Editor, Ted Libbey
With Classical 101, Amazon.com's expert editors introduce music fans to key composers and performers, important stylistic movements, and milestone recordings in the history of classical music. In this mailing, contributor Ted Libbey introduces the minimalist movement--in its American and European varieties--as a background to the music of Arvo Part (b. 1935).
A New Style Arising
One of the most interesting developments of the past quarter century has been the growth of minimalism as a musical style. Minimalism started out as a reaction to the complex, rigidly organized, dissonant, and emotionally crabbed language of post-World War II modernism. Using simple procedures and relying on various kinds of formulaic repetition in which a single rhythmic or melodic element might change at any given time, "minimalism" was an attempt to embrace the living and intuitive side of music, after years of abstraction.
Among the Americans who made a go of minimalism during the 1970s and 1980s, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams are certainly the most familiar. Each has utilized the methods of minimalism in his own particular way, and each has his own distinctive sound, but all of them have produced music that is incisive and energetic, pulsatingly alive and colorful. As time has gone by, their treatment of compositional elements has become more subtle and organic, so that the term "minimalism" hardly seems appropriate any more. Over the past decade, Reich and Adams, in particular, along with younger composers like Michael Daugherty, have developed a kind of "maximal" minimalism that utilizes more and more of the expressive resources of conventional tonal music--in a sense rejoining the mainstream of musical thought from which modernism increasingly appears to have been a departure.
"Reich: Music for 18 Musicians"
performed by Rebecca Armstrong, Marion Beckenstein, et al.
Check out the CD here
"Adams: The Chairman Dances"
performed by The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
Check out the CD here
"Koyaanisqatsi (1998 Re-recording)"
composed by Philip Glass
"Holy Minimalism"
Meanwhile, in Europe, minimalism has experienced a second birth, developing along different but no less interesting lines. In the mid-1970s, as the American minimalists were coming to prominence, a number of European composers also turned away from the abstract, highly systematized procedures of the avant-garde, in search of a language that would lend itself to the expression of emotion and allow them to communicate in a direct yet profound way with listeners. In the vanguard of this movement have been four composers--Arvo Part, Henryk Gorecki, Sofia Gubaidulina, and John Tavener--who, though they come from quite different backgrounds, have at least two things in common: a distaste for the intellectual aridity of most contemporary music and a strong religious orientation.
Their brand of minimalism has been called "holy minimalism" by some, to distinguish it from the American variety, and occasionally they get referred to, somewhat irreverently, as "the God squad." That is not to make light of their achievement, which has been extraordinary. Indeed, Polish composer Henryk Gorecki's three-movement Symphony No. 3, known as the "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," has become one of the most popular classical compositions of the past 25 years, thanks in large part to the runaway success of the Nonesuch recording featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw with the London Sinfonietta conducted by David Zinman--which went to the top of the charts in England, and in this country as well, and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies over the past 10 years.
The music of English composer John Tavener has also enjoyed tremendous popularity with listeners and performers alike, and is very well represented on recordings. Millions of people were touched by Tavener's beautiful "Song for Athene," which was performed by Martin Neary and the Westminster Abbey Choir at the funeral services for Princess Diana in 1997. And Tavener's most significant instrumental work to date, "The Protecting Veil" for cello and string orchestra, has been recorded at least half a dozen times in the 10 years since it was premiered, most recently, and with notable success, by Yo-Yo Ma. It is a strikingly original and beautiful piece, lyrical in feeling, and absolutely luminous in sound.
Russian-born Sofia Gubaidulina has also won great acclaim with her intensely expressive music and attracted the attention of some pretty impressive champions among performers, including Mstislav Rostropovich and Gidon Kremer. Some observers have hailed her as the true successor to Shostakovich; as with Gorecki and Tavener, there is a strong spiritual dimension to her music.
"Gorecki: Symphony no 3"
performed by Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta
"John Tavener: Innocence"
conducted by Martin Neary
"Tavener: The Protecting Veil, Wake Up...and Die"
performed by Yo-Yo Ma
Check out the CD here
"Gubaidulina: Offertorium, etc"
conducted by Charles Dutoit
Check out the CD here
The Spellbinding Arvo Part
The austere, otherworldly beauty of Estonian-born composer Arvo Part's music has struck a chord with many listeners since recordings began appearing on the ECM label about 15 years ago. The spareness of Part's idiom and the pureness and fragility of his gestures call for a special sensitivity on the part of performers, but in the right hands his music can be utterly spellbinding. Part started out as a typical postwar serialist but changed direction several times, finding his true voice after several years of silence in the 1970s. His breakthrough came with the hauntingly beautiful concertino for two violins, strings, and prepared piano called "Tabula Rasa," composed in 1977. It was recorded originally by Gidon Kremer (for whom it was written), and has been recorded several times since, most recently by one of today's emerging stars, Gil Shaham. Nearly all of Part's subsequent production has been put on disc, making him one of the best documented of living composers.
"Tabula Rasa, etc"
performed by Dennis Russell Davies, et al.
Check out the CD here
"Tabula Rasa, etc"
conducted by Neeme Jarvi; performed by Adele Anthony, Gil
Shaham, et al.
Check out the CD here
