Minimalism

The static sounds of popular music, especially rock <ap>‘n’ roll, influenced a new generation of composers. Rejecting both classical and contemporary formal procedures in composition, minimalist composers created new works whose structures became apparent to the listener as the music slowly unfolded. Beginning with La Monte Young, the master of the drone, a few composers began to simplify their art in an effort to connect to the listening public. The percussion music presented herein exhibits many of the traits that define minimalism: the constant repetitive pulse, reduced forces, slowly changing rhythmic modules, and canonic constructs. A brief look at Terry Riley’s iconic work, In C, leads to an in-depth examination of composer Steve Reich’s most popular minimalist work, Drumming. In it, the listener can hear the slowly unfolding structure of the work as well as the psychoacoustic phenomena caused by the interaction of rhythmic and tonal patterns. The chapter concludes with an examination of works by the Danish composer and theorist Per Nørgård and the American composer James Tenney.

Subject of the drone

The increasingly popular and influential genre known as drone metal is characterized by the interaction of amplified drones with permutational rhythms. Scholarship in the field has, so far, concentrated on distinguishing the work of various drone metal artists through ethnographic analysis of the symbols and social bonds that accumulate around the drone; the ways in which drones are conceptualized have been paid more attention than the function of the drone itself. This article follows the drone form from the inception of Minimalist musical practice in the work of La Monte Young, to contemporary developments in works incorporating the drone by major artists operating in the experimental wings of popular music. To clarify the relationship or non-relation between the drone and musical meaning, three drone-related works by Joan La Barbara, Eleh and Keiji Haino are discussed with respect to their relative proximity to, or distance from, language and/or speech. Although only Haino here could be said to have even a tangential relation to metal, each exemplar extols a primary form that drone metal can be said to elaborate upon: a voice pushed to its limits (La Barbara), amplified sound as a physical force (Eleh), monolithic homogeneity at a crawling pace (Haino). Each piece of music is also considered in terms of the subject who listens, leading to some speculative thoughts on the uses made of the drone, an assessment of its potential to resist appropriation by the culture industry and reasons for the drone’s remarkable persistence and diversity.

Ellen Arkbro and Marcus Pal; Claudia Molitor, Decay, hcmf//, 16 November 2019

Ellen Arkbro has been much fêted in experimental scenes (though not – or not yet – so much in the sort of new music scenes with which hcmf// remains associated) for her two records, For Organ and Brass (2017) and CHORDS (2019). Her performance with Marcus Pal in St Paul's Hall in Huddersfield follows a number of other shows in the UK, including at TUSK festival in Newcastle and at the Barbican in London. The pair are based in Stockholm, where they seem to be part of a burgeoning experimental organ scene. Their just intonation drone music comes with impeccable credentials: both studied with La Monte Young, and Pal also studied with Catherine Christer Hennix. The organ emitted a quiet diminished octave as the audience filed in, a dissonance resolved as soon as Arkbro sat down at the organ manual. What followed appeared to be a reworked and extended version of CHORDS for organ: the organ articulating perfect intervals and single tones, sounding something like a harmonic series and something like the I–IV–V of rock and blues, while Pal's computer-generated additive synthesis, speakers carefully directed upwards parallel to the organ's pipes, combine with the organ's familiar sound to create dense and jagged masses, chords transforming into timbres and back again.

The Rebirth of Improvisation as a Site for Religious Studies Research

In this article, I propose that studies of music’s links to religion go beyond reductionistic links between religious traditions and music forms (e.g., “Music and/in Islam”), and look instead at ways in which music responds to or expresses concerns or aspirations that are linked to religion or spirituality. The article further proposes that, should this approach be adopted, the explosion of radical improvised music-making in the 1960s (associated with such artists as the Grateful Dead, John Coltrane, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Albert Ayler, etc.) is a very promising site for investigation.

Music for Airports and the Avant-Garde

Chapter 2 places Music for Airports within the context of a “sonic turn” that occurs among various avant-garde trends in twentieth-century Euro-American music. A brief history begins with Debussy, accelerates with musique concrète and John Cage’s regard for the activity of sounds, and closes with consideration of La Monte Young and Terry Riley. The chapter insists that this history, in its technological and compositional advances, makes the experiments on Music for Airports possible. Ongoing references to chapter 1’s observations concretize the album’s relation to the Euro-American avant-garde.

La Monte Young Trio for Strings Original Full Length Version, Dia 15 VI 13 545 West 22 Street Dream House, New York City

Stepping inside the Dia Art Foundation's transformed gallery space in the heart of Chelsea is a special experience in itself. Darkly dressed ushers closely watch over your every move, preserving what is for the average audience member today a strikingly uncommon concert experience. ‘Turn off all cell phones, remove your shoes, and remain completely silent while in the Dream House’. Free of everyday noise and distractions, this unassuming venue is converted into an almost reverential space of mystical quasi-worship. The air is thick with the fragrance of incense and the floor is covered wall-to-wall with plush white carpet. Blends of deep magenta and rich blue light illuminate the space. In the centre of the room, facing the stage area, are three dark figures – the curators of this numinous sensory environment (La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Jung Hee Choi) – sitting silently on swivel chairs. They sit, literally elevated above the audience, which is relegated to the carpet. There are no chairs for mere onlookers, only small pillows, and not nearly enough for everyone. Most find themselves at points during the marathon-length evening lying prostrate: to rest aching backs and arms, but mostly just to take it all in.