Holy Moses it's Holy Minimalism!

I agree with you and I first heard Part's 3rd symphony driving home in the car one evening and sat, stationary, whilst it finished and I could find out what it was. I subsequently bought Welser-Most's recording.

Minimalism is music stripped to the essentials. So, all these other elements that are in abundance in previous or other kind of music are considered as not indispensable. For me, all these composers, starting from US with the likes of Riley, Reich, Glass, Adams and, later in Europe, with obscure and controversial figures of the kind of Andriessen, Nyman, Bryars, Martland, Gorecki, Part or Taverner constitute an almost irrelevant development in Classical Music, since, practically, send the music back to its non-existing future.

When the greatest invention in Music is the Sonata form (exposition of two themes in the tonic and the dominant, development of them, recapitulation of the two themes in the tonic and the coda, which, in Beethoven, was used often as a vehicle for a second development), one can imagine what kind of backward "development" is the Minimal music. And, when everything is minimal, all the ingredients of music get either less or insignificant (basic repetitive melodies, rhythms of the simpleton and orchestrations of no essence. As for the form, that's "back to basics").

If you like it, though, it's fine, but don't fool yourselves that there is any greatness there or any development of music. That's why the movement has few followers and less impact in the evolution of music.

Parla

Here we go again…

Of course this is merely your opinion. The fact is that the classical tradition is based on the development of ideas in the sonata form, but lots of other sorts of music (folk, rock, pop, garage, etc.) are simply not interested in development in the classical sense. And neither is minimalism.

But it’s solely your own subjective opinion to draw the conclusion that the classical tradition is superior to all other forms of music because of that fact.

The point is surely that there are many different forms of music, each doing different things and it’s simply perverse to try and judge one form against the criteria appropriate to another. It’s rather like saying Schubert is inferior to Primal Scream because he never wrote anything worth playing at a nightclub.

Thank you. 

It's only our friend Parla who seems to believe that his personal opinions have the force of Holy Writ. I'm fully expecting him to give another quote from Leonard Bernstein to prove his point.

I take your point about Philip Glass - although his score for Koyaanisqatsi is terrific (perhaps he's better when there's a visual accompaniment):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz_R2y1oAzw&feature=fvst

I think it is quite wrong to elevate Pop Music and various other kinds of Folk Music to the level of serious music, there aims are quite different. One is almost purely to entertain and generally makes no other claim, the other is an art form that has higher meaning. To say 'Elvis is Beethoven to some people' is also wrong and condescending. Of course it is not just subjective and objective, absolute values play a part. I don't know where some people get their education from but I think they need to start thinking for themselves and not just keep repeating things they hear on the TV.

I keep it simple. We have at one end Poor ( 1 out of 10) and at the other end we have Excellent (10 out of 10). We have at one end simple minded drunks singing Drinking Songs and we have at the other end Trained Opera singers. We have at one end an uneducated unemployed youth sitting in his council house in Manchester writing Oasis lyrics and we have at the other end Beethoven. When an 'Artists' tries to achieve something and fails, he will place it towards the 1 out of 10 end, when he succeeds he will place it towards the 10 out of 10 end. It's quite simple really but not a popular way of thinking in Britain at the moment.