Minimal Challenges: Process Music and the Uses of Formalist Analysis

Abstract

Critiques of formalist modes of musical analysis resemble critiques of certain types of minimal music. One ironic, if not downright paradoxical aspect of this parallel is that the sharpest attacks on minimal music have come from writers sympathetic to formalism. A reconciliation of sorts has been reached by formalist admirers of minimalism, for whom the music is a staging ground for reflexive methodological critique.Since this volume focuses on theorists' responses to what we perceive as the challenges of contemporary music, I hope I will be forgiven for beginning with a personal anecdote. A dozen years ago, in my first semester of graduate study, I enrolled in Jonathan Kramer's proseminar in music theory at Columbia. The final paper for the class was meant to engage somehow with current issues in the field. At the time, the mathematical modeling of similarity among melodic contours was something of a hot topic in the corner of the field usually known as 'set theory', which I was studying at the same time in a seminar at CUNY. Seeking to apply these cutting-edge analytical tools to music that not only functioned as an appropriate testing ground, but also meant something to me, I set about looking at the slow instrumental music that opens and closes the central movement of Steve Reich's The Desert Music. This music, which is interrupted by a faster choral section that forms the keystone of Reich's arch design for the piece, consists of a series of identically structured double canons (six in two), each of which unfolds over a single harmony. Taken together, these harmonies form a progression that is also the basis of the fast music in the middle, but this was beside the point of my analytical endeavor, which was limited to the contour of the higher of the two dux melodies of each canon.What I heard in the music was easy enough to put into words: the upper melodies, despite the changes of harmony and a rhythmic process involving what John Roeder

Inter-subject Correlation While Listening to Minimalist Music: A Study of Electrophysiological and Behavioral Responses to Steve Reich's Piano Phase

“…Numerous professional musicians and critics have asserted that listeners do not engage in such detailed listening—in part, they argue, because the music is overly simple and has insufficient substance to be cognitively engaging (see summaries of such negative appraisals in Fink, 2005 , p. 19; Dauer, 2020 , p. 24). Some music scholars have argued that minimalism's simplicity contains complexities upon analysis (Epstein, 1986 ; Cohn, 1992 ; Quinn, 2006 ). Beyond professionally trained listeners, do listeners tend to find the music engaging?…”

Experiencing Structure in Penderecki’s Threnody: Analysis, Ear-Training, and Musical Understanding

“…It can propose a certain kind of hearing, thereby effecting a potential to shape phenomenal experience and alter one's perception. 35 (a) (Orchestra II, 33 A similar point of critique is taken up by Quinn (2006) with respect to minimalist music. One difference is that I attempt to use formal analysis to shape experience, while Quinn is interested in altogether changing the very objectives of such analysis.…”

“…13 Dubois and Prade (1988). For an accessible tutorial on fuzzy sets and their musical application to contour theory, see Quinn (1997). 14 These include such works as Dimensions of Time and Silence (1960;rev.…”

Neuroscience and New Music: Assessing Behavioral and Cerebral Aspects of Its Perception, Cognition, Induction, and Entrainment

“…Numerous professional musicians and critics have asserted that listeners do not engage in such detailed listening-in part, they argue, because the music is overly simple and has insufficient substance to be cognitively engaging (see summaries of such negative appraisals in Fink, 2005, p. 19;Dauer, 2020, p. 24). Some music scholars have argued that minimalism's simplicity contains complexities upon analysis (Epstein, 1986;Cohn, 1992;Quinn, 2006). Beyond professionally trained listeners, do listeners tend to find the music engaging?…”