Minimalism. Complexity of the Essential.
When I was 9 years old, I remember being paralyzed in front of my parents' television. A huge black-and-white box spoke to me in a sinful way. What I heard I have never forgotten. It was as if the world opened up for me a secret and magical universe that invited me to its encounter. Always in search/creating everyday fantasies.
[Celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Leonardo Gell's MinimalPiano concert, I share the notes I wrote for his concert, this time translated into English.]
By Julián De La Chica
Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawing #370
Courtesy by the MET
Reflections/Anecdotes on Minimalism (Notes from Leonardo Gell's Concert)
I
I called my piano teacher and asked her to tell me about what I was hearing on that TV. Her response was quite straightforward: "It's monotonous, boring, and repetitive. It lacks intellectual depth and complexity." I never forgot those words, especially because at the age of 9, they felt like a mental disturbance. I kept pondering while still being mesmerized. I thought that, despite my teacher's impressive academic credentials that are revered in our scholarly societies, and despite her entirely respectable opinion, I would follow my "less intellectual" and "less profound" instinct towards what had captivated me. I have never conditioned anything or anyone based on third-party criteria, even if they come from almost pontifiable figures.
II (Years went by)
I was in an old theater in Rome. I leave the Santa Cecilia Conservatory and on my way, I come across two movie premieres: Chicago (The Musical) and The Hours. Both at a similar time. Captivated by Meryl Streep's gaze, I decided to opt for Stephen Daldry. Minutes later, I was once again entranced, just like when I was 9 years old... Who was that composer who could silence a shy boy with concentration and attention problems? His name was Philip Glass.
III (Continuation)
In 2004, I presented Corrida Musical, one of my many musical failures. In the middle of the bullring at Hacienda el Pórtico, a wonderful Steinway piano awaited. It was the bull waiting in the arena and I, the matador. (I know it sounds dreadful - I know) The difference? There was no blood here. Only love. I emerged riding an Andalusian horse, and the repertoire, for the most part, was from traditional Spanish composers. Many people liked the concert, one of my many experiments with electronic music, drums, and fusion with other artists. Each piece had a purpose. The concert was modestly accepted, although one of the pieces caused a great stir with a critic from my beloved Bogotá (halfway through the concert, I closed the piano lid and stood still). For more than 3 minutes, the sound of that night had taken center stage, which I had wrested from it; this was for me, the prelude to my experiments on the music that encapsulates apparent silence. Later, I discovered that this idea was not so crazy and that decades ago, the great John Cage had already caused a stir with his masterful 4:33. (Support is not always found when you seek paths different from the established ones).
IV
I am working with music producer Tato Lopera. We finished one of the sessions, and he asks me, "Do you know this movie? (Koyaanisqatsi)" — I said no. "I recommend it to you," he replied. That same night, when I put the movie on at home, I returned to my childhood. Just like in Ratatouille when the critic sits at the table and a first bite takes him back to his mother's house, that's how I felt; there I was, standing in front of that huge black and white box. That was Mom.
My love affair with Philip Glass continues unabated, and with him, I immersed myself in a fascinating world, which some define as minimalism. An infatuation that led me to cohabit with Terry Riley, Steve Reich, John Cage, La Monte Young, Yann Tiersen, Michael Nyman, Steve Martland, Ligeti, Henryk Gorecki, Arvo Pärt, Björk, Wim Mertens, John Tavener, etc...
Minimalist music is more complex than one might think and encompasses a wide range of musical worlds. The term "Minimalism" has been known since the 1960s and emerged, among other places, in alternative spaces in San Francisco and New York, stemming largely from the development of electronic music and, to a large extent, as a response to the proposal of modern music at the time: a certain "ugliness" that arose from the works of Schoenberg, where discourse and concept seemed, according to some, to be entirely lost and/or finished. (According to Paco Gómez Martín- Polytechnic University of Madrid and his writing "Minimalism and Mathematics: Clapping Music" "Indeed, whereas modernism is resolutely atonal, minimalism is clearly modal or tonal; whereas modernism is aperiodic, fragmentary, minimalism is characterized by great rhythmic regularity; and whereas modernism presents a great complexity of structure and texture, minimalism is simply transparent").
Its prelude is attributed to "Serialism," a twelve-tone musical trend that repeats pitches in the same octave position and to mono/structuralism, which works on static works that create a sound effect, called by some as pointillism. "Minimalism" is built from few ideas (minimal), the constant use of the same theme, and according to John Adams: 1. a perceptible pulse, 2. emphatic tonality within a relatively slow harmonic rhythm and 3. a repetition of small cells or motives, which over time create larger architectonic structures.
Many composers make minimalist music, but this does not mean they are minimalists. So, what is minimalism then? The correct use of few elements? The repetition and series of structural and harmonic elements over unimaginable times? The play and clash of rhythms that produce displeasure, largely due to their collateral effects? Minimalism, at least for me, proposes a complex look inward: Silence the noise, to hear what remains, even if it continues to be noise. This is indeed truly complex.
Minimalism has been crucial in the development of the emerging electronic universe. Its current prominence is evident in genres such as pop, vocal/electronic, hip hop, and rap. (That's without mentioning its presence in other fields of the arts such as painting, sculpture, and architecture). Minimalism has represented, since its inception (and here I am NOT referring to music and ancestral eastern currents, nor to its presence in many ethnic cultures), a constant individual search that clashes with a collective market; over time, it becomes a trend, and that quest and/or trend for the minimal, the basic, the essential (now saturated, largely from social networks and/or media), has generated stylistic facets that converge within a whole current of current life.
Leonardo Gell | MinimalPiano
Poster from 2014
Today, Cuban concert pianist Leonardo Gell proposes us to look beyond an apparent recital program. MINIMALPIANO From Bach to de la Chica, proposes, in addition to the sound experience, to reflect on the very roots of minimalism from Gell's interpretive vision. Personally, I believe that before being a theory about minimalist creators, Gell offers us an experimental journey through the music of composers who, as in the case of J.S. Bach (a composer who was part of a period as particular and as antagonistic to minimalism as the Baroque period) offers a timeless vision of what we could consider minimalism today according to an interpretation. Let us not forget that there are those who claim that Bach himself, Satie, and Ravel, to name just a few, proposed this process in many of their works. Cyclical movements, rhythmic games between voices, and evolution and growth of the mono/structure that becomes poly-structure (Does anyone else remember Renaissance music and the basso continuo? (I will soon also share my experience of recently listening at the MET to the New York Philharmonic performing Ravel's much-acclaimed Bolero).
Minimalism largely recovers a proposal that contradicts tonal exhaustion. The harmonic-melodic rebirth in a formal and academic context. We open up to new determination and a neo-tonality, leading to a new scale of post-modernism in our current music. Minimalism, therefore, does not mean the absolutism of nothingness, nor everything that is poor in ideas and development; minimalism is built from a basic experience and cell (note, not a simple cell. "Basic" is necessary as a structural element, "simplicity" is only superficial. A minimalist cell can be basic and very complex or basic and very simple) with a constant and repeated use of its structural elements (rhythm, melody, and harmony) "DISCOURSE," producing a sound experience that leads the listener to a new internal space of their musical consciousness. In conclusion, minimalism encompasses an immense universe of proposals, which grows largely from the compositional tools of the creators; however, minimalism not only refers to arpeggios, polyrhythms, or extensive silences. Its essence is extensive and, I reiterate, by no means new, although we have only officially heard of minimalism since the 20th century.
It will take a long time to resolve many of the concerns contained in minimalism. Surely, like everything in the history of the arts, it will take centuries and much study of the music created today to understand its complete essence. I have no doubt that its musical development subjugated by a previously studied mathematics leads to results (in this I agree with Nico Muhly), even physical ones, something undoubtedly disturbing, which will be the subject of study in perhaps, not too distant future.
V (Any given day)
BAM, Brooklyn, NY. The theater in silence. The synthesizers start. Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach. Hours and hours of apparent repetition. My brain convulsed, and my insides fell silent... I rediscovered a sound experience that I had never lived before. Later, I understood part of that philosophy, the one I had always been looking for but couldn't find. A dense darkness that eclipses your senses, your reason, and leads you to think, if everything was irrelevant, perhaps empty, or if you had visited that Dantean hell that we all keep. In any case, something that never goes unnoticed.
Many attribute my experiments to minimalist creations. I only echo the voices of everyday life. But at night, after communing with the noise of my fears, I think of that day (when I was 9 years old) and the discovery of that unusual place where the minimal resides. A new sound experience? Some call it minimalism, I see it as a form and experience of existence.