CarrieEdmundson.docVIP

Carrie Edmundson December 5, 2009 Prof. Kallick 20th Century Music After Minimalism: Continued from page 568 in Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century In order to better understand and track the new developments in composition, primarily in New York City, “Kyle Gann has coined the term “postminimalism.” He describes it as a tonal, steady-pulsing king of music that avoids defining itself through a controlling process, such as Reich’s phrase shifting or Glass’s additive rhythm. Instead, repetition becomes a background grid on which a large variety of material can be plotted: everything from the Southern American shape-note singing in William Duckworth’s Southern Harmony to the microtonal electric-guitar soundscapes of Glenn Branca. “Postminimalists tend also to be plugged-in composers. Each new technological advance- digital sampling, the MIDI interface for computers and synthesizers, computer music software, interactive Internet linkups- mandates a change in technique. The advent of laptop computers means that composers can carry their life’s work in a backpack, and via the internet they can send it around the world at the touch of a button. Downtown composers also show sympathy for pop. The original minimalists revived tonality in part by studying jazz, RB, and early rock. Postminimalists have taken cues variously from funk, punk, heavy metal, electronic and DJ music, and hip-hop” (Ross 2007; 568). Thus the postminimalist composer is very much a part of modernity and has been able to incorporate technological advances to his own advantage. But before discussing more about what defines the postminimalist style, it is important to understand the composers and their relationships to minimalism (in the most general of terms, of course). As the term “postminimal” would suggest, the style is seen in many ways as being a reaction to the minimalist movement. These composers would have studied music during the height of minimalism’s popu