|
Minimalist music I have recently been writing some music for piano in the minimalist style. I have completed two "suites" of pieces: Le Vent and Trois Gymnospermes. Le Vent is a pair of pieces showcasing an additive style similar to what Philip Glass was doing in the sixties. The first piece, "Le Vent Que Ronge les Montagnes", is basically two chords, F minor and G minor, alternating with each other and stretched out to an extreme length before being crushed back into shortness over the work's 16-minute-long duration. The second piece is called "Le Vent Qu'agite Les Arbres" and uses a similar, yet less extreme, lengthening process without the corresponding shortening. A prelude and coda make this piece a little more conventional, and it is also, at only about three minutes long, a much shorter work. The second suite, Trois Gymnospermes, is more of a musical joke than a serious artistic statement. I took three sections of Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie #1" and repeated them over and over, "ad nauseum". The three pieces are each of open duration, but it doesn't usually take me more than ten minutes to play them all. Back |