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06 Minimalism 1 Student Copy MSM CPP Survey EC 6. Minimalism and After 1. Roots La Monte Young (*1935) Trio for Strings (1952) “I think that this kind of sense of time has to do with getting away from the earthly sense of direction which goes from birth to death, in other words, like developmental form, and has to do with static form and moving up into, by up I mean like vertically, as in Vertical Hearing, moving, then, up through the sound of a chord or the sound of a tamboura or the sound of an interval that’s sustained, using this to create a drone state of mind as I described. By using this to create a drone state of mind, it provides a means toward achieving a state of meditation or an altered state of consciousness that can allow you to be more directly in touch with universal structure and a higher sense of order. And that once one achieves this kind of state of consciousness, in order to maintain it, one is not trying to get back down to the earthly level and get back involved with directional, climactic form, developmental form, one wants to stay in this more static state. The drone constants are very supportive and allow you to use them as positioning points of reference, to remain aloft, so to speak, in this special state of consciousness and awareness.” La Monte Young The Well Tuned Piano (1964-73-81) "The Well-Tuned Piano for its influence, its formal originality, its fluid improvisational style, its lengthy gestation, and its monumental ambitions may well be the most important piano music composed by an American since the Concord Sonata.” Kyle Gann, CHICAGO READER 7/17/87 Terry Riley (*1935) In C (1964) Steve Reich (*1936) “If music doesn’t move people emotionally, it’s a failure. I don’t want people find my music ‘interesting’; I want them to be deeply moved by it.” in Talking Music, 317. It’s Gonna Rain (1965) Come Out (1966) MSM CPP Survey EC Piano Phase (1967) Music for 18 Musicians (1974) Tehillim (1981) Philip Glass (*1937) 1+1 (1967) Two Pages (1968) Music in Similar Motion (1969) Einstein on the Beach (1975) Arvo Pärt (*1935) Fratres (1977) Berliner Messe (1990) My Heart’s in the Highlands (2000) Henryk Górecki (1933-2010) Symphony No. 3 (1976) John Taverner (1944-2013) Ikon of Eros (2000) Karlheinz Stockhausen Stimmung (1968) “Stockhausen was talking about Cage all the time, and I realized what an influence he was having on Stockhausen… [Stockhausen] supported that approach, and if anything, pushed me in that direction.” La Monte Young, on studying at Darmstadt in 1959. “Karlheinz Stockhausen's exploration of the harmonic series, notably in Stimmung (1968), has often been linked to Young's example. [...] The German composer seems to have visited Young and Zazeela when in New York, in 1964 or 1965, and listened to a rehearsal of The Theatre of Eternal Music. He requested tapes of the group's performances which, perhaps surprisingly, Young gave him. Stockhausen's own musicians visited Young and Zazeela's Dream House installation in Antwerp in 1969.” Keith Potter, Four Musical Minimalists, Music in the Twentieth Century 11..
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