeggios is a two-part BBC documentary on the American minimalist movement, focussing on the “Big Four” composers: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass. The narrator and primary interviewer is the British composer Charles Hazlewood, who does have one-on-one interviews with all four.
Young, Riley and Glass have strong Indian influences in their work, although it seems indirect, especially in comparison to the more overt influences of, say, George Harrison. (Reich, in contrast, studied drumming in Ghana.) The instruments and orchestration used by all four seem to distance them from these influences, as their works primarily feature piano, synthesizers, tape loops, and they are not much associated with using instruments from their influencing cultures. That may be an overly broad generation, but I don’t know that I would have be aware of those influences without having read about them.
Both Young and Riley are focussed on spiritualism and are identified as Californian minimalists. (It’s not clear to me that Young has a California connection, but he and Riley do seem aligned with the hippie movement. In contrast, Steve Reich and Philip Glass are presented as New Yorkers effectively becoming the establishment, as the most successful composers today.
It is interesting to note that one of Reich’s most interesting techniques (phasing), arose by an accident with the tape loop that became one of his most powerful pieces, Come Out. (Gavin Bryars’s work Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet developed in a similar accident.) How often do such accidents arise where we are composing or playing music with intention. It does remind me how important it is to create enough to allow these sorts of opportunities.
In covering Glass’s educational background, the documentary omits his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, to emphasize his work with Ravi Shankar, and states that he “turned his back on the classical music world”. My recollection from Glass in his Words Without Music is that he considered her as equal an influence as Shankar.
Musically, all four of their early works are very much built on repeated patterns. At one point it is suggested by Hazlewood that the minimalism is in the contrast between patterns, not that there is anything minimal about the patterns themselves, in contrast to minimalist visual arts.
Glass attributes the “minimalist” label to Tom Johnson, the American composer and Village Voice critic, while Reich believes it was coined by the British composer Michael Nyman.
Crossovers: Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, and Brian Eno/David Bowie’s collaborations.
Works featured:
- Young: The Well-Tuned Piano
- Riley: In C
- Reich: Come Out, Music for 18 Musicians
- Glass: Music with Changing Parts, Einstein on the Beach
Other notes:
- Young is identified as a student of Cage, and Glass was influenced by Cage’s writings
- Both Young and Riley studied with Indian classical singer Pandit Pran Nath
- The group of composers known as Bang on a Can (and member Julia Wolfe) are mentioned as a later influence
- The presentation of the two halves Young/Riley and Glass/Reich is quite different. Was the former a dead end?
- Why wasn’t John Adams mentioned?
- Interesting quote: Terry Riley says of minimalism, “In all honesty, I haven’t kept up with it. Because it’s not my favourite music to listen to.”
References