Making a Connection: Music
Introduction
Minimalism was not only seen in literature. By looking at other forms of minimalist art, we can develop a better understanding of what minimalism truly is. Minimalist music sparked around the same time that minimalist literature did. It emerged in the 1960's in the downtown scene of New York City, and became fairly popular for a period of time and spread throughout the rest of the United States. Minimalist music was known for the use of constant harmony, steady pulse, and the repetition of slowly changing chords. It is also known to have fairly continuous forms with few breaks in the rhythm. During a piece of minimalist music, one will hear fairly consistent tunes with the occasional emphasized brief melodies and patterns. With the fairly consistent background music, these interjecting melodies become very obvious. Three of the main composers that led this movement were Terry Reily, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass.
Minimalist music carries a few of the same characteristics that minimalist literature carries. Recall that minimalist literature does not use many adjectives and only keeps what is truly important. In a way, minimalist music does the same sort of thing. Since its background music is very consistent, allowing the interjecting melodies to be very obvious, it can be compared to a piece of minimalist literature's lack of words because the lack of words helps expose the topic. The background music only contains what it must to make the song sound good, and the obvious interjecting melodies can be seen as the main content in minimalist music because they are emphasized. They could be related to the words of a minimalist poem. The words of a minimalist poem only consist of what is necessary to carry the point the author is trying to convey like the interjecting melodies of minimalist music are used to make the songs as energetic as the composer wanted.
The above video is a recording of one of Terry Riley's most famous compositions, In C. As you listen, note how the melody starts out very simply and repeats throughout the whole song. This very simple, repeating melody makes it very apparent when new melodies are added. As time goes on, multiple new melodies are added and dropped, increasing and decreasing the energy of the piece of music.
This video is a composition by Steve Reich. Like the video before it, it consists of very consistent melodies which make it obvious when there are additional melodies added or subtracted. Also, the energy changes throughout. There are very high tempo parts that are very exciting and very slow parts that are much more relaxed. The slow parts help emphasize the more quickly paced parts, showing a classic example of a characteristic of minimalist music.
Conclusion
Both of these videos are general examples of what minimalist music is. After examining minimalist music, one can begin to make a connection back to minimalist literature. One of the characteristics of minimalist literature is rhythm. Not all pieces contain rhythm but many do, especially in minimalist poetry. Like the rhythms in these two songs, the rhythms in minimalist literature also changes. This rhythm does not necessarily have to be lyric, although it often is in poetry. For example in the previously discussed book by Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, has both dull and exciting parts. It is designed to be this way to draw out a more dramatic effect during the exciting parts. This is exactly like what happens in minimalist music.