How to use this Page

Desert scene in a minimalistic pixel art style, for a Talk Retro site redesign.

Available as a high quality art print.

More images: MetinSeven.com.

The electronic musician — pixel artwork in a minimalistic style.

Available as a high-quality art print.

More images: MetinSeven.com.

Last month marked the 50^th anniversary of the premiere of Terry Riley’s In C. The date was 4 November 1964 at the San Francisco Tape Center. Having written a book on the topic, it’s a time of reflection for me as well. The piece continues to endure, and though only five years out, it becomes ever more clear that its inclusion in the OUP series Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation was justified. In short, it’s a canonic work.

Happily, most of the participants in the event are still with us. In particular, Terry is celebrating his 80^th next year, and such luminaries as Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Stuart Dempster, and Ramon Sender are still going strong. One of the great joys I experienced in the course of researching the book was to meet a group of composers about 20 years older than I who were not only still productive, but also not bitter. Their engagement with their work and purity of commitment was inspiring then, and continues to be.

By now minimalism is so ingrained in our era’s musical consciousness that it becomes ever harder to imagine what a break the piece represented. But it came over me recently in a different way, when listening to a new release on New World of the “TudorFest” that was organised in February 1964 by Oliveros. This was a series of concerts centered around David Tudor as both performer and general collaborative provacateur. The 3-CD set concentrates mostly on music of Cage (though there’s a great work for accordion and bandoneon by Oliveros, that she and Tudor perform on a multi-dimension seesaw—how I wish for a video!). Even though Cage’s ethos of experiment and freedom is obviously an inspiration to the circle that organized the event, it’s also clear just how different that sort of experimentalism was from what was about to erupt in the immediate future. Cage’s pieces, most from the 1950s, are amongst his most radical works, “atonal” in the purest sense for the word, and resolutely refusing any traditional form or teleology. Frankly, listening to several in a row, exhilarating as is their invention, they’re also tough.

For me this makes it clearer just how much the new music percolating under the surface in San Francisco wasn’t just about process or repetition, it was also about beauty (even if no one really wanted to use the word). Cage was a California boy, but he found his milieu in New York, with its intensity, rigor, and challenge. To take a counter-example, Lou Harrison, his early friend and collaborator, went there too, but he returned West and found himself in the pursuit of Asian sounds. I may be making too much of a dichotomy here, as there are many other factors involved in the making of a style and individual works therein. But the old trope of “mean old modernism” vs. minimalism is too pat; there was a generational shift at work as well. Cage was a beloved pioneer, but he wasn’t living the Haight life. The music that was about to resound in November had a new sensuality and freedom, in tune with the adventure, love, and sheer subversive fun that was erupting across the country.

Headline image credit: Music. CC0 via Pixabay

The post On the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Terry Riley’s In C appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• Charting events in international security in 2013
• A different kind of swindle
• Yes? Yeah….

 

Alternative box cover design for the Hoi Amiga game from 1992, executed in a minimalistic 1960s style.

More at Sevensheaven.nl

I like the premise, the title, and the look of Deyan Sudjic's The Language of Things: Understanding the World of Desirable Objects, and so began to read:

Never have more of us had more possessions than we do now, even as we make less and less use of them. The homes in which we spend too little time are filled with things. We have a plasma screen in every room, displacing state-of-the-art cathode-ray-tube-based television sets just five years old. We have cupboards full of sheets; we have recently discovered an obsessive interest in the term 'thread count.' We have wardrobes stacked high with shoes. We have shelves of compact discs, and rooms full of game consoles and computers. We have gardens stocked with barrows and shears and cutters and mowers. We have rowing machines we never exercise on, dining tables we don't eat at, and triple ovens we don't cook in.

There's nothing quite like reading a generalizing statement to be reminded of just how out-of-step with regular life one is. Except for the hours when I'm at the gym or dance studio 0r (occasionally) with clients and friends, I'm a full-time citizen of my old-time house. We have one antique-y TV in the family room and a second tiny, I-think-it-gets-three-channels-tops TV that belongs to my son. Just two sets of sheets per bed, and I don't really know what 'thread count' means, though I've heard the term bandied about. I wear shoes, absolutely, and I do love music, though it comes to me via an IPod and a pair of mini-speakers. We definitely have our fair share of computers in this home-office terrain. I have always wanted a wheelbarrow but there'd be nowhere to put one. My one pair of garden shears is diseased with rust. I see no rowing machine in the vicinity. We don't have a dining room in this house, but we do have one table, on which we eat, fold laundry, arrange flowers, contend with the bills, and throw mini-banquets. Finally a triple oven sounds really nice to this old fool who prepares endless rounds of lunch and dinner and yearns (I do, I admit) to be able to cook with more than one temperature at once.

I'm a minimalist by nature—overly exuberant in my hunt for beauty, it's true, but also overly insatiable in my quest for dance-able space, simplicity. I've made decisions about the way I live that have sometimes adversely affected others. Pretty, small, and simple is nice, for example, except to a son who would have benefited from having something akin to a playroom or a basement, a true gathering place for friends. Small is grand except for when I want to open my door to family and friends who find no extra bedroom here, and always too few chairs. I have an old spinning wheel where a couch should be. I have walls of books instead of loveseats. Things break more than bounce in this house of bones and flowers.

I believe in consuming less, in leaving this earth as untouched as one can. I also believe in striking a balance. I am, as of yet, a work in progress.