“Someday someone will appear who has analyzed more minimalist-influenced music from the 1980s and ’90s than I have, and if that person feels that I have divided my era into categories inappropriately, I will be glad to listen to her argument. So far, I’ve gotten plenty of argument, but only from people who don’t come anywhere close to fitting that description.

There are several ways to characterize a style. One is to catalogue all relevant qualities associated with pieces associated with that style. I’ve done this for postminimalism elsewhere, and I have no intention of replicating that feat today. Another, less cautious tactic is to isolate a compositional aim that one perceives as the essence of a style. This has the disadvantage of marginalizing (or at least discategorizing) pieces that do not manifest that particular idea, for artistic styles, it seems to me, are rarely homogenous in their makeup. Nevertheless, if I had to point to one characteristic that strikes me as quintessential to postminimalism, it would be the impulse to write music freely and intuitively within a markedly circumscribed set of materials, outside of which the piece “knows in advance” it will not venture. For me, and reinforced by the contemporaneous writings of Steve Reich, minimalism’s essence was its quasi-objectivity, its linear movement from one point to another, along with its adherence to audible process or structure. Postminimalism at once became much more subjective, often even mysterious, imitating minimalism’s extreme limitation of resources but replacing the idea of linear, audible structure with that of a nuanced, intuitive musical language.” Continue reading Postminimalism: Chapter One, Metaphorically Speaking by Kyle Gann.