Month: July 2017 (Page 2 of 4)

 

‘Following World War II, performance art emerged as a useful way for artists to explore philosophical and psychological questions about human existence. For this generation, who had witnessed destruction caused by the Holocaust and atomic bomb, the body offered a powerful medium to communicate shared physical and emotional experience. Whereas painting and sculpture relied on expressive form and content to convey meaning, performance art forced viewers to engage with a real person who could feel cold and hunger, fear and pain, excitement and embarrassment—just like them.

‘Some artists, inspired largely by Abstract Expressionism, used performance to emphasize the body’s role in artistic production. Working before a live audience, Kazuo Shiraga of the Japanese Gutai Group made sculpture by crawling through a pile of mud. Georges Mathieu staged similar performances in Paris where he violently threw paint at his canvas. These performative approaches to making art built on philosophical interpretations of Abstract Expressionism, which held the gestural markings of action painters as visible evidence of the artist’s own existence. Bolstered by Hans Namuth’s photographs of Jackson Pollock in his studio, moving dance-like around a canvas on the floor, artists like Shiraga and Mathieu began to see the artist’s creative act as equally important, if not more so, to the artwork produced. In this light, Pollock’s distinctive drips, spills and splatters appeared as a mere remnant, a visible trace left over from the moment of creation.

‘Shifting attention from the art object to the artist’s action further suggested that art existed in real space and real time. In New York, visual artists combined their interest in action painting with ideas of the avant-garde composer John Cage to blur the line between art and life. Cage employed chance procedures to create musical compositions such as 4’33”. In this (in)famous piece, Cage used the time frame specified in the title to bracket ambient noises that occurred randomly during the performance. By effectively calling attention to the hum of fluorescent lights, people moving in their seats, coughs, whispers, and other ordinary sounds, Cage transformed them into a unique musical composition.

‘Drawing on these influences, new artistic formats emerged in the late 1950s. Environments and Happenings physically placed viewers in commonplace surroundings, often forcing them to participate in a series of loosely structured actions. Fluxus artists, poets, and musicians likewise challenged viewers by presenting the most mundane events—brushing teeth, making a salad, exiting the theater—as forms of art. A well-known example is the “bed-in” that Fluxus artist Yoko Ono staged in 1969 in Amsterdam with her husband John Lennon. Typical of much performance art, Ono and Lennon made ordinary human activity a public spectacle, which demanded personal interaction and raised popular awareness of their pacifist beliefs.

‘In the politicized environment of the 1960s, many artists employed performance to address emerging social concerns. For feminist artists in particular, using their body in live performance proved effective in challenging historical representations of women, made mostly by male artists for male patrons. Artists of the 1960 and 70s also experimented with other “dematerialized” formats including Earthworks and Conceptual Art that resisted commodification and traditional modes of museum display. The simultaneous rise of photography and video, however, offered artists a viable way to document and widely distribute this new work. Their ground-breaking work paved the way for male and female artists in the 1980s and 1990s, who similarly used body and performance art to explore issues of gender, race and sexual identity.

‘Performance art’s acceptance into the mainstream over the past 30 years has led to new trends in its practice and understanding. Ironically, the need to position performance within art’s history has led museums and scholars to focus heavily on photographs and videos that were intended only as documents of live events. In this context, such archival materials assume the art status of the original performance. This practice runs counter to the goal of many artists, who first turned to performance as an alternative to object-based forms of art. Alternatively, some artists and institutions now stage re-enactments of earlier performances in order to recapture the experience of a live event.’ — Virginia B. Spivey

 

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Lectures

Martha Wilson’s lecture on the history of performance art, part 1

History of the Circus Sideshow / Freakshow

Amy Bryzgel ‘Performance Art East and West’

Catherine Wood on Performance Art

RoseLee Goldberg on Performance Art

 

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Context

 

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Line-up

Robert Whitman
Yves Klein
Yoko Ono
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Tiny Tim
Yayoi Kusama
Bruce Nauman
The Open Theater
Bas Jan Ader
Chris Burden
Vito Acconci
Martha Rosler
Ulay & Abramović
Tehching Hsieh

 

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Robert Whitman The American Moon (1960)
‘Robert Whitman is an outstanding American artist best known for creating non-narrative theater works rich in visual and sound images that incorporate actors, film, slides, sound, and evocative props in environments of his own making. Whitman was born in New York City in 1935. He studied literature at Rutgers University from 1953 to 1957 and art history at Columbia University in 1958. He began in the late fifties to present pioneering theater works like The American Moon (1960), Mouth (1961), and Flower (1963), as well as to exhibit his sculpture and installations in some of New York’s more advanced galleries. Whitman’s interest in incorporating non-traditional materials into his work led to an increasing involvement with new technologies like lasers and advanced optics.’ — zero1biennial.org

 

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Yves Klein Blue Women (1962)
‘Yves Klein was the most influential, prominent, and controversial French artist to emerge in the 1950s. He is remembered above all for his use of a single color, the rich shade of ultramarine that he made his own: International Klein Blue. But the success of his sadly short-lived career lay in attacking many of the ideas that underpinned the abstract painting that had been dominant in France since the end of the Second World War. For some critics he is a descendent of Marcel Duchamp, a prankster who lampooned settled understandings of painting and opened art up to new media. Others consider him as a descendant of earlier avant-garde artists such as Kazimir Malevich and Aleksander Rodchenko, who were also attracted to the monochrome. And even in the ways he used performance later on in his career, he is like many artists who rediscovered some of the tactics of earlier avant-gardes in the 1950s and ’60s.’ — theartstory.org

Excerpt

 

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Yoko Ono Cut Piece (1964)
‘Yoko Ono first performed Cut Piece in 1964 in Japan. She repeated the performance at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1965. In September of 2003 she performed the piece for the last time in Paris. The piece consists of a solitary perfomer, Yoko Ono, sitting on stage with a pair of scissors at her side – inviting the audience to come and cut off pieces of her clothing and take them away. (Audience members are given this instruction in a leaflet at the commencement of the piece.) Unflinching, she allows strangers to gradually remove portions of her clothing until there is nothing more to cut away at. The piece ends when nothing more can be cut, or when the performer decides that the piece has ended. In her script for the piece Yoko Ono adds that the performer does not have to be a woman.’ — floricavlad.com

 

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Karlheinz Stockhausen Mikrophonie I (1964)
‘Mikrophonie I (Work Number 15), for tamtam, 2 microphones, 2 filters, and controllers, is an example of moment form, polyvalent form, variable form, and process composition. It consists of 33 structural units, or “moments”, which can be ordered in a number of different ways, according to a “connection scheme” specifying the relationships between successive moments by a combination of three elements, one from each of the following groups: (1) similar, different, or opposite; (2) supporting, neutral, or destroying; (3) increasing, constant, or decreasing. In Mikrophonie I two percussionists play a large tam-tam with a variety of implements. Another pair of players use hand-held microphones to amplify subtle details and noises, inflecting the sound through quick (and precisely scored) motions. The last two performers, seated in the audience, apply resonant bandpass filters to the microphone outputs and distribute the resulting sounds to a quadraphonic speaker system.’ — Wiki

Excerpt

 

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Tiny Tim The Other Side (1966)
‘Tiny Tim was an American singer, ukulele player, and musical archivist. He was most famous for his rendition of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” sung in a distinctive high falsetto/vibrato voice. Tiny Tim first appeared in Jack Smith’s film Normal Love, as well as the independent feature film You Are What You Eat (his appearance in this film featured him singing the old Ronettes hit, “Be My Baby” in his falsetto range). These tracks were recorded with Robbie Robertson and the other members of what was going to become known as The Band. The latter performance led to a booking on the massively popular Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, an unpredictable American television comedy-variety show. Dan Rowan announced that Laugh-In believed in showcasing new talent, and introduced Tiny Tim. The singer entered carrying a shopping bag, pulled his soprano ukulele from it, and sang a medley of “A Tisket A Tasket” and “On the The Good Ship Lollipop” with a dumbfounded Dick Martin standing near.’ — collaged

 

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Yayoi Kusama Self-Obliteration (1967)
‘So many ideas were coming forth one after another in my mind that sometimes I had trouble knowing what to do with them. In addition to making painting, sculpture, and avant-garde fashion, I made a film called Kusama’s Self-Obliteration. I starred in, directed and produced it, and Jud Yalkut filmed one of my Happenings in Woodstock. I played the role of high priestess and painted the nude bodies of models on the stage with polka dots in five colors. I was never nude, publicly or privately. At the homosexual orgies I directed, I always stayed at a safe place with a manager in the studio to avoid being arrested by police. I think I staged about 200 Happenings all over the place. The film is a document of my performances and happenings, and it is itself a performance. What is the meaning of “self-obliteration?” By obliterating one’s individual self, one returns to the infinite universe.’ — Yayoi Kusama

Excerpt

 

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Bruce Nauman Walking in an Exaggerated Manner … (1967-68)
‘Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square represents a microcosm of the fundamental themes rooted in Bruce Nauman’s colorful aesthetic: circularity, repetition, minimalism, body awareness, and post-structural linguistic theory. These themes are ingrained into what is essentially a ten- minute performance of epic banality; : Nauman deliberately traipsing foot over foot along the perimeter of a makeshift masking tape square several times, alternating between forward and backward movements. It’s anti-film in a sense, the camera reductively operating only as a simple recording device, stripped of its power to manipulate the image and pared down to its base function as a dispassionate observer. All pertinent information is laid bare from the start; the title of the piece describes the entirety of the task that Nauman rigorously performs ad nauseam, simultaneously giving and taking instruction.’ — Not Coming

 

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Various A Happening in Paris (1968)
‘In a Parisian art gallery, painters, performance artists, dancers and the interested public participate in a happening.’ — Budget Films

 

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The Open Theater The Serpent (1969)
‘The Open Theater was an experimental theatre group active from 1963 to 1973. It was founded in New York City by a group of former students of acting teacher Nola Chilton, and joined shortly thereafter by director Joseph Chaikin, formerly of The Living Theatre, and Peter Feldman. The group’s intent was to continue Chilton’s exploration of a “post-method”, post-absurd acting technique, by way of a collaborative and wide-ranging process that included exploration of political, artistic, and social issues, which were felt to be critical to the success of avant-garde theatre. The company, developing work through an improvisational process drawn from Chilton and Viola Spolin, created well-known exercises, such as “sound and movement” and “transformations”, and originated radical forms and techniques that anticipated or were contemporaneous with Jerzy Grotowski’s “poor theater” in Poland.’ — collaged

 

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Bas Jan Ader Fall 1, Fall 2 (1970)
‘In recent years, the work of Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader (1942–1975) has become admired and exhibited worldwide. Ader’s famed performances in falling—from a rooftop, say, or a riverbank—gained resonance as post-millennial economic and social hopes also plummeted. An increasingly interdisciplinary art world has become more ready to appreciate Ader’s gesture towards a melding of conceptualist rigour and romantic tragedy. Ader’s work… demonstrates how much conceptual art owes to the aesthetic of the sublime, to the idea of experiencing emotion rather than depicting it.’ — CanadianArt

 

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Chris Burden Through the Night Softly (1973)
‘In 1973, Chris Burden bought a month worth of late-night ad time on a local TV station in Los Angeles, and aired a 10-second film clip of Through the Night Softly, a performance where Burden, clad only in bikini underwear, crawls across a parking lot full of broken glass with his hands behind his back. The poetic title, Through the Night Softly is mentioned in an intertitle in the commercial itself, but the piece is treated separately. Burden calls it “TV Ad,” and “TV Ad piece,” as in “The TV Ad piece came out of a longstanding desire to be on television.” Burden’s ad is preceded by a Ronco record ad and followed–almost too perfectly–by another naked guy, lathering up in a soap commercial. In retrospect, Burden’s ideas for the piece are almost quaint. He wanted to be on “real TV,” which he defined at the time as “anything you could flip to on a dial. Anything else–cable, educational, video–was not real TV.” And he also expressed “satisfaction” at knowing that 250,000 people a night would see his video “stick out like a sore thumb” and “know that something was amiss.”‘ — greg.org

 

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Vito Acconci Theme Song (1973)
‘In Theme Song, Acconci uses video as close-up to establish a perversely intimate relation with the viewer, creating a personal space in which to talk directly to (and manipulate) the spectator. He is face to face with the viewer, his head close against the video screen, lying cozily on the floor. Acconci writes, “The scene is a living room — quiet, private night — the scene for a come-on — I can bring my legs around, wrapping myself around the viewer — I’m playing songs on a tape recorder — I follow the songs up, I’m building a relationship, I’m carrying it through.” Smoking cigarettes, he begins a seductive monologue as he plays “theme songs” by the Doors, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Kris Kristofferson and others on a tape recorder. The songs are a starting point for his come-ons; the tenor of his monologues shifts with the lyrics. “Of course I can’t see your face. I have no idea what your face looks like. You could be anybody out there, but there’s gotta be somebody watching me. Somebody who wants to come in close to me … Come on, I’m all alone … I’ll be honest with you, O.K. I mean you’ll have to believe me if I’m really honest…” Theme Song, with its ironic mixture of openness and manipulation, is one of Acconci’s most effective works.’ — Electronic Arts Intermix

Excerpt

 

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Martha Rosler Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975)
‘Semiotics of the Kitchen is a feminist parody video and performance piece released in 1975 by Martha Rosler. The video, which runs six minutes, is considered a critique of the commodified versions of traditional women’s roles in modern society. Featuring Rosler as a generic cooking show host, the camera observes as she presents an array of kitchen hand utensils, many of them outdated or strange, and, after identifying them, demonstrates unproductive, sometimes, violent, uses for each. It uses a largely static camera and a plain set, allowing the viewer to focus more on Rosler’s performance and adding a primitive quality.’ — collaged

 

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Ulay & Abramović AAA AAA (1978)
‘Abramovic and Ulay kneel in front of each other, gazing into each other’s eyes. Initially, they produce the same monotonous sound, but gradually a contest develops: who can yell, scream and yowl the loudest and longest? Ulay is the first to give up. When Abramovic has also screamed herself hoarse, they both resume their original position. The performance is reminiscent of ‘Freeing the Voice’ (Abramovic 1976), in which Abramovic screamed herself hoarse. There, the emphasis was on cleansing body and mind, while AAA-AAA revolves around the relationship between two lovers. Starting from a position of equality, they try to outdo each other. There are two versions of AAA-AAA, one recorded in Liège (which is a longer colour version of the current work), the other in Amsterdam.’ — catalog.nimik.nl

 

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Tehching Hsieh One Year Performance (1980 – 1981)
‘Tehching Hsieh dropped out from high school and started creating art in the form of paintings; he went on to create several performance pieces after finishing his three years of compulsory military service in Taiwan. In 1974, Hsieh jumped ship to a pier of the Delaware River, near Philadelphia, and made a living as a dishwasher and cleaner during his first four years in New York. From 1978–1986, Hsieh accomplished five One Year Performances; from 1986–1999, he worked on what he called his “Thirteen-Year Plan”. For one year, from April 11, 1980 through April 11, 1981, Hsieh punched a time clock every hour on the hour. Each time he punched the clock, he took a single picture of himself, which together yield a 6 minute movie. He shaved his head before the piece, so his growing hair reflects the passage of time. Documentation of this piece was exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2009, using film, punch cards and photographs.’ — collaged

Excerpt
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p.s. Hey. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! My pleasure, as always. Wonderful about Anita spending a few days with you! Have incredible fun and amazing conversations, as I know you guys will. I look forward to seeing you on Friday and catching up on everything. Take good care ’til then! ** Steevee, Hope the psychiatrist visit went well. And, okay, ‘Dunkirk’, your assessment? I liked ‘Nocturama’ quite a bit. Curious what you’ll think. Your opinion feels re: it unpredictable. I’m not sure how much of the most recent Rosenbaum writings I’ve read. Surely some. My admiration, of course, is derived from his history and body of work that was quite influential on me. I’m sorry to hear that you and he don’t get along taste-wise. Hoberman and Daney are also great film writer heroes of mine. ** Juana quinones, Hi, Juana! Thanks a lot for coming here and for being ‘in’. What’s up? How are you? ** New Juche, Hm, I don’t remember why ‘Brotherhood of Justice’ wasn’t included. Maybe there wasn’t a decent clip available at the time I originally assembled the post? Other than a lifelong dream to make a porn film, a dream now dead, I never dreamt of making films. Well, in college I did and took filmmaking classes only to discover I had no talent for visualizing things in motion. So, yes, the burning interest in making films essentially started with Zac with whom, miraculously, I almost seem to share minds in terms of what I want to make/do/see in film. It’s a super thrilling stroke of luck and development, and, for the time being, it is the practice I want to concentrate on most fully. Really great luck with the submission process re: ‘Bosun’. Sure, why not try Kiddiepunk? Obviously a fantastic venue. I love the zines possibility. I hope that happens. And I hope you have the best time humanly possible in the capitol. Let me know what you’re up to when you get the chance please. ** David Ehrenstein, Recopying by hand, wow. Wonderful that he’s so dedicated. Excited to see ‘Soon’ whenever it’s ready. Great name, of course. ** Bill, Hi. I like the ‘John Wick’ movies, but it’s hard to know if they’re others’ things. I can’t stand Nolan’s films other than ‘Memento’, which I could likely hate now that I’ve seen more of what he wants to be up to. ‘Valerian’ is remotely tempted to me but only really because I hear it’s a ridiculous, incoherent shitshow. ** Sypha, Hi. Interesting about ‘Black Hole’. I quite like that track ‘Forbidden Blocks’ too, no big surprise. (My computer spell-corrected ‘Forbidden Blocks’ into ‘Forbidden Books’, which isn’t a bad track title either). What a cool, wacky dream. Wow. That’s a dream I’d like to take a vacation inside. ** Jeff J, Hi. Ha ha, I do think a lot about creating the most unsuspected and yet surprisingly sensible post transitions when I can. Okay, cool, I’ll look for his work via those other projects, thank you. Thanks, I’ll look for the email/mp3. Very curious, of course. Your planning on the pre-planning process sounds right. Your sentences feel confident. Mm, no larval novel ideas. I think I’m kind of out of the novel loop right now. I do have a kind of longing to finish my long-dormant novel-in-progress. Some days the feeling is strong enough that I almost open the document, but I don’t. I’m completely confident that I will at least finish that unfinished novel, but I’m not sure when. Maybe soonish, or maybe not. At some point I want to go back at look at my abandoned novel about my relationship with George Miles from some years ago, but I’m about 98% sure it’s unsalvageable. Thank you asking about that. ** H, Hi, h. I’m happy you enjoyed the Keanu’s younger work post. Yes, I’m sure a break from the film will be a positive thing, but I weirdly do miss it. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Where you been, man? I don’t think that you would be able to escape redundancy-related stress no matter what happens. Spoken as a person given to bouts of anxiety about my future’s uncertainties. I hope that does kickstart your creativity. I bet it just needs the gentlest nudge. ** Misanthrope, I had a feeling you might have had some level of daydreaming about acting or encouragement to daydream/pursue that. I can see you as an actor. You have that kind of actor charisma thing, not that I can define what that means. Based on my experiences making films so far, I would say that being a good actor is some kind of inherent thing and not necessarily something that comes through training. In Zac’s and my films, some of the most amazing performances are from people who have never acted or thought about acting before. Interesting stuff. ** S., No, I don’t think you told me that, but you do get laid a whole lot compared to the likes of … almost everybody? So you might have told me but it got lost in the shuffle. There’s a murf mobile? Wait, what is a murf. My eyes saw smurf for a second. When I read the word murf, it immediately seems like the name of a surfer. Close? ** Okay. Today’s post has a backstory that isn’t every interesting at all, but, nonetheless … When I was looking for posts to restore the other day, I found the one up above which I apparently started making years ago but never finished for some reason. But when I looked at its ruins, I thought, This seems finished. So I don’t know I originally meant it to become. Anyway, so today you get a … I don’t know … blog equivalent of an unreleased DC’s track from 2012. That is all. See you tomorrow.

 

‘Minimalism is a long way from whatever it meant to the composers who were at its vanguard in the 60s. The big four back then, as now, were Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Steve Reich and Philip Glass. None of them, it is worth pointing out, has ever fully embraced the term “minimalism”, and the seeds of how differently the minimalist impulse would be taken up by later composers are already there in the huge aesthetic and temperamental gulfs that separate Riley’s music from Reich’s, or Glass’s from Young’s. All are now in their mid-70s: Riley is a devotee of Indian philosophy, Young lives according to a 27-hour day in his Dream-House in downtown New York, Glass writes symphonies and film scores, and Reich, the most revered of the quartet, continues to plough his furrow of pulses, phases and rhythmic richness.

‘But 50 years ago, all four did have something in common: a commitment to exploring the base materials of music with forensic, analytical detail. Reich’s early works, such as the tape piece It’s Gonna Rain and Piano Phase, for two pianists are about a single, obsessively pursued idea. Reich’s revolution was to loop different versions of the same material at different speeds against itself. Written down here, it sounds like a tortuous, solipsistic process – but it’s really pretty simple to hear. In It’s Gonna Rain, the voice of a Pentecostal preacher is looped at gradually different speeds, creating a sumptuous sonic texture, and in Piano Phase the pianists have to move in and out of phase with one another, subtly shifting from one semiquaver of a melodic pattern to the next. The effect is the sonic equivalent of slowly turning a kaleidoscope as the music comes in and out of focus. If you haven’t heard it yet, do it now – it’s a thrilling, essential listen.

‘But there’s something else in early Reich, Glass and Riley, too – an insistence on returning music to the roots that all three composers felt European modernisms, such as serialism, had left behind: melody, modality and rhythm. Riley’s In C puts all of that together in a piece that remains a masterpiece of compression, one of the great musical proofs of how less really can be more. From 53 tiny cells of musical material – the whole score fits on one page – Riley allows his performers to create an unpredictable, ever-changing tapestry of sound as the musicians (of which there can be any number) move from one bar to the next. In C is a game-changer not just for minimalism but for music history. Glass wasn’t far behind, either, in such pieces as Music With Changing Parts, while Young created music of slowly shifting chords and harmonies, extending the minimalist idea into larger, longer spheres of time and being.

‘Once minimalism became just another style for composers to use, it stopped being minimalist in any meaningful aesthetic sense. Such composers as David Lang or Michael Gordon, or any of the Bang on a Can group of New York-based post-minimalists, couldn’t have written their music without Glass; but equally, they couldn’t have written it without the influence of rock. The impulse for any composer who uses minimalism as a style today – whether you’re Thom Yorke or Nico Muhly – is the diametrical opposite of what Reich and Riley were up to half a century ago. Stylistic free-for-all has replaced forensic, monomaniacal obsession.’ — Tom Service

 

Gavin Bryars
Marc Mellits
La Monte Young
Louis Andriessen
Wim Mertens
Michael Nyman
Graham Fitkin
Philip Glass
Arvo Pärt
Karel Goeyvaerts
Terry Riley
Simeon ten Holt
John Cale
Steve Martland
Moondog
Ari Benjamin Meyers
Tom Johnson
Steve Reich

 

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Gavin Bryars Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (1975)
‘In 1971, when I lived in London, I was working with a friend, Alan Power, on a film about people living rough in the area around Elephant and Castle and Waterloo Station. In the course of being filmed, some people broke into drunken song – sometimes bits of opera, sometimes sentimental ballads – and one, who in fact did not drink, sang a religious song “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”. This was not ultimately used in the film and I was given all the unused sections of tape, including this one. When I played it at home, I found that his singing was in tune with my piano, and I improvised a simple accompaniment. I noticed, too, that the first section of the song – 13 bars in length – formed an effective loop which repeated in a slightly unpredictable way. I took the tape loop to Leicester, where I was working in the Fine Art Department, and copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping. I was puzzled until I realised that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man’s singing. This convinced me of the emotional power of the music and of the possibilities offered by adding a simple, though gradually evolving, orchestral accompaniment that respected the tramp’s nobility and simple faith. Although he died before he could hear what I had done with his singing, the piece remains as an eloquent, but understated testimony to his spirit and optimism.’ — Gavin Bryars

 

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Marc Mellits Tight Sweater (2005)
‘Composer Marc Mellits is an apprentice to Steve Reich whose own worklist stretches back into the early ’80s. Endeavor Classics’ Tight Sweater is the first all-Mellits disc and features four works performed by the new music ensemble Real Quiet. If Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians is like an 11-course meal with appetizer and dessert, then the short movements that make up Mellits’ suites, such as Fruity Pebbles and Tight Sweater, are like hors d’oeuvres. Mellits’ post-minimalist spin is to deliver the tasty treat of minimalist style minus its messy forward development, which only works when the trajectory is seamless. Mellits’ work is all “seams,” just like the seams in the tight sweater pictured on the front cover, but unashamedly so, and it is clear that Mellits is hoping to acquire an audience through cutting to the chase and not making them wait for the payoff. The strategy seems to be working, as Mellits has collected positive concert reviews even from such tough publications as The New York Times.’ — Dave Lewis

 

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La Monte Young The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer (1962)
‘Three decades after its composition, La Monte Young’s The Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer remains as radical a statement and as uniquely revelatory an experience as ever. … Long, steady tones and protracted silences gradually efface the clock, to open up an airier, unfenced domain. Facets of sound become apparent that are usually only peripheral to conscious perception. The tones diffract (via Harmon mutes) to form a brilliant corona of partials that soon flares to dazzling intensity. In a dream, events of little apparent significance may be evocative of fathomless resonances. As The Second Dream develops, the four pitches virtually turn inside out to reveal astonishing depths of sonic phantasmagoria.’ — Sandy McCroskey

 

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Louis Andriessen Workers Union (1975)
‘Workers Union is a composition by Louis Andriessen intended for any loud-sounding group of instruments; Andriessen did not want to handicap orchestras by providing a list of instruments. It is a melodically indeterminate piece; this means there is no key and no defined melody.[2] The piece is very strict rhythmically, with only a guide to lower or raise pitches. Sections may be repeated as many times as the conductor wishes, resulting in varying performance lengths. Every instrument plays different notes that follow the same rhythm and ascending or descending patterns. This creates an atonal piece with many polyphonic phrases. There are points in the piece where the ensemble splits into two groups. The groups alternate lines before coming back together again. If executed properly, the piece sounds mechanical as the instrumentation operates in perfect unison.’ — collaged

 

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Wim Mertens Often a Bird (1996)
‘Mertens’ style has continually evolved during the course of his prolific career, starting from downright experimental and avant-garde, always gravitating around minimalism, usually, however, preserving a melodic foundation to the forays that he makes into the worlds that he is exploring. His compositional quality has often overweighted the “labelling issue” and reached wider audiences although stemming from a far-from-mainstream musical context. One can follow three separate threads of musical styles throughout his work: a) Compositions for ensemble, perhaps his most accessible and “commercial” material; b) Solo piano and voice compositions, which features haunting keyboard melodies accompanied by Mertens’ unique high-pitched tenor voice singing in an invented, personal language; and c) Experimental minimalist “cycles” for single, dual, and sometimes more instruments.’ — collaged

 

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Michael Nyman Angelfish Decay (1985)
‘Celebrated for his modular, repetitive style, minimalist composer Michael Nyman was among experimental music’s most high-profile proponents, best known in connection with his film scores for director Peter Greenaway. Born in London on March 23, 1944, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music and King’s College, London, under communist composer Alan Bush and Thurston Dart, a musicologist specializing in the English Baroque. Under Dart’s tutelage, Nyman was introduced to 16th- and 17th-century English rounds and canons, their repetitive, contrapuntal lines highly influencing his own later work; Dart also encouraged him to travel to Romania in the interest of seeking out the country’s native folk music traditions. Upon graduating during the mid-’60s, Nyman found himself disconnected from both the pop music of the times and the school of modern composition heralded by Stockhausen; as a result, from 1964 to 1976, he worked not as a composer but as a music critic, writing for publications including The Listener, New Statesman, and The Spectator. In a review of British composer Cornelius Cardew, he first introduced the word “minimalism” as a means of musical description.’ — collaged

 

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Graham Fitkin Hook (2002)
‘Graham Fitkin lives and works as a composer in Cornwall. He works with dance, film and digital media alongside concert, orchestral and chamber music. He runs his own ensemble Fitkin Band of 9 soloists which tours new material each year. Graham has collaborated with many of today’s foremost performers of new music including Powerplant, Nederlands Blazers Ensemble, Yo-Yo Ma, Kathryn Stott, Will Gregory, Smith Quartet, Ruth Wall, ensemblebash and London Sinfonietta. He won the International Grand Prix Music for Dance Award in 2000 and has since won two British Composer awards.’ — Hyperion

 

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Philip Glass Music In Fifths (1969)
‘In Music in Fifths, Philip Glass’s ideas are at their most basic, using only addition and subtraction of notes in simple scales to create epic and hypnotic musical forms. Music in Fifths is in “closed form” – a predetermined structure that ends when the accumulation of repetitions fill it out completely. Glass has always considered Music in Fifths a sort of teasing homage to [legendary pedagogue Nadia] Boulanger; it is written entirely in parallel fifths, a cardinal sin in the traditional counterpoint his teacher so carefully instructed.’ — BoaCF

 

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Arvo Pärt Fur Alina (1976)
‘Für Alina, a brief and poignantly spare work for piano, represents the essence of the so-called “tintinnabula” technique for which Estonian composer Arvo Pärt has become famous. The work was composed in 1976, a year in which he emerged from a five-year period of intense study and reflection. Pärt’s study of medieval and Renaissance church music inspired a new approach to tonality, one that recast triadic tonality within an entirely new kind of musical syntax. Für Alina was the first piece in which this new triadic language coalesced into a consistent method of composition. Simply put, this technique, known as the tintunnabula style for the bell-like sonority it creates, involves two different lines moving in a consistent relationship with each other, one of them moving in a mostly stepwise fashion along notes of the diatonic scale (that is, without chromatic inflections), somewhat after the manner of plainchant, the other moving in tandem with the first but landing only on pitches contained in the tonic triad, or the chord of the piece’s home key. This creates an engaging combination of harmonic stability, melodic motion, and occasional shimmering dissonances.’ — allmusic

 

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Karel Goeyvaerts Komposition n. 5 (1953)
‘Karel Goeyvaerts’s 1953 electronic composition, Nummer 5 (met zuivere tonen) is an exact palindrome: not only does each event in the second half of the piece occur according to an axis of symmetry at the centre of the work, but each event itself is reversed, so that the note attacks in the first half become note decays in the second, and vice versa. It is a perfect example of Goeyvaerts’s aesthetics, the perfect example of the imperfection of perfection.’ — FijneWIET

 

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Terry Riley Desert Of Ice (1980)
‘Born in 1935 in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California, Terry Riley launched what is now known as the Minimalist movement with his revolutionary classic In C in 1964. This seminal work provided the conception for a form comprised of interlocking repetitive patterns that was to change the course of 20th-century music and strongly influence the works of Steve Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams, as well as rock groups like The Who, The Soft Machine, Curved Air, Tangerine Dream and many others. In the 1960s and ’70s he turned his attention to solo improvisational works for electronic keyboards and soprano saxophone, and pioneered the use of various kinds of tape delay in live performance. This approach resulted in another set of milestone works, A Rainbow in Curved Air, Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band, The Persian Surgery Dervishes and Shri Camel. These hypnotic, multi-layered, polymetric, brightly orchestrated, eastern-flavored improvisations set the stage for the New Age movement that was to appear a decade or so later.’ — Other Minds

 

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Simeon Ten Holt Canto Ostinato for Synthesizers Section 17 (1976)
‘Simeon ten Holt wrote Canto Ostinato between 1976 and 1979 from behind the piano. The first public performance of the piece in Bergen, NH was both praised and criticized. It was critiqued for its sweetness and simplicity. Ten Holt wrote his pieces at a time when people were used to an entirely different kind of music; composers in aspiration for financial support from the “Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst” better wrote their work in an atonal style. Nevertheless, Simeon covertly persued his own way since he realized that the atonal style he had utilized thus far was not really working for him. He used to call his work “the tonality after the death of tonality”.’ — Home Concerts

 

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John Cale John Milton (1972)
‘Taking a sidestep from his earliest solo efforts into an exploration of his classical training and influences — thus the title — Cale on Academy creates a set of songs that probably bemused more than one listener at the time of release. The predominantly instrumental release, which finds him working with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on two tracks, steers away from the more grotesque classical/rock fusions at the time to find an unexpectedly happy and often compelling balance between the two sides. The sound is at once thick and remarkably spare, a rejection of flash for mood setting without aiming toward the drones so prevalent in much of Cale’s initial work.’ — allmusic

 

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Steve Martland Beat The Retreat (1995)
‘Steve Martland was one of the most vibrant, unconventional and dynamic forces in British music. He first came to prominence in 1983 with Babi Yar, for large orchestra in three groups, championed by the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM) and premiered separately on the same day by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Cleobury, and the St Louis Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin. It was later recorded to critical acclaim. After that, though, he avoided the orchestra, preferring, from American Invention and Re-Mix (1985) onwards, to compose for smaller ensembles, not usually exceeding 13 players, such as those scored for his Steve Martland Band (formed 1992), which toured internationally like a rock group; string quartets, as with his Patrol (1992) or arrangement of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor from the same year; and Wolf-Gang (1991), six operatic arias by Mozart reimagined for wind band.’ — Guy Richards

 

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Moondog Invocation (1981)
‘Moondog, who died in Germany in 1999 at the age 83, was the most celebrated of New York street denizens from the late 1940s through 1974. He dressed like a Viking, spouted short-burst poetry in a stentorian voice and cranked out unlikely consonant music on homemade instruments. The Don Drapers of the world saw him on the way to work, perched as he was near 6th Avenue at 53rd Street, near CBS’s building (a fortuitous location, as we’ll soon see). The Beats took him in, later the counter-culture hippies, then the art crowd ferried him overseas. And if you turned on a television for more than 10 minutes during the year 2003, you heard his music remixed for a Lincoln Navigator ad that played nonstop. He collaborated with the young Philip Glass, was promoted by a top rock producer, has been covered by artists as diverse as Janis Joplin and Antony and the Johnsons, and had a booster in Elvis Costello. He’s the 20th century’s avant-garde in one strangely cloaked package.’ — Vanity Fair

 

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Ari Benjamin Meyers Symphony X (Excerpts, 2009)
‘SYMPHONY X is a work of symphonic scale that combines elements of hardcore, experimental, and minimal music into an entirely original musical texture. Ari Benjamin Meyers has written this 70 minute through-composed piece specifically for his unique 17 member Redux Orchestra which includes saxophones, brass, strings, electric guitar, electric bass, drums, and electronics. This physically demanding work combines complex repetitive instrumental arrangements with electro-noise, martial percussion rhythms, and intense guitar melodies. At a constant tempo of 120bpm it escalates into a veritable tour de force. The intensity of SYMPHONY X rests on its extremes: static, pounding repetition layered against an almost unnoticeably slow variation of melodic and harmonic patterns – a compositional style that Steve Reich characterized as “gradual process“. By uniting the formalistic structures of classical and minimal music with the sonic palette of rock, hardcore, and electronic music, Meyers has further developed his musical language and with SYMPHONY X has taken it to a new level.’ — ABM

 

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Tom Johnson Nine Bells (1973)
‘Nine Bells is a conceptual album in which Johnson performs on 9 bells, evenly spaced and hanging from the ceiling. Greg Sandow (2003) describes Nine Bells, “in which he walked, at a steady rhythmic pace (and, if I remember correctly, for more than an hour), among nine suspended burglar alarm bells, systematically exploring all the possible paths among them. Which, since he strikes each bell as he passes it, are also all the possible melodies their pitches might make. As in many of Tom’s works, theory and practice are identical here… You see and hear the structure of the piece. That’s not even remotely abstract; instead, it’s pure happiness, as the pealing bells seem to ring with Tom’s concentration (visible in his face and body, audible in his steady steps), and his joie de vivre.” At the age of 55, Johnson had to stop performing this athletic piece, but Matthias Kaul, Adam Weisman, Olaf Pyras and others have developed their own interpretations of the score, using their own sets of bells.’ — collaged

 

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Steve Reich Six Marimbas (1986)
‘Six Marimbas, composed in 1986, is a rescoring for marimbas of my earlier Six Pianos (1973). The idea to rescore came from my friend, the percussionist James Preiss, who has been a member of my ensemble since 1971 and also contributed the hand and mallet alterations that are used in this score. The piece begins with three marimbas playing the same eight beat rhythmic pattern, but with different notes for each marimba. One of the other marimbas begins to gradually build up the exact pattern of one of the marimbas already playing by putting the notes of the fifth beat on the seventh beat, then putting the notes of the first beat on the third beat, and so on, reconstructing the same pattern with the same notes, but two beats out of phase. When this canonic relationship has been fully constructed, the two other marimbas double some of the many melodic patterns resulting from this four marimba relationship. By gradually increasing their volume they bring these resulting patterns up to the surface of the music; then, by lowering the volume they slowly return them to the overall contrapuntal web, in which the listener can hear them continuing along with many others in the ongoing four marimba relationship. This process of rhythmic construction followed by doubling the resulting patterns is then continued in the three sections of the piece that are marked off by changes of mode and gradually higher position on the marimba, the first in D-flat major, the second in E-flat dorian, and the third in B-flat natural minor.’ — Steve Reich

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Of course so sorry to hear about Irving Rosenthal’s declining health. How great, at least, that his archive is at Stanford. But still. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Shit, the heat didn’t leave you alone. Ours has disappeared for the moment, and it’s actually pretty sweet, sky-wise. I hope whatever’s hovering over Paris slides quickly into your location. Oh, sure, it’s always weird and hard to switch gears into new writing as soon as a work is finished. I try to use that time to just fool around and experiment and write random stuff without a care. Sometimes you can find something fresh that way. Good thing is that the in-between phase never lasts very long. Any news back from your book’s readers yet? Cool the zine arrived and is keeping you company. We didn’t finish the color grading yesterday, but we will on schedule today. It went very well. We’re incredibly close. We tried a couple of new approaches to the color of a couple of scenes that were flummoxing us, and they worked! But, yes, the grading was pretty much the entirety of yesterday for me. But today will be it. What did you do on your hopefully cooler Friday? ** Jamie, Hey Jouster. No, I think Toad is pretty revered. Not only is it a sublime thing, but it’s often rightly considered the father/architect of the contemporary ‘dark ride’. I’m good. Could have slept better last night, but oh well. Excited to finish the color grading today. Then we have a close-to-monthlong break from the heavy work part, although I’ll keep doing random film-related stuff. It looks great! Every time I watch the film, which we basically do every day in order to spot any slight color issues, I love it more, which has to be a good sign. You absolutely without question need to go to Tokyo at the soonest opportunity. I think you will lose at least some of your mind re: its visual (and many other) joys. We did get the big temperature drop, and I, along with presumably most of Paris, am very grateful. No, that was a cool dream. Even I, who is not normally so interested in people’s dreams, was rapt and deconstructionist about it. Yes, enter that screenplay competition! Great! I bet you could write a genius horror movie. What’s your idea(s)? May Friday dance all around you like a giddy fool. Pistachio love, Dennis. ** Steevee, Hi. It’s nice that she’s a nice person. All kinds of mediocre crap gets ecstatic buzz. No trust there. And Nolan making a great film is an oxymoron. No interest in seeing that. Possibly as a last ditch on a flight someday. ** S., Hey. Apparently, yeah. They topped the bill of my nephew’s first rock concert, which I took him to as a Xmas gift or something. He picked the line-up, obviously. Say hi to the mouse for me. I doubt he’ll remember me. ** Wolf, Wicked StepWolf! Me, comment while on rides? Hm, maybe, if it’s a slowy, and if I’m with someone who’s also into ride design/architecture like, say, Zac. But I never go ‘wow, ‘whoa’, and that kind of blah blah. When I talk, I’ll comment on the unusual or innovative way the ride uses the premise and conventions of the ride to elicit fresh responses. Ride nerd. Mr. Toad is both fun and slow, so you wouldn’t get physically ill on it, guaranteed. End credit track is as yet undetermined. We have ideas, but I can’t mention them until we decide yes or no and possibly approach their makers. It needs to be either a gift or extremely cheap because we are scraping the ultra- bottom of our budget. It’s tricky because it needs to be both interesting, pretty-ish, smart and either non-emotional or in an entirely different emotional register than our film. The film’s ending is very delicate, and it can’t be interfered with. Tricky. ** B, Hi, Bear. Yay! Best ride not only at Disneyland but ever. In my book. Oops about that snag. Yeah, you don’t want somebody hurling stress into the process. That’s for sure. Glad you liked ‘Okja’. We’re nearly finished (today) with the color grading of the film. There’s still plenty to do. The sound work, which is a big job, will take up most of September. It’ll be sad to finally finish, but I’m so excited for people to see the film that it won’t be too sad. Love back to you. ** Jeff J, Yes, a MTWR vet! Oh, the Disneyworld one. I never road it. It was well liked. I was always suspicious of it because its scale was different/larger than the Disneyland one, and the Disneyland one’s genius use of scale is one of its major points. Thank you for the congrats, but I must remain mum. Hugs about the memorial. Kind of beautiful that it almost burned its location down? I’ll look for your email, thanks. Waiting for edits! Exciting! Is there a way to extricate your collaborator? Tricky, though. If he is continually flaking out, that might be a legit reason enough? ** Nick Toti, Hi, Nick! Cool. Well, I can’t think of another ride where you’re condemned to prison, get killed, and end up in hell. All within about 20 seconds. Pretty cool. How’s stuff w/ you? ** _Black_Acrylic, That sounds like an idea of hell for damned sure. Please let me and us know how the talk with the career advisor went today. Fingers intricately crossed. ** Misanthrope, G-man. I don’t know him, but I suspect he would like the idea of you too. Uric acid crystals is a nice drug-like name. What does that Bruce Lee quote mean? I’ve never understood what the heck that’s supposed to mean. Is it as simple as, I don’t know, keep flowing, keep moving? I like to overthink things. ** Okay. As I mentioned here recently, I went to see this show that involved the Belgian choreographer Keersmaker choreographing to a live performance of Steve Reich’s seminal composition ‘Drumming’, and it got me re-thinking about minimalist music, and a post erupted thusly. See you tomorrow.