finally followed up on a friends recommendation to listen to glenn branca and it is blowing my fucking mind. i've only listened to symphony 3 gloria, and the ascension, but god damn are they good. highly recommended.

Just saying my favorite is Lou. My bad on the minimalist thing. That's what I meant. It's ill-informed to recommend it due to minimalism is what I meant. Balinese gamelan is some of the most dynamic, dense, and polyphonic/rhythmic music in the world imo, which are traits generally at odds with minimalism.

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Originally posted by DFelon204409:
Just saying my favorite is Lou. My bad on the minimalist thing. That's what I meant. It's ill-informed to recommend it due to minimalism is what I meant. Balinese gamelan is some of the most dynamic, dense, and polyphonic/rhythmic music in the world imo, which are traits generally at odds with minimalism.

since listening to gamelan music, as recommended on this board, i have read more about it, and also my old roommate (composition grad student in Paris now) has given me a lot of good insights, though he does admit a lot the stuff he knows about it he read online (wikipedia for example).

i don't think i can agree with you on it being bad to recommend gamelan music to fans of minimalism. first of all, at first listen the similarities are obvious even to someone who has never listened to either type of music. debussy, who directly influenced minimalist composers, (the rest of this is from my roommate) heard gamelan music at the paris exposition in the late 19th century. The equal-tempered whole tone scale appears in his music of this time and afterwar, and a Javanese gamelan-like heterophonic texture is emulated on occasion, particularly in "Pagodes", from Estampes, in which the great gong's cyclic punctuation is symbolized by a prominent perfect fifth.

Reich and Glass have both written works with parts for gamelan instruments or full gamelan ensembles. reich even traveled to areas where gamelan music is played to study it and then came back and his subsequent compositions showed obvious signs of this influence. this goes both ways, with modern Indonesian composers writing compositions using western instruments along with gamelan. Cage also directly pays homage to gamelan music in his prepared piano piecies.

Is it a coincidence that the minimalist composers of the world have taken a huge interest in gamelan music, and to some degree vice versa? or could it be that there is some similarities? i think it is hard to deny that gamelan music is a logical recommendation to a fan of minimalist music, given the impact gamelan music has had on minimalist composers, the use of similar composition techniques, and the overall emphasis on multiple alternating rhythms.

Is it a coincidence that all American gamelan composers are homosexual? Does that mean you should recommend gamelan to homosexual men? I don't think so. Influences on Cage, Glass, and Debussy (that Paris Exposition story is the most romanticized story ever) are important but ultimately pretty superficial on a "music recommendation level." Also, nobody even makes the distinction between two massively different "genres" of gamelan, in Javanese and Balinese. They are night and day, and most Western composers have only really been influenced by the Javanese version (or at least that's what their music indicates). At the end of the day, sure recommending may be nice, but the correlation is actually fairly weak. Also, the causality is somewhat weak as well. Gamelan influenced minimalist composers by way of Debussy and a few others? Don't think so. In the pluralistic landscape of 20th century music, everything influences everything, so it's better to be a little cautious when asserting influence and relationships. Forgive my rough passion on the subject. I studied it quite a bit in school and love gamelan, particularly Balinese for all of the reasons that it does not sound like American minimalist music. Steve Reich has always been more influenced by Western African music anyways. His gamelan stuff is more an exoticism than a pure study or an adaptation of genre. And remember, Harrison, McPhee, Cowell, Cage, and Partch are all gay. Be careful with causality.

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Originally posted by DFelon204409:
Is it a coincidence that all American gamelan composers are homosexual? Does that mean you should recommend gamelan to homosexual men? I don't think so. Influences on Cage, Glass, and Debussy (that Paris Exposition story is the most romanticized story ever) are important but ultimately pretty superficial on a "music recommendation level." Also, nobody even makes the distinction between two massively different "genres" of gamelan, in Javanese and Balinese. They are night and day, and most Western composers have only really been influenced by the Javanese version (or at least that's what their music indicates). At the end of the day, sure recommending may be nice, but the correlation is actually fairly weak. Also, the causality is somewhat weak as well. Gamelan influenced minimalist composers by way of Debussy and a few others? Don't think so. In the pluralistic landscape of 20th century music, everything influences everything, so it's better to be a little cautious when asserting influence and relationships. Forgive my rough passion on the subject. I studied it quite a bit in school and love gamelan, particularly Balinese for all of the reasons that it does not sound like American minimalist music. Steve Reich has always been more influenced by Western African music anyways. His gamelan stuff is more an exoticism than a pure study or an adaptation of genre. And remember, Harrison, McPhee, Cowell, Cage, and Partch are all gay. Be careful with causality.

i don't follow your causation argument. are you saying i am making a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy? can you please explain more (as in what factors/terms would be used to express this fallacy from what i stated).

also, i don't see how musical influences = bad recommendation. a basic example would be that the pixies influenced nirvana, and i would recommend the pixies to fans of nirvana (though i'm sure there are much better examples of this, you get my point). i never asserted that gamelan music was the formative influence on minimalist composers, only that it was an influence on some of the more well known minimalist composers. given that, why wouldn't this be considered valuable to listen to for people interested in minimalist music? if reich, for example, thought enough of the music to travel and learn about it, and had it influence some of his work, isn't it worth recommending this for listening to those interested in reich, or even interested in minimalism itself (due to reich's importance to the minimalist movement)?

you also contradict yourself, and i am curious to see which of these two claims of yours you find to be more true. how can "in the pluralistic landscape of 20th century music, everything influences everything, so it's better to be a little cautious when asserting influence and relationships", when you claim "steve reich has always been more influenced by western african music". now, i agree with you about reich and western african music, but how can you think that when you clearly think that "asserting influences" is a negative step? which one of these claims is more important to you, because it is impossible for both of them to exist simultaneously.

as far as minimalism not being "dynamic, dense, and polyphonic/rhythmic", i wanted more clarification on what you meant by this.

for dynamic do you mean volume levels and/or how hard you hit the notes, or do you mean as in covering a wide range, changing keys, diverse sections, contains polyrhythms, etc.

if it is the later that you mean, which i think it is, then i can see what you mean. a constant repetitive pulse through a whole piece isn't very dynamic, but you could also say that the way one section of a piece is completely different from another, while the transition was so slow and smooth you barely noticed it was changing, is a sign of really incredible dynamic/dramatic control. to use a well known example, riley's "In C," listen to it about a minute in, then skip to seven minutes in, then twenty five, then forty, and notice how different they are. Then play it all the way though, and you'll barely notice the change. But that may or may not constitute dynamism to some (plus that piece is pretty dry if you ask me).

Dense really just means there's a lot going on, and that is not a sign of musical quality, it's more of a taste issue. Dillinger Escape Plan (to use a non classical example) is really dense, so is piano music by Brian Ferneyhough, who writes in a style called New Complexity. Both of them are exceptional at it. It can also mean things like having chords with 9 notes in them instead of the usual three or four, or having the usual three or four voiced really closely together. The easiest way to say it is thick. Think, for example, of the keys on a piano. 88 is a lot, but you know the notes repeat. C E G is a major triad, and one of the most basic. If you play a very low C, E somewhere in the middle, and a G really high on the piano, then that is a pretty sparse texture, where as if you play those three notes in their closest spacing, that is more dense. Neither is better than the other, but entirely depends on the piece it is being used in.

I suppose density in minimalism comes from the strong, repeating rhythm, and in experimental, process minimalism, from the cross rhythms that come out of the processes. My roommate gave me a good example: Reich's "Clapping Music" starts with two people clapping the same pattern, which looks like this (X's are claps, -'s are spaces, with each unit taking the same amount of time).

X X X - X X - X - X X -

If you give this a try you'll be able to pull it off. The idea of the piece is that one of the people then moves the rhythm one space to the right, to create something new. Then one more, then one more, until they are the same. The number of repeats on each combination is up the the performer who is moving, while the other stays steady:

Person 1: X X X - X X - X - X X -
Person 2: X X X - X X - X - X X -

Person 1: X X X - X X - X - X X -
Person 2: - X X X - X X - X - X X

Person 1: X X X - X X - X - X X -
Person 2: X - X X X - X X - X - X


And so forth, see the bottom moving one to the right. In this easy example the units stay the same, so it is technically not polyrhythmic, which means two speeds on top of on another. The idea is similar though. Something polyrhythmic, in, the easiest being 2 against 3, would look like this:

X - - X - -
X - X - X -

And often the audience can't tell which is the beat and which is the accompaniment, which is cool. most people consider polyryhthms dense (correct me if i'm wrong), so how can an idea so similar to this be not dense?

also, how is minimalism not polyphonic? isn't polyphony just mean more than one thing happening (two or more melodic voices)? does minimalism not have that. i don't know enough to make a claim either way on that. If you have two or more doing different things (one note gets lower while the other gets higher) that's polyphony right? so how does minimalism not do this?

god, this is going to turn out really long. just trying to better understand your argument. i am new to gamelan and your analysis is interesting. are there other major reasons for why gamelan music is so different from minimalism that it shouldn't be recommended to fans of minimalism? also, could you explain the differences between the two "genres" of gamelan (any links to mp3 or youtube to represent the differences would be highly appreciated - but its understandable if you can't find any). i'm enjoying this discussion, and the knowledge bestowed upon me by your sizable expertise on the subject. i look forward to your response.

quote:

Originally posted by DFelon204409:
Is it a coincidence that all American gamelan composers are homosexual? Does that mean you should recommend gamelan to homosexual men?

When did anyone recommend recommending gamelan based on sexual preferences? This is a total non sequitir - I don't think it helps your argument at all. And secondly, do you know ALL American 'gamelan' composers? It's perfectly possible that there is a heterosexual one out there that we haven't heard of yet. Thirdly, on a good (pedantic) day I wouldn't even call Lou Harrison a 'gamelan' composer. I have problems with many genre-tags.

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I don't think so. Influences on Cage, Glass, and Debussy (that Paris Exposition story is the most romanticized story ever) are important but ultimately pretty superficial on a "music recommendation level."

A lot less superficial than the "method" you suggested above. You're being facetious to make me look bad! RRRAAWR!!!

quote:

Also, nobody even makes the distinction between two massively different "genres" of gamelan, in Javanese and Balinese. They are night and day, and most Western composers have only really been influenced by the Javanese version (or at least that's what their music indicates). At the end of the day, sure recommending may be nice, but the correlation is actually fairly weak.

You totally contradicted yourself there. Are you really trying to say that Javanese gamelan is so different than Balinese that NOBODY even bothers to make a distinction?! Using your following analogy, you've just said something like nobody makes the distinction between day and night, because they're TOO DIFFERENT? HUH?

I've admitted to not being completely familiar with the differences, although I'm sure there are many, and to someone who is more familiar those differences will become more and more apparent. That said, the islands are still quite close geographically, and the instruments used are also very similar on a global scale. We live on earth, so it makes sense to lump things together based on how similar they are on a BIG scale, then divide them up on a smaller scale, no? How would you propose we did it differently?

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Also, the causality is somewhat weak as well. Gamelan influenced minimalist composers by way of Debussy and a few others? Don't think so. In the pluralistic landscape of 20th century music, everything influences everything, so it's better to be a little cautious when asserting influence and relationships.

Ok, you're getting slippery on me again here. Is "everything influences everything" what you're talking about when you say it's best to be a little cautious when asserting influence and relationships. Sounds a bit vague and reckless to me. I mean, Cage studied under Schoenberg and I'm sure Schoenberg "influenced" Cage, but it's not quite the same thing as Steve Reich studying Balinese gamelan and then writing Music for 18 Musicians. Of course causality gets a little weak when you think of it that way...

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Forgive my rough passion on the subject. I studied it quite a bit in school and love gamelan, particularly Balinese for all of the reasons that it does not sound like American minimalist music.

I've studied a bit too. There's nothing wrong with liking gamelan for being more interesting than most 'minimalist' music (in all honesty I don't like that genre-tag either).

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Steve Reich has always been more influenced by Western African music anyways. His gamelan stuff is more an exoticism than a pure study or an adaptation of genre.

I would like more proof that Reich is "more influenced" by West African music than gamelan. Where are you getting that? In the number of pieces he's composed with direct references to either kind of music? If so, I would kindly ask you to respect your own words.

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Be careful with causality.

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also, how is minimalism not polyphonic? isn't polyphony just mean more than one thing happening (two or more melodic voices)?

The key word there is "melodic." In classifying minimalist music as non-polyphonic, you simply have to deny that the voices in question carry the melody - which is generally the voice of the music that stands out the most - the "star," if you will. Now in the case of minimalism it's doubtful that any one voice warrants the limelight any more than the others. So it's easiest not to call it polyphonic, as I understand it. The term "polyphony" is most comfortably applied to Baroque music, where more than one voice is composed as a melody.

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Originally posted by V:

quote:

also, how is minimalism not polyphonic? isn't polyphony just mean more than one thing happening (two or more melodic voices)?

The key word there is "melodic." In classifying minimalist music as non-polyphonic, you simply have to deny that the voices in question carry the melody - which is generally the voice of the music that stands out the most - the "star," if you will. Now in the case of minimalism it's doubtful that any one voice warrants the limelight any more than the others. So it's easiest not to call it polyphonic, as I understand it. The term "polyphony" is most comfortably applied to Baroque music, where more than one voice is composed as a melody.

this makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

Looks like good conversation thus far, and I just wanted to contribute the "proof" that Steve Reich is more influenced by West African music. From his biography:

"During the summer of 1970, with the help of a grant from the Institute for International Education, Mr. Reich studied drumming at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Ghana in Accra. In 1973 and 1974 he studied Balinese Gamelan Semar Pegulingan and Gamelan Gambang at the American Society for Eastern Arts in Seattle and Berkeley, California. From 1976 to 1977 he studied the traditional forms of cantillation (chanting) of the Hebrew scriptures in New York and Jerusalem."

It states both here, but I've seen him speak twice and both times he mentioned how much he learned from the time in Ghana and West African marimba bands, and didn't mention Gamelan either time. If you check out native marimba stuff on youtube and then listen to Nagoya Marimbas or Electric Counterpoint (especially the entrance of the second guitar in the third movement) the influence on rhythmic hocketing is really clear, while it's not as present in his earlier phase shifting pieces like Piano Phase.

I suppose that's not proof, but at least some evidence/food for thought. His biography is worth checking out too, on stevereich.com