MUS631: History of Western Music II

Week 7: Extremes of Difficulty

Complexity and Minimalism
Dr R.L. Tavis Ashton Bell

MISSION VISION CORE VALUES

CHRIST is a nurturing ground for an individual’s Excellence and Service Faith in God | Moral Uprightness
holistic development to make effective contribution to Love of Fellow Beings
the society in a dynamic environment Social Responsibility | Pursuit of Excellence
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Outcomes of the Lesson

● Analyse Ferneyhough’s “Time and

Motion Study I” as a reflection of
extreme technique in music

● Analyse Reich’s “Music for 18

Musicians” as a reflection of
Minimalism

● Contrast concepts of skill and

efficiency with Complexity and
Minimalism

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Week 7 Timeline – Synchronous
Session

9:00 a.m. – 9:10 a.m. Attendance period

9:10 a.m. – 9:20 a.m. Revision of Concepts
9:20 a.m. – 9:25 a.m. Brian Ferneyhough
9:25 a.m. – 9:40 a.m. Steve Reich
9:40 a.m. – 9:50 a.m. Skill vs. Efficiency
9:50 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Asynchronous Task

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Revision of Concepts
• Emotional Palettes: Impressionism and Expressionism
• Societal Discourse: Individual Perspectives and Social Commentary
• Cultural Dialogue: Nationalism and Globalism
• Utopianism: Egalitarianism (Equality via removal of hierarchy)
• Integral Serialism: Complete formalisation of all musical
possibilities
• Indeterminism: Impossible to control the musical outcome

How do these concepts relate to your life?

Why do we care about these concepts?

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Active Listening

Have a listen to Time and Motion Study I for Bass Clarinet by Brian
Ferneyhough (Link on Moodle page)

● What do you know of this piece historically?

● Have you ever heard of Brian Ferneyhough?

● List the musical features you hear in this piece.

● What is the artistic message of this piece of music?

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Brian Ferneyhough (b. 1943)

English Composer, born in Coventry

● Hochschule fur Musick (Germany)

● University of California, Stanford University
● Harvard University
● Darmstadter Ferienkurse (Germany)

Received Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (2007)

Appointed member of Royal Swedish Academy of Music (2009)
Awarded an honourary DMus by Goldsmiths, University of London
(2012)
Honourary degree from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (2018)

Commonly referred to as the father of New Complexity school of

composition
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Complexity

● How much can a singer control ALL aspects of their voice?

● How much mastery does an instrumentalist have over their

instrument?

○ Extended techniques
○ Different instrumental timbres

● How much mastery does one have over their musicality?

○ Extreme rhythms, polyrhythms and ratio-based time divisions

○ Sheer comprehension and technical execution

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Technical Limitations of Performing

● Skills
○ Technicality does have some social wow factors (i.e., prodigies)
○ At what point does it become too extreme to be seen as impressive?
○ What sorts of emotions emerge beyond this point?

● What’s the big idea?

○ Do we do something just because it’s nice?
○ Why do we challenge ourselves?
○ There’s mastery beyond mastery
○ We are capped by our beliefs – the journey of skill development never ends
■ This is the global platform of artistry – what will you say?

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Active Listening

Have a listen to Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich (Link on Moodle page)

● What do you know of this piece historically?

● What do you know about Steve Reich?

● List the musical features you hear in this piece.

● What is the artistic message of this piece of music?

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Steve Reich (b. 1936)

American Composer, born in New York City

● Studied Philosophy at Cornell University

● Studied composition at Juilliard School
● Master’s Degree from Mills College
○ Taught by Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio
○ Played keyboard and percussion instruments

● Began experimenting in 12-tone serialism yet found rhythmic aspects

more interesting than the pitch aspects.

● Influenced by Terry Riley, Philip Glass and other minimalists who

used simple melodic patterns offset in time to create a slowly shifting,
cohesive whole.

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Minimalism

● Minimalism: The use of limited or minimal musical materials to

create music

● Lots of Steve Reich’s music has to do with Rhythmic Phase Shifting

○ Heard as two sounds slowly go in and out of synch with each other
○ Rhythmic devices using this technique are everywhere in Reich’s works
■ Interlocking intervallic patterns create tapestries of larger designs

● This phenomenon can be identified across different musical

dimensions
○ Pulse, beat, rhythm, pitch and resonance
○ Consonance and dissonance
○ Timbre
○ (essentially, different types of wave cancellation)
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Eking the Most out of the Least

● Comparing Serialism and Minimalism

○ Taking Steve Reich’s education path as an example, when listening to melodies
in minimalist music, we can hear their progression is designed in a very similar
way to how a tone row gets manipulated:
■ They are often repeated
■ They are subject to inversion, retrograde, etc.
■ They can be elongated or shortened
■ They can be layered on top of each other
○ What is the difference between a tone row and a minimalist melody?

● How does this major difference change our perspective to tonality?

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Eking the Most out of the Least

● We can gain some very valuable insights through this comparison

○ We can use all the generative techniques of serialism with minimalist melodies.
○ Musical textures can be generated through the interlocking of repetitive intervals
■ Each interval played by each part interlocks to outline a chord

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Skill and Efficiency

● What are we comparing between skill development and efficiency?
○ What are common to these two concepts?
■ They are both ways of doing things, leading to achievement of goals
■ We aim to develop skills efficiently in order to gain accuracy in action
(control)
■ Difficulty is proportionate:
● The more we develop skills the more we become efficient at that skill
● Efficiency develops skills to make things less difficult
○ This is autonomous development

● Thus, autonomous development can be trained by repeatedly

challenging our skill and knowledge limits in the most efficient
manner.
○ Strategically challenging yourself to accurately stretch your skills and / or
knowledge
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Asynchronous Task

● Find one musical example of Complexity and another example of Minimalism

(different from any found in the synchronous session).
● List five features that are heard within the piece that reflect these perspectives.
● Write a short reflection outlining how Skill and Efficiency are similar and how
they differ.

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Thank you!

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