10

Going with the Flow: minimalism

as cultural practice in the USA
since 1945
Robert Fink

Introduction: life out of balance?

Thischapterattemptstosketchapossibleresponsetoaseriesoflinkedhistoricaland
interpretative uestionsabouttheminimalistprocessmusicofcomposerssuchasTerry
riley,StevereichandPhilipGlass.wheredidthisrepetitive,modular, hypnotic’music
comefrom whatisitssignificanceasaculturalpractice andwhydoesthisparticular
practiceappearinnorthamericancultureattheprecisemomentitdoes,aroundthe
middleofthe1960s Formostcriticalcommentators,aculturale planationformusical
minimalism might begin with the vicissitudes of avant-garde aesthetic politics  or
withaconsiderationofthecounter-culturalupheavalsofthe1960s or,perhapsmost
seductivelyofall,withasurveyofpopularandnon-westernmusicalin uences,of(to
takearepresentativesample) a ,raga,gamelanandwest-africandrumming,played
out in an increasingly globali ed and multicultural musical world.1 Recent critical

1 Repetitive, hypnotic and modular are alternative 1960s and 1970s labels for some of
the music that would later be called minimalist’. See Michael nyman, Experimental
Music: Cage and beyond (london,1974),pp.139–71,andedwardStrickland,Minimalism:
origins (Bloomington and indianapolis, 1993), pp. 1–10. The countercultural link has
beenenthusiasticallyendorsedbythecomposersofrepetitivemusicthemselves,most
notably Philip Glass (see Glass as interviewed in william Duckworth, Talking Music
(new york, 1995), p. 337). The in uence of non-western music on minimalism is a
matter of some debate, downplayed by the composers themselves but adduced by
legionsofcriticsandscholars,beginningwithTom ohnsonintheVillage Voice: The
otherdaysomeoneaskedmewhatithoughtwasthesinglemostimportantin uence
on contemporary music.after mulling over a few possible answers for a moment, i
foundonewhichseemedbroadenoughtoanswerthe uestion.isaidithoughtitwas
theinfiltrationofnon-westernideas’( MusicforPlanetearth’,Village Voice, 4 anuary
1973 reprintedin ohnson,The Voice of New Music: New York City 1972–1982: a collection
of articles originally published in theVillageVoice(eindhoven,1989),p.35).
Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist & Postminimalist Music

workonrepetitivemusichasusefullyproblemati editsrelationshipwithafricanand
north-indian musical models, noting the idiosyncratic and contingent way in which
minimalist composers have received these comple  traditions.2a new generation of
scholarshasbeguntoaskmoreprobing uestionsaboutearlyminimalism’spolitical
allegiancesin1960sbattlesoverraceandrepressionintheUSa.3
and yet an even more basic critical framework for minimalist music remains
relatively une plored: however deep and complicated its entanglements with other
andcountercultures,minimalismitselfisaprofoundlyamericanculturalpractice.it
must have something positivelytodowiththemainstreamcultureoftheindustriali ed,
mass-mediasocietyinwhichitrosetosuchprominence.Thereoughttobesomething
american’ – other than a general liking for mavericks and outsiders – behind the
ubi uityofrepetitiveminimalistmusicincontemporaryamericanconcertlife.4
To uncover this positive connection, we can begin with a programmatic moment
of repetitive music from the 1982 art film Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey reggio (b. 1940),
occurring about 80 minutes in, during the final moments of a 21-minute perpetuum
mobile on the soundtrack that its composer, Philip Glass (b. 1937), calls The Grid’.
over the course of the previous hour, we have seen monumental time-lapse shots
of unspoiledamerican nature give way to environmental despoliation, to images of
urban decay and anomie, and finally to a nightmarishly sped-up artificial world of
empty,repetitiveproductionandconsumption.Theclimacticmomentsofthese uence
cross-cut between e treme time-lapse and e treme slow-motion cinematography.as
thevertiginoustemposhiftsandelectronicarpeggiosapproachadisorientatingpeak,
suddenly we see a single american woman, holding two small children, all three
completelymotionless.
Theyarega ing,transfi ed,atatelevisionset.
we can’t see what they are watching  but behind them, in what is clearly a
department-storeshowroom,anentirewallofTVs,accelerated50-foldthroughtime-
lapse photography, spews forth its chaotic overload.almost immediately the visual
field is filled by a single TV screen, first showing a video game and then, for what
seemslikeaneternitybutisonly30seconds,aragingtorrentofearly-1980sUSnetwork
programming.Theshotseemslonger,becausestop-motionfilmingcompresseshours

2 eremyGrimshaw,drawinginpartonpreviousworkbyDavidClaman,hasnotedthis
dynamicintheongoingminimalistpro ectoflaMonteyoung seeChapter3ofDraw
a Straight Line and Follow It: the music and mysticism of La Monte Young (o ford,2011).
MartinScher ingerhascriti ued africanist’readingsofreich’smusicfroma(South-)
african perspective  see Curious intersections, Uncommon Magic: Steve reich’s It’s
Gonna Rain’,Current Musicology,79/80(2005):pp.207–44.
3 e emplary in this regard are Sumanth Gopinath’s reich in Blackface: Oh Dem
Watermelons and radical minstrelsy in the 1960s’, Journal of the Society for American
Music,5/2(2011):pp.139–93 and TheProblemofthePoliticalinStevereich’sCome
Out (1966)’, in robertadlington (ed.), Sound Commitments: avant-garde music and the
sixties (o ford,2009),pp.121–44.
4 Maverickappearstobethepreferredamericantermforits native’avant-garde, especially
the e perimental and minimalist wing; thus the San Francisco Symphony’s ongoing
festival series, American Mavericks. Michael Broyles, Mavericks and Other Traditions in
American Music (newHaven,2004)presentsanarrativeofthe maverick’aestheticin
americanartmusicinwhichminimalismfeaturesprominently.

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of broadcast time, do ens of channels, literally hundreds of programme segments
andadvertisements,intoafewfren iedmoments.inthisnegativeclima ,theoverall
anti-technology, anti-mass-media message of the film is made brutally, almost
pornographicallyvisible.5
Glassandreggiolaterbackedawayfromtheeco-politicalreadingofKoyaanisqatsi 
theybothtookthepositionthatall itsimagesof lifeoutofbalance’–assemblylines,
rocketlaunches,cerealadvertisements,televangelists,sped-upfootageofcommuters
boiling out of Grand Central Station like ants, even the soul-crushing long shots of
losangeles freeways broiling in smog and tra c – should be looked at abstractly,
in counterpoint to the repetitive soundtrack, as an aesthetic e ercise in pure pattern
and form. removing the somewhat dated counter-cultural filter also allows a more
suggestive e uivalence with mainstream US culture to make its case directly to the
viewer: wittingly or not, the movie shows us through simple u taposition how the
e perienceof1970snetworktelevision–inparticular,therelentless,torrentialaspect
ofthate perienceisolatedandmagnifiedbyreggio’stime-lapsephotography–feels
the same as the e perience of whirring, repetitious figuration and endlessly cycling
harmonicprogressionsinGlass’smusic.inthischapter,iwille aminethehistoricaland
culturalimplicationsoftheformalclaimthatrepetitivemusicalminimalismfiguresin
soundthephenomenologyof1960sand1970scommercial-networktelevisioninsome
detail.as we shall see, a powerful isomorphism of phenomenology and affect links
pulse-pattern minimalism with television – the single dominant cultural form of the
latetwentiethcentury–tothedegreethatchangesinthemodeoftelevisionproduction
andconsumptioncanbecorrelatedwiththehistoricalfactsofminimalism’sriseand
fallasaculturalpractice.

Television as a Process: the phenomenology of broadcasting

‘flow’

The most in uential scholarly attempt to consider network television formally was
inspired by an actual e perience of broadcast overload much like the one evoked in
Koyaanisqatsi  as recounted by British cultural theorist raymond williams in 1975, it
happenedataslowertempo,butproducedthesamedreamydisorientation:

one night in Miami, still da ed from a week on an atlantic liner, i began
watchingafilmandatfirsthadsomedi cultyinad ustingtoamuchgreater
fre uency of commercial breaks’. yet this was a minor problem compared
to what eventually happened. Two other films, which were due to be
shownonthesamechannelonothernights,begantobeinsertedastrailers.
a crime in San Francisco (the sub ect of the original film) began to operate

5 ThediscussionofKoyaanisqatsi isdrawnfromthepresentauthor’sRepeating Ourselves:

American minimal music as cultural practice (Berkeleyandlosangeles,2005),pp.161–2.
Thepresentchapterwille pandonandhistorici esometechnologicalimplicationsof
thisbook’slargerargumentaboutminimalism,advertisingandconsumerculture.

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in an e traordinary counterpoint not only with the deodorant and cereal
commercials but with a romance in Paris and the eruption of a prehistoric
monsterwholaidwastetonewyork Thetransitionsfromfilmtocommercial
andfromfilmatofilmsBandCwereineffectunmarked.Thereisinany
case enough similarity between certain kinds of films, and between several
kindsoffilmandthe situation’commercialswhichoftenconsciouslyimitate
them,tomakease uenceofthiskindaverydi culte periencetointerpret.
icanstillnotbesurewhatitookfromthatwhole ow.ibelieveiregistered
someincidentsashappeninginthewrongfilm,andsomecharactersinthe
commercials as involved in the film episodes, in what came to seem – for
all the occasional bi arre disparities – a single irresponsible ow of images
andfeelings.6

Thecatalystise haustionratherthantime-lapsephotography,buttheresultisthesame:
williamslosestrackoftelevision’ssupposedlyvariegatedcontent,andbecomesaware
ofitsactualrepetitiveform. Formally,broadcasttelevisionisnotreallyaseriesofdistinct
programmesinterruptedbycommercial intervals’,butasingleundifferentiatedflow of
segments and,aswilliamsputsit,that planned ow’is thedefiningcharacteristicof
broadcasting,simultaneouslyasatechnologyandasaculturalform’.7 To rephrase the
insightintermsthatdeliberatelyevokeStevereichandMichaelnyman,anevening
oftelevisionisnotacollectionoftemporallydiscrete works’ itisparticipationinthe
endless,unitary owoftelevision as a process.
asdescribedincontemporaneoussources,thephenomenologyof1960sand1970s
television-as-process had a lot in common with that of the new minimalist process
music.ina1975essayontheformalpossibilitiesofvideoart,thevideographerDavid
antinreportedthathisownmedium’sdouble,networktelevision,wasdominatedby
theregular tickofitsmetronome’ hewentontoanalogi ebroadcasttelevision’snested
modulartimestructurestoproportionallyrelated timesignatures’,asiftheinterplay
of programmes and advertising in a typical hour of television could be notated as
in a score by Glass or reich, where stratified musical te tures interlock in the same
systematicway.8Thisisarathere oticconcept,especiallyifonehasnothadthebenefit
ofstructuralimmersioninthisbygoneeraoftelevision itwillbeusefultorecallforthe
contemporaryreaderantin’sanalysisofhowtheinterlocking timesignatures’of1960s
networktelevisionactuallymeshed.onthe micro-scale’ofTV,henoted,a30-second
advertisementwas built’outof10-secondpieces(themetronomic beat’),and60-or
120-secondadvertisementsweresimplymultiples.atthe macro’level,thestructureof
networkbroadcastingwasproportionallythesame,carvedfromprogrammingunits
of120minutes, the beat’nowmetedoutin15-minutesegmentsthemselvesdivided
betweenappro imately12minutesofprogrammingandappro imatelythreeminutes

6 raymondwilliams,Television: technology and cultural form (newyork,1975),p.92.

7 ibid., p.86.
8 Davidantin, Video: the distinctive features of the medium’, in Su anne Delahunty
(ed.), Video Art (catalogue of a 1975 e hibition at the institute of Contemporaryart,
University of Pennsylvania), pp. 61–74. This little-known but fascinating essay was
reprintediniraSchneiderandBerylKorot(eds.),Video Art: an anthology(newyork,
1976),pp.174–95.

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ofadvertising.eventoday,antin’smetaphorof timesignatures’remainsperfectlyapt:
itencapsulatesarecursiveperiodicstructurethattraditionalmusicalnotationmakes
intuitivelyclear.
it was possible to subdivide television’s beat further: in 1977, erry Mander’s
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television formally analogi ed the technology of
televisionitselftoa repetitiveprocess’takingplaceatthelevelofthemicrosecond.a
reformed advertising man, Mander was obsessed with the baleful hypnagogic effect
ofanaloguetelevision’s electronicrhythm’,whathecalledthe beatoftheset’,asit
organi edtheassemblyofmovingpicturesfromanendlesslypulsatingtransmission
streamofglowingdots:

Fortheentirefourormorehoursperdaythattheaveragepersoniswatching
television,therepetitiveprocessofconstructingimagesoutofdots,following
scans,andvibratingwiththebeatsofthesetandthee igenciesofelectronic
rhythmgoeson eventually,theconsciousmindgivesupnotingtheprocess
andmergeswiththee perience.Thebodyvibrateswiththebeatandthemind
givesitselfover,openinguptowhateverimageryisoffered oneimageis
always evolving into the ne t, arriving in a stream of light and proceeding
inwardtothebrainatitsownelectronicspeed.9

asMander’spsychedelicallyin ectedlanguageshows,hebelievedthatthepatterned
visualvibrationofthesedots,blinkingoffandon30timespersecond,wouldcreatea
physicalentrainment( Thebodyvibrateswiththebeat’)thatmightwelloverwhelm
theconsciousmind.Castingaroundforarulingmetaphortodescribehowtelevision’s
abilityto setitsownvisualpace’couldoutruntheconsciousmind,hehituponthe
samememorablefigureofspeechaswilliamshadtwoyearsbefore:thankstothe li uid
ualityoftelevisionimagery’,heargued, theviewerhasnowaytoslowthe ow’.10
(in the se uence of time-lapsed television broadcasting from Koyaanisqatsi discussed
above,reggiomadethispotentialdangercinematicallyreal:theviewercannotpossibly
processthepicturescomingoutofthefilmedTVsetfastenough,andthestroboscopic
effectis uitevividlyhallucinatory.)
Mander was not alone: an iety about such subliminal seduction’, as it has been
called, already pervaded the Cold-war imagination, with periodic outbreaks of
indignation over hidden se ual imagery airbrushed into maga ine advertisements
and e hortations to consume amidst the ickering of movie trailers.11 whether sub-
perceptualvisualstimulireallycouldslipanideapasttheconsciousmindisnotreally

9 erryMander,Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (newyork,1978),p.192.

10 ibid., p.200.
11 Popular fears about subliminal’ messaging were first stoked in the USa by the
muckraking ournalistVancePackard,whoseThe Hidden Persuaders (newyork,1957)
took on a whole range of psychologically and perceptually subliminal advertising
techni ues. The term subliminal seduction’ was coined by the communications
scholar wilson Bryan Key, whose much more hard-edged conspiracy theories about
hiddense ualimageryinseeminglyinnocuousprintadvertisingappearedunderthe
sensationaltitle,Subliminal Seduction: ad media’s manipulation of a not so innocent America
(newyork,1974).

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thepoint moreinterestingisthatthesephantomvisual vibrations’werepostulatedas

directlyeffectiveonthebody(and,thereby,thebodypolitic), ustasmathematically
organi edsoundvibrationshavebeensincethetimeofPythagorasandPlato.
likePlato,Manderwantedtobanishthishypnoticvisual music’fromhisideal–in
thiscase,ofcourse,american–republic.Hescoffedatwell-meaningattemptstoraise
the ualityoftelevisionbroadcasting,andproposedtooutlawtheTVsetitselfasade
facto publichealthha ard.ButwhetherornotweacceptMander’sparanoidcriti ue
oftelevisionassubliminalseduction,wecannotignorethewayinwhichitharmoni es
with other late-1970s phenomenological descriptions of television that emphasi e a
constant, rhythmically regular ow of basically undifferentiated material, organi ed
at three metric levels of pulsation: a subliminal level of barely perceptible vibration,
whereeachsecondisdividedinto30or60electronic ickers anintermediatelevelof
interruption(moreaboutthisbelow)wherethesecondsaregroupedbytensinto15-,
30- and 60-second units  and an encompassing programmatic level, where the basic
buildingblockisthe15-minutese uenceofshowsegment break,assembledinto30-
(sit-com),60-(drama)and120-minute(movie)units.
Glass’srepetitivecyclingmusicfor TheGrid’thusdisplaysastrikingresemblance
tonetworktelevision’stripartitetimestructure:whirringsynthesi erarpeggios,rapidly
cyclinggeometricpatternsofmusical dots’atthelimitsofsonicperception,doapretty
good obsimulatingthevibrating electronicrhythm’oftheTVset theactualprocess
ofthework,itsphrasestructure,isbased uiteclearlyonrepetitionandbuild-upof
phrasesthatareappro imately10secondsinlength,usuallyrepeatedfourtosi times 
andtheentirecompositionis21minuteslong,whichisslightlylongerthantheaverage
segmentoftelevisionprogramming,butisscaledincorrectproportiontotheothertwo
levels.ofcourse,Glass’sscoreforKoyaanisqatsi makesnoovertreferencetothecontent
ofthe1970snetworktelevisionspewingoutonthescreenaboveit,butitdoesseem
to reproduce the distinctive cultural form of that television broadcasting – sustained
abstractpatternsofinterlocking,pulsating,largelysubliminal owatmultipletemporal
levels–ine uallysustainedabstractpatternsofmusicalsound.
astructureofmultipleinterlockingmetriclevelsisunremarkableinwesternmusic,
butthegradual,subliminalnatureofitsrepetitivepatterningisadistinctivefeatureof
minimalist processmusic,oftenhighlighted by composersintermsthat wouldhave
made contemporary critics of television and the subliminal very uneasy. la Monte
young has long argued that the periodic composite sound wave forms’ created by
intricate combinations of sine tones in perfect rational intonation can physically
entrain the auditory corte  into repetitive neuronal firing  this should induce in
listeners subliminal’feelingsthatinde fundamentalPythagoreantruths.12(Giventhe
fre uenciesthatheuses,thesecompositewaveformscyclesimultaneouslyatintervals
fromonceeveryseveralminutestothousandsoftimespersecond.)Stevereichspent
anumberofyearsinthelate1960sandearly1970se ploringhowthe psycho-acoustic
byproducts’ of the constantly changing phase patterns in works such as Violin Phase
(1967) and Drumming (1971) could, through subtle doubling and timbral matching,
be gradually picked out, moved from subliminal to conscious awareness, and then
dropped back into an undifferentiated rhythmic ow. at around the same time, he

12 laMonteyoung, notesonThe Well-Tuned Piano’,linernotestorecordingofThe Well-

Tuned Piano 81 X 25, 6:17:50–11:18:59 PM NYC (Gramavision:18-8701,1988),pp.5and7.

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inventedthePhaseShiftingPulseGate,anelectronictimingdevicethat,muchlikethe
electrongunattheheartofananaloguetelevision’scathode-raytube,couldprocess
and fire up to 120 electronic pulses per second in constantly changing rhythms. The
goal,reali edonlyonce,wastocreateahypnotic,graduallyshifting owofsubliminal
electronicsoundpatternsinalistener’sperceptualapparatus.13
My argument, implicit in much of the above, is that classic network television,
likeclassicminimalistmusic(andunlikemostothermusic),isdominatedbygradual
process. Televisual owwasgradualbydefinition inthe1960sand1970s,everything
onnetworktelevisionlookedprettymuchlikeeverythingelseandsharpcontrastswere
deliberately avoided.antin points out that an entire arsenal of techni ues had been
developed to soften the tick of its metronome  to soften all shocks of transition’.
He argues that video art, if it was to be art, had to resist the sameness built into the
technology,oritwouldboreitsaudiencetodeath buttheartofmusic,aspractisedby
minimalistcomposers,happilyembracedtheundifferentiated owoftelevisiontime.
Perhapsthisiswhysomanyothervideoartistswithlinkstothemusicalavant-garde
–pioneerssuchasBerylKorot,Brucenaumanandnam unePaik–foundrepetitive
musicsofascinating.14

Flow, Advertising and the Birth of Minimalist Music

neither repetitive minimalist music nor the ow of broadcast television presents a
completelynon-lineare perienceoftime.rather,theyshareaspecialkindoflinearity,
auni uerelationtothedesirefornarrativeclosurethatisperhapstheirmostdistinctive
phenomenologicalfeature:

radio and television programs are constantly being interrupted – by

advertisements,stationbreaks,andfiller.interruptionhasitsownlogic,one

13 Steve reich, Music as a Gradual Process’ (1968), in Writings on Music 1965–2000,
Paul Hillier (ed.) (o ford, 2002), p. 35. reich’s programme note for Violin Phase
(1967)describesthetechni uefor pointingout’subliminalmelodiesinthelistener’s
awareness(seeWritings on Music, p.26).Forreich’swrydescriptionofhisbriefforay
intoelectronicinstrumentconstruction,seehis anendtoelectronics–PulseMusic,
thePhaseShiftingPulseGate,andFour Organs, 1968–1970’(1972),inWritings on Music,
pp.38–45.
14 antin, Video’, pp. 64–8. while on the east Coast in 1968, Bruce nauman  became
interestedinthemusicoflaMonteyoung,PhilipGlass,Terryriley,andStevereich.
His studio activities, sometimes dealing with rhythmic patterning, re ect the serial
repetitionofthismusic,whichdoesawaywiththesenseofdurationwhileintensifying
one’sawarenessofthemoment’(li ieBorden, DirectionsinVideoart’,inDelahunty,
Video Art, p.79.)itisworthnotinginthisregardthatBerylKorot,aseminalvideoartist
whosepioneering1970swork weaving’togethertheoutputofmultipleTVmonitors
(e.g. Dachau, 1974) directly engaged with the repetitive, interlocking nature of the
broadcast medium, is married to reich, and has been his collaborator on a number
of large-scale multimedia works that combine the rhythms of repetitive music and
multipleinterwovenstreamsofvideo.

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thatwritersofTVscriptshavetostudycarefully.Thestorythatgetscutinto
piecesbycommercialbreakscannotbesopowerfulinanyonesegmentthat
theviewerwillbefuriouswhenthebreakcomes–anangryviewerisnota
receptivebuyer.arhythmofcontentisestablishedbythepeoplewhocontrive
massentertainment:the show’isbrokenintoregularshortsegments,eachof
whichterminatesatapointatwhichtheviewer(orlistener)wantstosee(or
hear)morebutisn’tsooverwhelminglyengagedastoresentthebreak.15

ThankstowhatrichardSennett, uotedhere,identifiesasits logicofinterruption’–

thefactthatunrelatedadvertisingandtrailersareconstantlycuttingintothedramatic
progression – post-1960s television has evolved a carefully calibrated telos: each
segmentofthe owhas ustenoughforwarddrivetokeeptheviewerinterested,but
notsomuchthatthesegmentationitselfise periencedasunpleasant.
appositely enough to the current discussion, Sennett was not writing primarily
abouttelevision,butaboutmid-1980sdevelopmentsincontemporaryclassicalmusic.
Hewastryingtoe plainthesuddenimmensepopularityofmusicsuchasactiiiof
PhilipGlass’sThe Photographer,writteninthesameyear(1982)as–andsoundingmuch
like–thesoundtracktoKoyaanisqatsi. Thisisrepetitivemusicthatproceedsaccording
toitsownlogicofinterruption,musicthattakesthemostteleologicaltonalmaterial
possibleandforcesittoloopbackonitselfevery10seconds,interruptingitself,and
thus segmenting itself, over and over, according to the rhythm of commercial time.
Sennett, trying to pin down its appeal to the younger generation (he prefers Pierre
Boule ), uotes a teenage relative whom he took to see the show in Brooklyn. it’s
simple’,reportedhisinformant. Thisiswhattelevisionshouldbe.’16
Sennett the critic makes a perspicacious point about reception: by 1984, massive
dosesoftelevision owhadcreatedanaudienceforamusicalstylethatmovedthrough
time in the same multilayered, interrupt-driven way. (Glass, he argues, was not a
crossoverartist  massculturepreparedpeopletocrossovertohim’.17)Buttherelation
ofmusicalminimalismandtelevisual owalsohasintriguingimplicationsfortheway
inwhichwewritetheculturalhistoryofrepetitivemusic.Flowwasnotinventedwith
thetelevisionbroadcastingsysteminthelate1940s norhasitcontinuedunalteredto
thepresentday.Findoutwhentelevisionstarted owingfreely,andyoumightbeable
topredicttheriseofarepetitivemusictomatchit laterdisturbancesinthe ow(and
therehavebeenmany)mightwellcorrelatewithashiftawayfrom classic’minimalism,
towhatwenowcall postminimalism’,orperhapstowardsomethingelsealtogether.
asithappens,itis uiteeasytodatethebirthof ow.ithadtodowithadvertising,a
featureofcommercialnetworktelevisionthat,thoughimplicitinmuchofthepreceding
discussion, has been deliberately avoided until now. Flow, with its logic of constant

15 richardSennett, TheTwilightoftheTenuredComposer’,Harper’s,269(1984):pp.70–71.

16 Sennett, TenuredComposer’,p.71.asithappens,actiiiofThe Photographer didnot ust
becometelevision itparticipatedinanartyoffshootofMTV,generatingapioneering
abstract musicvideo’madeforCBSin1983bythevideoartistsDeanwinklerand ohn
Sanborn (see http://www.youtube.com/user/dean358  (accessed 12 august 2011)).
actuallyairedontheUScablenetworkin1984,winklerandSanborn’sworkisnowin
thecollectionofthenewyorkMoMa.
17 Sennett, TenuredComposer’,p.72.

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interruption, is the direct conse uence of a structural shift in the way sponsorship
was deployed to underwrite network programming.18 at its inception, television’s
sponsorshipmodelwastakenfromradio:individualcorporationsboughtentirehours
oftimefromthenetwork,andcreatedboththeadvertisingandtheprogrammingtofill
them.Theeffectcouldbehigh-classorvulgar–butthegoalwasaunifiedpresentation
of entertainment and salesmanship, e ibly deployed to create an attractive fusion
of product and programme in the viewer’s mind. interruption was avoided: serious
programmes sometimes eliminated advertisements altogether, or bunched them up
at the beginning and end of a drama played without breaks  in comedy and variety
programmes,thesellingwasoftenseamlesslyintegratedintotheshow,withthehost
turning spontaneously’ to his audience and initiating a rela ed discussion of the
sponsor’sproduct.
Buttheradiomodeleventuallyprovedunworkable:corporatesponsorswerepoor
managers of the airwaves, alienating viewers and bringing regulatory wrath down
onthenetworks moretothepoint,asadvertisingratesskyrocketed,eventhelargest
corporationsfoundthemselvesunabletoaffordanhourof prime’time.Thesolution
was to change television’s sponsorship model over to what was known during this
period as the maga ine concept’: short advertising spots would be sold to the highest
bidderandinsertedwithmetronomicregularity,butwithoutcoordinationofcontent,into
anongoingstreamofprogramming,likeprintadvertisementsinthepagesofamaga ine.
Thelogicofspotadvertisingandmultiplesponsorshipchangedthephenomenology
oftelevision asbothraymondwilliamsandDavidantinpointout,theygaveinevitable
riseto ow.antinnotesthatatypical -hourof1970snetworktelevisionhadabout22
to24minutesofprogrammingandsi toeightminutesofadvertisements.Thelatter,of
course,aredistributedatthebeginning,middleandendoftheprogramme,splittingit
intotwohalvesandseparatingitfromtheprecedingandfollowingprogrammes.But,
as he points out, thanks to spot advertising, by the 1960s these commercial breaks’
were themselves dividedintouptofourseparate30-secondchunks,eachconnectedtoa
differentsponsor,eache tremelydifferentinsub ectandstyle,andsometimesfurther
fractured by short promo’ spots inserted by the network. The pulveri ing effect of
these 30-second interruptions increased when, as often happened, the opening and
endingoftheactualprogrammewere wrappedaround’thefirstandlastcommercial
breaks.antinarguesthattheresulting owoftelevision,evenwithintheprogramme
segments,is scaledtocommercialtime’,andthus,likeminimalistmusic,ithasasteady,
repetitive,metricalbeatatseveralphenomenologicallevels.19
This structure fell into place uickly during the early 1960s: in 1955, three out of
fourshowshadasinglesponsor adecadelater,onlyoneineightdid.Thehistorical
correlation is satisfyingly precise: repetitive minimalist music arises in american
cultureatthee actmoment,themid-1960s,whenspotadvertisingirrevocablytakes

18 Thefollowingdiscussionsummari eshistoricalandinterpretativethemesdevelopedat

muchgreaterlengthinFink,Repeating Ourselves, pp.128–42.Forhistoricalbackground,
consultwilliamBoddy,Fifties Television: the industry and its critics (Urbana,il,1990),
p. 155  as well as . Fred MacDonald, One Nation Under Television: the rise and decline
of network TV (new york, 1990) andanthony Smith (ed.), Television, an International
History (o ford,1995).
19 antin, Video’,p.65.

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over broadcast television, and se uenced semi-teleological ow – Sennett’s logic of
interruption’ – becomes the dominant phenomenological reality of the medium. of
course, correlation is not causation  television did not cause minimalism to happen,
either as a deliberate response to the rise of ow or as an involuntary re ection of
the new electronic zeitgeist. nor should minimalism suffer critically for commercial
television’s many sins. But the history of repetitive music inamerican culture looks
uitedifferentifoneimaginesitsriseandfallcorrelatednot ustwiththeusualcounter-
culturalsuspects–drugs,easternreligion,popmusic–butwiththecomple evolution
ofourconsumercultureanditsmass-mediatedculturalforms.
Minimalism is often positioned in histories of twentieth-century art music as the
soundtracktothemythic1960s:asonicin unctionto,asthehippiesusedtoputitback
then, turnon,tunein,anddropout’.Timothyleary’sactualin unctionwassomewhat
morecomple andprocess-oriented: Si words:dropout,turnon,thencomebackand
tuneitin andthendropoutagain,andturnon,andtuneitbackin it’sarhythm.’20
Drlearywouldn’thavelikedtohearmesayit,but1960stelevisionalsohadrhythm,
and following it could be an e ually repetitive, hypnotic trip. Pretty much everyone
in1960sand1970samericawasontheTVtrip woulditbesooutlandishtowonder
whetheramericanmusicwentwiththe owaswell

Zap! The Remote Control and the Rise of a Postminimalist

Style

it may have occurred to a reader e ually familiar with the history of minimalism
and television that by 1984, when richard Sennett provided his cultural analysis of
minimalistrepetition,boththewhirringarpeggiosofPhilipGlassandthehomogenous
owoftelevisionpumpedoutbythethreema oramericannetworksweregettinglong
inthetooth.Theearly1980swereatimeofradicalchangeinthetelevisionindustry.
inadditiontorampantderegulationoftheairwaves,thisperiodsawtheintroduction
andrapiddiffusionofvideocassetterecorders,thebirthofthenationalcableindustry
andaproliferationofnewbroadcastchannels.Butthepivotaltechnologicalshiftfor
the phenomenology of television ow was the unstoppable diffusion of cheap infra-
reddevicesforremotelycontrollingtheset.workableremotecontrolsforTVsetshad
beenmarketedasearlyasthemid-1950s,buttheywereclunky,pronetomisfireand
very e pensive(aremoteadded30percenttothepriceofatypicalconsole) aslateas

20 leary reiterated his si -word mantra, in various in ections, in ust about every
interviewandspeakingengagementbetween1964and1973.Theversionherecomes
fromafamouspresentationatMiTinBostonon3March1967,about10minutesinto
leary’shalfofadebatewith eromelettvin,anMiTneuroscientist,onthebenefitsand
dangersoflSD.ThefilmeddebatewaslaterbroadcastbyBoston’spublictelevision
station,wGBH,on30november1967underthetitle,LSD: Lettvin Vs Leary. interested
readerscanaccesstheentirefilmintheonlinewGBHMedialibraryandarchivesat
http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/7df2a7-lsd-lettvin-vs-leary (accessed25 uly2012).
learyuttersthewords uotedaboveat10:23.

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1975,lessthan10percentofTVshadone.Butby1992,whetherattachedtoanewvideo
cassetterecorder(VCr),anewTVor(increasinglycommon)thenewcabledecoderbo 
ontopoftheset,remotecontrolswereinthehandsof90percentofviewers.21
robert Bellamy and ames walker begin their indispensable 1996 book on the
televisionremotecontrolbyforthrightlyclaimingtheremotecontroldevice(rCD)as
a subversivetechnology’.whatitworkstosubvertistelevision ow: Byallowingthe
usertomoverapidlybetweenprogramofferingsandavoidunpleasantoruninteresting
material, the rCD works in opposition to the historic structure and operational
parametersoftheUStelevisionindustry.’22ScholarssuchasBellamyandwalkerhave
discussedtheriseoftheremote,itseconomicandpoliticaleffects,andtherace,class
andgenderfactorsthatdetermineitspossessionanduse theyhavealsodevelopeda
typologyofremote-control-enabledbehaviourssuchaszipping(usingaVCrremote
to fast-forward through the advertisements in recorded broadcasts), zapping (using
a TV or cable remote to ump away from commercials while watching live) and
grazing or flipping (using the remote to ump repeatedly between programming on
multiplechannels).
Thereisstillmuchthatresearchersdonotknowaboutthewayinwhichtelevision
viewersuserCDs,andlingeringcontroversyaboutsuchsimple uestionsashowmany
timesperhouranaverageuserchangesthechannel.23Butdetailedphenomenological
analysisofrCDuseshowsthatform–inparticular,thecomple ,real-timeinteraction
betweentheinterlocking,fi edtemposoftelevisionbroadcastingandthenewrhythmic
freedomofimpulseenabledbythe clicker’–iscentraltotheimprovisatorypleasuresof
gra ing’.ThecommunicationsscholarPaulTraudt–whovideotapedchannelsurfing
sessions,analysedthemandthen(thekeystep)wentontointerviewhissub ectswhile
they were watching themselves surf – establishes that television gra ers understand
howbroadcastingisputtogetherrhythmically theyfeelits owandplayoffitasthey
seek out interesting content. (Traudt calls this surveillance’ and argues that, when
viewers are in surveillance mode, they display a sophisticated understanding of
television’stemporalrulesforstructuringpresentations’.24)
ineffect,broadcasttelevisionviewersusetherCDasaforagingtool,engagingin
rhythmic rapid-fire clicking to lock in a set of promising channels (Traudt calls this
a cluster’), and then moving back and forth between them based on their intuitive
graspofthecountervailingrhythmsoftelevision.Thecollagesthattheyconstructare
purposiveandformallyintricate thefamoussemiotician,Umbertoeco,wasnot ust
beingself-congratulatory,norwasheatypical,whenhedeclaredin1990that,withthe
remoteinhishand,hecould maketelevisionintoaPicasso’.25Traudtnotesthat,like

21 SeeBruceC.Klopfenstein, FromGadgettonecessity:thediffusionofremotecontrol

technology’,in amesr.walkerandrobertV.Bellamy, r(eds.),The Remote Control in
the New Age of Television(westport,CT,1993),pp.23–39.
22 robertV.Bellamy, r.and amesr.walker,Television and the Remote Control: grazing on
a vast wasteland (newyork,1996),p.1.
23 The fundamental problems seem to be, on the one hand, too much reliance on self-
reporting in mass surveys and, on the other, the small sample si e of observational
studies.SeetheessaysinPartii(pp.41–100)ofwalkerandBellamy,The Remote Control.
24 Paul . Traudt, Surveillance and Cluster Viewing: foraging through the rCD
e perience’,inwalkerandBellamy,The Remote Control,p.70.
25 This uotation is a favorite of communications researchers who study the rCD  its

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Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist & Postminimalist Music

old-time telegraph operators, rCD users have distinctive clicking styles that are as
uni ueasfingerprintsbutclassifiablethroughabasicontologyoftempos determined
byuserpredispositionandprogrammingavailability’.26
intheremote-controlera,viewersarenotsimplypassivereceiversoftelevision’s
electronic rhythms’  they impose their own ontologies of tempo’, their own swing,
ontothebroadcast ow.Bellamyandwalker,callingonalong-standingtheoryofmass
communication,implythatthereispurepleasureinmakingaPicasso–oraCharlie
Parker solo – out of television. rCD use is an e ample of communication-play’, in
which gra ers also gra e ust for the fun of it  a oy that comes not ust from the
imagesencounteredbutfromthecontroltheyhaveoverthoseimages’.27
let’s go one step further, a step that none of these communications researchers
takes,perhapsbecausenoneofthemisaprofessionalmusician.Thepointisnot ust
controlovertheimages itiscontrolovertherhythm oftheimages. Alert viewers can
playtheremotecontrollikeamusicalinstrument, soloing’byboppingamongacluster
of channels in syncopated rhythms over the basic groove of television’s segmented
ow.a 1993 article reproduces the anguished cry of a wife driven half-mad by her
husband’s aggressive playing’ on the rCD, and yet her musical metaphor is pitch-
perfect: Heliesonthecouchandplaysthepianoonthecablebo .everysecondit’s
switchy-switchy.anythinghedoesn’tlike,whammo,it’sgone.’28annoyingtheymay
be, but these irregular shifts and umps are temporally akin to the rhythms of igor
Stravinskyor a onthepiano:theymakesense,butonlyinconte toftheongoing
temporal organi ation (the time signatures’) of broadcast television playing behind
them ametricgridthat,asBellamyandwalkerremindus,neveractuallywentaway.29
Thanks largely to the remote control, but also to structural changes in the ow
itself(aboutwhichmorebelow),theeverydaye perienceofbroadcasttelevisionwas
becomingmorerhythmicallycomple andunpredictable,andthusmoretraditionally
musical’,allthroughthe1980s.Sowaspulse-patternminimalisminmusic.whether
framed as the leavening of strict process with a new freedom of intuition, or as the
collapse of an all-encompassing aesthetic into a grab bag of surface techni ues, a

original appearance was in a 1990 Village Voiceinterview.SeeGeorgeStokes, ecoeco

ecoecoeco’,Village Voice, 8 anuary1990.
26 Traudt, SurveillanceandClusterViewing’,p.70.
27 Bellamy and walker, Television and the Remote Control, pp. 117–18. The idea of
communication-play is from william Stephenson’s in uential study The Play Theory
of Mass Communication (Chicago, 1967), a te t often referred to by rCD researchers.
writingwellbeforethemassadventoftheremotecontrol,Stephensonnotedgra ing
behaviour among newspaper and maga ine readers. Marshall Mcluhan first made
the connection between the staccato syncopated rhythms created by scanning the
newspaper’sfrontpageandPicasso’sanalyticcubisminThe Mechanical Bride: folklore of
industrial man (newyork,1951),pp.3–4.
28 uotedinDavidlavery, remoteControl:mythicre ections’,inwalkerandBellamy,
The Remote Control,p.229.
29 acursoryglanceattheprogrammingschedulesofthebroadcastnetworks,aswellas
thevastma orityofbasiccableservices,revealsnoobviouschangesinthescheduling
structure of 10 or 20 years ago. with the e ception of sports and motion pictures,
programmesarestillscheduledineither30-or60-minutetimeblocksthatbeginonthe
hourorhalfhour(seeBellamyandwalker,Television and the Remote Control,p.75).

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 Going with the Flow

recogni ably postminimalist style appeared and was hailed as such in american
music of the 1980s.30 ohn adams, the most celebrated (or derided) practitioner of
musicalpostminimalism,wasbornin1947,andthusgrewupalongside1960snetwork
broadcasting(althoughherecallsthathisparentsdidnotallowaTVsetintotheirrural
newHampshirehome).initiallyinspiredbythe1970sworkofGlassandStevereich,
hehaddeclaredhimself aminimalistboredwithminimalism’asearlyas1980.31
adams’s own postminimalist style was already more open to aggedness and
contingencythanthatofthepreviousgeneration.Heimaginedhislate-1970srepetitive
worksaspassingthroughaseriesof gates’,atermborrowedfromelectroniccircuits
wherecapacitancewasusedtodamupandthenreleasethesignal ow.Musicalgatesare
on–offswitches,introducinginstantaneousmodalandte turalshiftsintominimalism’s
gradualprocess.acompositionsuchasPhrygian Gates forpiano(1977),largelybasedon
the owofrepetitiveinterlockingpatterns,usesmusicalgatingto changethechannel’
(asitwere)onlisteners unpredictably,inthemidstoftheprocess,thecomposerwould
introduce asuddenunpreparedshift that wouldproduceanune pectedshocktothe
listener’.Thispropensityfor asenseofsurpriseandtheune pected’becameadams’s
trademark formanycritics,thisslight umpiness,thewayinwhichadamscontinually
intervenesinthe owofhisrepetitivepatternstokeepthemfrombecomingpredictable
(andthusboring),wasasignaladvance:

Forthefirst159measuresofNixon in Chinatheviolins,violas,andkeyboards
in the orchestra play rising scales  moreover, for the first thirty of those
measuresthescalesarethesameandalwaysrisingthroughoneoctave.But
tothesescales,woodwindsaddslowerscales(aboutonesevenththespeed
oftheothers),bassinstrumentscontributeaseriesofpedalsona,F,andC,
trombonesaddalittlefour-notesputterfromtimetotime,andeverynowand
again the whole is punctuated by a high ding.’ you never know when the
bassisgoingtochange,howtightlytheslowerscaleswillbelapped,whenthe
trombonesputtersorthe ding’willappear.32

30 SeeK.robertSchwar , Processvs.intuitionintherecentworksofStevereichand ohn

adams’,American Music,8/3(1990):pp.245–73 andTimothya. ohnson, Minimalism:
aesthetic, style, or techni ue ’ The Musical Quarterly, 78/4 (1994): pp. 742–73. Calling
adamsapostminimalistissomewhatcontroversial KyleGann,oneofthefirstcritics
todescrypostminimalisminthe1980s,omitsadamsfromtherollofpostminimalist
composers in his survey of twentieth-centuryamerican music, assigning to him the
e tremelydifferentattitude’ofnewromanticism.(ithinkwecanbothbecorrect see
myconclusionbelow.)Gann,American Music in the Twentieth Century (newyork,1997),
pp.229–34and325–7.
31 adamsrecallstheprohibition,andwatchingtelevisioninneighbours’homes,ina2005
interview  see ohn adams re ects on His Career’, in Thomas May (ed.), The John
Adams Reader: essential writings on an American composer (Pompton Plains, n , 2006),
p.5.Theremarkaboutbeing boredwithminimalism’wasmadetoMichaelSteinberg
in1980andis uotedinSteinberg’s1981programmenoteforHarmonium,reprintedin
May,The John Adams Reader, p.82.
32 ohn adams re ects’, pp. 25–6  Michael Steinberg, liner notes for Nixon in China
(nonesuch:79177,1990),reprintedinThe John Adams Reader, p.114.

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Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist & Postminimalist Music

By1992,whenremote-controlpenetrationinamericanhouseholdsreached90percent
and when most of the sociological and communications research uoted above was
actuallyinprocess,this umpinesshadbecomethemanifestcontentofadams’smusic.
His Chamber Symphony, composed in that year, begins with a cowbell articulating
a basic ¦¼ beat – but almost immediately everything goes haywire, as bubbling and
shrieking woodwinds uickly give way to angular ostinatos cutting independently
acrossthe ine orableclick’ofanimpliedtrapset.33Thiskindoftense, a y,dissonant
polyrhythm has obvious classical-music antecedents: Stravinsky, aaron Copland,
Conlon nancarrow. But it is also a perfect representation of the turbulent television
environmentof1992,asabrasiveand erkyasGlass’s1970sminimalismwasglossyand
smooth.nolongercarriedalongononechannel’shypnotic ow,thelistenerbounces
among three or four patterns of metrically clashing programming, at irregular and
dis unctrhythmicintervals.
Butwecandobetter.asinotedabove,TraudtidentifiesacommonpatternofrCD
use,whererapid-firerhythmicclicking( surveillance’)alternateswithmoresedate,but
stillsyncopated,gra ingamongaclusterofchannels,followed,onepresumes,bymore
surveillance–andsoon.Traudttranscribestherunninginnernarrativegeneratedby
usersastheywatchthemselvesdoingthisonvideotape:

click  click  click okay,solookslikeiwenteight,nine,ten.Commercial

wasoneight,eight,nine,ten. click  umpedtofifteen. click  click Seen
that. click iwentbacktothatsleepthing,itlookedlikesomethingiwanted.
click Can’tstandthat. click Can’tstandthat.icantelle actlywhati’m
doinghere inreferencetorecordedimages .i’mdoingthatsamethingthat
i’dbedoingnow, ipthis,boring.34

Traudt’s sub ect is, likeadams, bored with repetitive programming – so he a es it
up with the rCD. what if there were a musical motive in the Chamber Symphony
thatonecouldcorrelatewiththat a ypatternofforagingclicks itwouldhavetobe
short,anditwouldcutacrossthemetricgridofthework itwouldappearinacluster
ofrapid-firereiterations,abateforawhile,thenreturnwithincreasingintensityand
palpableimpatience.itmightbenothingmorethanasimplefallingstep,theminimal
musicalrepresentationofopeningandclosinganelectronicgatelike,perhaps,theone
underneaththe channelshift’buttonontheremotecontrol.inthelast2 30 ofthefirst
movementoftheChamberSymphony, itispossibletofollow ustsuchafalling-step
motive through multiple une pected reappearances, repeated presses of the musical
button’, which could sound, to a sympathetic ear, like rCD-enabled foraging, the
achievementofastableclusterofchannels,andthenarenewedfren yofsyncopated
clicking ustbeforethesetisswitchedoff.
Perhaps,patientreader,youaretemptedtochangethechannelonmerightnow 
butbeforeyougo,consideradams’soriginalinspirationforthiscomposition:

33 adams uotedonhisChamberSymphony inSarahCahill’sprogrammenotefora2003

lincolnCenterFestivalconcert seeThe John Adams Reader, p.150.
34 Traudt, Surveillance and Cluster Viewing’, p. 66. i have replaced Traudt’s special
symbolfortherCDclick( S )forclarity.

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 Going with the Flow

i was sitting in my studio, studying the score to Schoenberg’s Chamber
Symphony, and as i was doing so i became aware that my seven year old
son Sam was in the ad acent room watching cartoons (good cartoons, old
ones from the 50’s). The hyperactive, insistently aggressive and acrobatic
scoresforthecartoonsmi edinmyheadwiththeSchoenbergmusic,itself
hyperactive,acrobaticandnotalittleaggressive.35

asadams worked onarnold Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony, a seven-year-

old was watchingBugsBunnycartoonsintheotherroom,bathingthembothinthe
sound of television ow. The young man may not have been apping and gra ing,
but classic cartoons are what television e ecutives call pre-gra ed’ entertainment,
since their hyperactive style arrests the attention and they last less than half as long
as the average programming segment, leaving more room for e ually hyperactive
commercials. adams himself was also gra ing, but at a higher level, dividing his
musicalattentionbetweentherhythmsoftheTVsetinthene troomandtherhythms
of the comple  avant-garde music that he was studying. The result was a formal
(con)fusion,SchoenbergandCarlStallingbe-boppingtogetherinhishead.when,at
the end ofadams’s score, Schoenberg gets mi ed up for a few seconds with elmer
Fudd, the e perience is of a kind with the tumbling confusion of genres and stories
thatledraymondwilliamstodeemtelevisionan irresponsible’ ow.later,asadams
worked,e uallyirresponsiblemusictookshapeonanotherglowingscreen,thescreen
ofhispersonalcomputer,runningtheDigitalPerformerse uencingsoftwarethathe
usestocompose,whilstSampresumablycontinuedtowatchtelevision.
intheChamberSymphony,itisadamswho ipsand apshisownmusicalmaterial,
clicking his computer mouse like a remote control, turning cartoon soundtracks on
televisionintothemusicale uivalentofaPicasso:

ihaveavery e iblesoftwaresystem,DigitalPerformer,aprogramoriginally
developedforfilmscoring.ithas e ibilityofthesortthatallowsmetotake
musical structures and stretch them, transpose them, s uee e them, distort
them – move large or small structures around. i’ve become very adept at
usingit,and,ofcourse,idon’tusethesoftwareinthewaythatitsdevelopers
intended.icanmovearoundinthatenvironmentvery uidly icandoit
almostwithoutthinking.36

Totalism, Event Marketing and the End of Flow

The remote control not only allowed viewers to improvise syncopated rhythms of
viewingagainsttelevision’smetronomic ow italsoallowedthem,morepragmatically,
toskipannoyingcommercials.Theindustrytriedtorespondlikeagoodbopdrummer,
feedingthemostdistinctiverhythmicinnovationsofitsaudiencebackintothegroove,

35 ohnadams, notesontheChamber Symphony’(1994),at http://www.earbo .com/w-

chambersymphony.html (accessed12September,2010).
36 ohnadamsre ects’, p.20.

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tradingriffsand ammingwiththemratherthaninsistingonarigidandregularpulse.
Theprogrammingtechni uewascalled accelerated ow’:advertisementsgotshorter
(so-calledsplit 30sbecamethenorm) programmeswererundirectlyintoeachother,with
thefirstcommercial pod’shiftedafterthe30-or60-minute downbeat’(hot switching)
both commercials and programming began directly to mimic the umpy, rapid-fire
rhythmsofrCD-enabledtelevision(pre-grazed content).37Bytheearly1990s,everybody
was ammingagainstthesubliminalbeatofthemedia,eventheadvertisersresponsible
for setting its temporal grid in motion. For a younger generation of postminimalist
composers,borninthe1950s,thelogicalne tstepwas toimaginemusicwithastrong
rhythmicpulse,writtendown,withnooneplayingonthebeat’,asMichaelGordon
(b.1956)illustrates:

one of the weird things i was doing, and one of the things i did in Yo
Shakespeare,isistartedsplittinguptripletnotes–whichisatechnicalthing
and i think you have to be a musician to understand this – but instead of
dividingabeatintothreetriplets,iwouldwritetwotripletnotes,abunchof
eighthnotesandthentwomoretripletnotesandabunchofeighthnotes 
Soistartedwritingthismusicthathadnobarlines.itwas ustonebigthing,
likenon-stop,andiwasworkingonitforawhileandthenikeptlookingand
ikeptlookingandisaid, youknowyoucanactuallydrawabarlinehere.’38

Therelentlessrhythmiccomple ityofthisthirdwaveofrepetitivemusic–sometimes
called Bang-on-a-Can-ism’, after the new york City-based composers’ collective
in which several of its e ponents laboured, or totalism’, for its attempt to integrate
rhythmic and harmonic comple ity over a strong implied pulse – is usually seen as
the natural response of a generation ofamerican composers who grew up with the
heavy four-on-the- oor beat and polyrhythmic comple ity of groove-basedafrican-
americanmusicpouringoutofeveryradioandTVset.39Butastheythemselvesnote,
thefunkyrhythmsoftotalismresemblepopulardancemusiconlyonthesonicsurface 
it is precisely the perceptual absence of a regular metric grid that distinguishes this
musicfromsimilarlyinterlockingpulsationsin classic’1970sminimalism.40

37 S.T.eastmanandG.D.newton, DelineatingGra ing:observationsofremotecontrol

use’,Journal of Communication,45/1(1995):p.94.
38 MichaelGordon’sdescriptionofYo Shakespeare fromalanBaker, americanMavericks:
aninterviewwithMichaelGordon’,americanPublicMedia, uly2002,at http://www.
michaelgordonmusic.com/interviews.php (accessed12august2011).
39 Totalismisgenerallyacceptedtobethecriticalcoinageofcomposerand ournalistKyle
Gann. See Totally ismic’, Village Voice (20 uly 1993), reprinted in Kyle Gann, Music
Downtown: writings from the VillageVoice(Berkeleyandlosangeles,2006),pp.127–9 
andGann,American Music in the Twentieth Century,pp.352–86.alsoGann’schapteron
Postminimalism’inthepresentvolume.
40 Bang-on-a-Canfounder uliawolferecountsatypicalmisunderstandingalongthese
lines in an interview with Bomb maga ine: iplayedLickandoneyoungguysaid, i
don’t understand why you’re rewriting ames Brown . But  if you listen to ames
Brown, it’s funk, it’s a regular meter, more or less in song form with a refrain. This
young guy could only hear the surface level where Lick  resembles a funk sound.’
DavidKrasnow, interviewwith uliawolfe’,Bomb, 77(2001):pp.66–71.

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 Going with the Flow

withtotalism,repetitivemusic’srelationshiptorepetitivemassmediabecomesas
comple andfracturedasthemusicitself.Butanotheralternative,simpleanddramatic,
hadalreadyarisenwithintheworldofbroadcasting,anevenmoreradicaldisavowal
ofthe logicofinterruption’thanthefranticcross-rhythmsofaccelerated ow.asearly
asthemid-1980s,somelargeadvertisers,beginningtoreali ethattheiradvertisements
were no longer safe within even the most acked-up ow of network programming,
deliberately stopped trying to make them blend in at all. By 1984, the term event
marketing’ was coined to describe a strategy whereby some advertisements would
impressconsumersbyattemptingtotranscendthespotadvertisingmodelaltogether.
Thekeywastomaketheadvertisementitself asupra-televisualevent,tomakeit ump
out of the (starting to be perceived by everyone as boring) network ow, so that it
wouldbediscussedandrebroadcastoverandover,forfree.(Viewers,itwasthought,
would not ap’ an event-type advertisement when it reappeared as news-slash-
entertainment’.) Thedistinctiveformaltechni ueofeventmarketingwasthereturnof
narrativedrive:advertisementsbecameepic mini-movies’,theirstyleandtoneaping
1980sactionfilms ortheyreturnedtotheoldserialstyle,aseriesof30-secondepisodes
thattoldacomple romanticstory.
advertisementswerethusremovedfromthe owofentertainmentprogramming.
Hypedinadvancelikemovies,criticallyreviewedinprintmedialikearte hibitions,
and featured in nightly newscasts like current events or political struggles, event
advertisements began to attack the ow itself, seeking to detach themselves from a
culturalformnowseenasboringandold-fashioned.
Thisshiftinthestructureofsponsorshipcanbedatedwithevenmoreprecisionthan
the mid-1960s transition to spot advertising on television.advertising first broke its
alliancewithnetworktelevisionon22 anuary1984,whenappleinc.e plodedthe ow
ofSuperbowlSundaywithasingle,sensational 1.5millionspotdirectedbythefilm
auteurridleyScott.Shownonce,butendlesslyanalysedandrebroadcast,itbecamethe
prototypeoftheadvertising event’,aperennialcandidateforbestTVadvertisement
of all time. everybody noticed how it used George orwell’s 1984 to attack apple’s
competitor iBM as the company of brainwashed drones and ombies  not remarked
onwasthefactthatthosebrainwashed ombiesweresittingen masse infrontofahuge
TVscreen,bathedinamind-numbinghomogeni edstreamofwordsandimages.with
thedramaticthrowofahammer,apple’sheroicrepresentativee plodedthescreen,
dealingasymbolicdeath-blowtotelevision ow.
apple’s 1984’ commercial did not use composed music  if one had wanted to
score that famous hammer blow, one couldn’t have done better than the archetypal
e plosion,completewithmetalliccrash,thatcapsthefirstmovementof ohnadams’s
Harmonielehre fororchestra(1984–85)–abreakthroughworkthat, liketheMacintosh
computeritself, wasinventedundergreatstressinnorthernCaliforniaandpremiered
togeneralacclaim,inthiscasein1985.Harmonielehre’snewmusicalstyle,likethenew
visualstyleofadvertisingforthenewcomputer,pushedtheartisticdepictionofold-
fashioned, goal-directed heroism to the point of melodrama. adams’s rhythms and
chord progressions were recogni ably in uenced by Glass’s high-energy style  the
firstmovementofHarmonielehre owesalottotheclimacticpullulatingmomentsofThe
Photographer, firstreleasedonlPin1983.Cruciallymissing,though,wasGlass’s logic
ofinterruption’:insteadofcyclingbackoverandover,eachmovementofHarmonielehre
pushes ahead with single-minded intensity toward one, overwhelming e pressive

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clima .adams,claimingboredomwithminimalism’s GreatPrairiesofnon-event’,41

reframed the obvious looping of 1970s minimalism and postminimalism as surface
detail,harnessingrepetitivemusic’ssubliminaltechni uestoatriumphantreturnof
theclima -as-event achievedthroughmasteryofthelong-rangesymphonicteleology
hesoadmiredinantonBrucknerand eanSibelius.(inthislightheshouldprobably
belabelledaneo-romanticPostminimalist,ifsuchanungainlymusichistoriographic
chimeraisallowable.)
Harmonielehre is thus a symphonic drama presented without (commercial-type)
interruptions.
adams’saestheticisthuscinematic,nottelevisual.
andthushismusic–whichmightbeacapsuledefinitionoftheinevitablehistorical
passing of repetitive music as a cultural practice and a cultural form – is no longer
goingwiththe ow.

click

41 Thisfavouriteadamsbon motisalsofromSteinberg’s1980interviewandis uotedin

Steinberg,‘Harmonium’,May,The John Adams Reader, p.82.

218