We Have Always Been Minimalist
The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Constance and William Withey Endowment Fund in History and Music.
We Have Always Been Minimalist
THE CONSTRUCTION AND TRIUMPH OF A MUSICAL STYLE
Christophe Levaux
Translated by Rose Vekony
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2020 by Christophe Levaux
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Levaux, Christophe, 1982– author. | Vekony, Rose, translator.
Title: We have always been minimalist : the construction and triumph of a musical style / Christophe Levaux ; translated by Rose Vekony.
Other titles: Nous avons toujours été minimalistes. English
Description: Oakland : University of California Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020008789 | ISBN 9780520295261 (cloth) | ISBN 9780520295278 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520968080 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Minimal music—History and criticism. | Music—20th century—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML197 .L4413 2020 | DDC 781.68—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008789
Manufactured in the United States of America
29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
2. Taking Root in Modernity: New Music
3. Transcribing Music: New York Avant-Gardists and Monotonality
5. Creating Genres: The Theatre of Mixed Means and Dream Music
6. Taking Sides over a New Medium: Electronic Music
7. The New York Hypnotic School: Founding a Movement
8. Untying the Bonds: Process Music
9. Transfiguring Experimental Music: Minimal Music
10. 1975: The Emergence of Minimalism
11. Fighting or Laying Down Arms: Music with Roots in the Aether and Simplicity
12. Persevering: Systems
13. Giving Up Ground; Retaking It: Minimal Music
14. Subscribing to an Idea: A New Current and Modern Music
15. Disrupting the Status Quo: American Minimal Music
16. Going beyond Modernity: Jameson and Lyotard
17. Opening the Borders: Popular Music
18. 1984: The Spread of Minimalism
19. Confirming an Established Fact: Perspectives of New Music
20. Furthering the Fight: New Sounds
21. 1994: The Arrival of Minimalism
22. In Conquest of the Twenty-First Century
Epilogue
Notes
References
Index
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks go to friends and colleagues who gave this book the benefit of their attentive reading: Émilie Corswarem, Mark Delaere, Michel Delville, Marc-Antoine Gavray, Bernard Gendron, Jérôme Gierkens, Olivier Julien, Philippe Vendrix, and especially Christophe Pirenne. I am indebted as well to those researchers who laid the groundwork for an approach to music based on science and technology studies, and actor-network theory in particular, and who kindly offered their perceptive insights, especially Antoine Hennion and Benjamin Piekut. Thanks also to several of the protagonists of this story for the invaluable information they provided, as well as for their willingness to be part of a study in which their work occasionally comes in for a bit of rough handling: Larry Austin, Jonathan Bernard, David Cope, Henry Flynt, Paul Griffiths, Richard Kostelanetz, John Perreault, Keith Potter, Eric Salzman, Greg Sandow, Elliott Schwartz, and David Smith. I extend my gratitude to Rose Vekony for her judicious advice and meticulous work in translating this book, as well as to Kim Robinson and Raina Polivka at the University of California Press for their patience and assistance during the final phase of its writing.
This study would not have been possible without the support of the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme of the Belgian Science Policy Office and its Literature and Media Innovation project, initiated by Jan Baetens in 2012. Nor could I have undertaken the research without the help of the Music Department at Columbia University—namely, Giuseppe Gerbino, Susan Boynton, Kevin Fellezs, Elizabeth Davis, and Nick J. Patterson—which hosted me three times, in 2014, 2015, and 2018. I also thank Brian McHale and the members of Project Narrative in the English Department at Ohio State University for welcoming me in 2014. Last, I extend my thanks to New York University, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art in New York (in particular Jennifer Tobias), and the Mela Foundation, as well as the Royal Academy of Music in London (notably Rosalind Cyphus) for granting me access to their magnificent collections. This work was supported by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS under Grant No. 1.P008.18.
Introduction
OPENING THE BLACK BOXES
From spontaneous generation to global warming, from cold fusion to the memory of water or the age of the Earth, numerous controversies have punctuated the history of modern science. Similarly, major debates have regularly swept through the humanities, sometimes spilling over to the public sphere, such as those recently focused on migration history and the integrity of elective democracy. In musicology, experts have argued over the provenance of the Codex Medici (Staehelin 1980), the practice of vibrato (Neumann 1991), and the authorship of Giacinto Scelsi’s oeuvre (Drott 2006). They have debated the place that one composer or another should be given in the history of music (recall the opposition between the defenders of John Cage and those of Karlheinz Stockhausen in the 1970s; see Nyman 2013), one music or another (as in the fight for academic recognition of “popular music studies”), and even one genre or another—if indeed they could agree on what differentiated those genres (Moore 2001).
How are such controversies settled? The standard response is to recognize the most