Phillip Glass, Audiophonic Sonority and the Phenomenon of Minimalism

After a century long struggle through the search for a 'new' kind of music and wandering in the experimentation of atonalism, sound design, new systems (ala Messiaen) and more, we seem to have arrived back at a juncture where the fundamentals of music theory have re-emerged, but in a different state... one that is primitive... at least harmonically. This brings me to the person of Phillip Glass and subject of his compositions and that of the minimalism movement in particular.

Lately I have listened to many many hours of Glass. His music is mesmerizing, albeit, not too much on an intellectual level, but much more on a psychological and emotional level that is alluring, perplexing and then also, troubling. At the moment I am playing the sound track to 'The Hours'. (https://youtu.be/wsg73PzKzDA) OK, so his harmonic structures are simply... simple. Minimalism, it seems, is truly a practice of playing with notes the way an immature artist plays with a coloring book or a budding pianist hits the same keys over and over simply because the tactile experience fascinates. There seems to be a lack of intellectual depth or groundedness; only emotion and drive to create with a very limited vocabulary. Nonetheless, Glass' music "works". I like "The Hours" (best of the selections I have heard and performed). I also like the score to "The Illusionist", and fittingly, the music is quite apro pos. It truly ends in my soul like a hypnotic illusion.

Certain movements in "Glassworks" (a compilation of Glass), which I listened to many times over the past few weeks, can be truly annoying, as can be certain of his highly repetitive works. There are those pieces that drive me to the point of “TURN IT OFF... NOW!” Somewhere I read that Glass is the perfection of sonic ADHD.

For myself, Mozart has somewhat of the same evocation, who, in a sense was a 'minimalist' in his day. It is all about the present pervasive moment and then poof, it's gone. Although I have heard thousands of hours of Mozart, there are very few of his compositions that have 'stuck' with me. I have played his Fantasia in D Minor for years. I like that one. And his fugue is really good too. I wish he had attempted more of that kind of composing.

With minimalism, the overwhelming bouquet and aromatic aura that, while present in the air, is overwhelming (and for fleeting moments, captivating), as soon as the music ends (the flower [audiophonic sonority] is absent) the internal movements within oneself seems to dissipate without trace or substance. For myself there seems to be no long term imposition on the soul. This is the part of minimalism that for myself is perplexing.

So, Glass, although his compositions are very basic in their intellectual content, have a certain 'old river' feeling to them. Primitive and maybe even prehistoric. Glass' music is what I would call 'classical trance'... his music leaves one sort of wandering within oneself. Perhaps it is best categorized as an audio colorscape... it is the perfect background music when working on ones computer... an audio screensaver?

This leads us to another minimalist, but one which is most definitely in the genre of sacred music... the compositions of Arvo Part. His music has much the same affect as Glass, but since sacred texts are employed, it then leads one onto a spiritual plane that drives toward the eternal destination of God himself (https://youtu.be/YOpa5Ec3i4s). I have never heard Part in a liturgical setting, only his recordings. His music is also quite hypnotic. This composer is one of the greats of minimalism.

Minimalism is also something that has emerged in architecture. One of the popular expressions is in the phenomenon of the 'Tiny House'. (https://www.tumbleweedhouses.com) It seems that the drive in this type of minimalism is to rid oneself of baggage; the extracurricular concerns for life, the trauma of day to day living (the goal of getting ahead and staying afloat), and shedding all that tends toward what makes life complex. Someone recently asked me "why wouldn't you just go out and buy a typical RV?" This lead me to the question, "What is it about the Tiny House that has such appeal?" The typical RV represents the age of plastics, oil and the refining of synthetics. It is a very sterile environment. It has an immediate appeal, but then it just gets old... fast. How long can one stand to continuously 'live' in a typical RV without the need to escape it? The tiny house is an attempt to amalgamate the transient with some sense of permanence and a human aesthetic which is absent in the plastic bubble on wheels. However, perhaps there is a deeper issue with the tiny house; the typical RV is a temporary escape from the grind of life. Is the tiny house fundamentally the rejection of putting down roots?

The real dichotomy in minimalism is that one is wholesale buying into the simple along with what is overtly transient. Does the art of musical minimalism do the same? Is the music of today’s liturgy (ala OCP and company) represent another bad flavor of the same phenomenon? Are we willingly ejecting all that has gone on before us so we can insistently always be running toward the new? Is the foundation of minimalism locked up with the goal of always wandering? Or is it that we simply cannot live with ourselves?