0:00:02 > 0:00:04And three, four. ORCHESTRA BEGIN TO PLAY
0:00:07 > 0:00:12Sometime in the 1960s, a revolution happened in America.
0:00:16 > 0:00:21The sounds of modernity were both disturbing and inspiring a group of
0:00:21 > 0:00:24musicians and composers in a wholly new way.
0:00:29 > 0:00:33Within ten years, they'd re-written the position of Western music.
0:00:37 > 0:00:40That revolution was minimalism,
0:00:40 > 0:00:43which went on to become one of the most dominant forms
0:00:43 > 0:00:45in 20th century music.
0:00:46 > 0:00:51Minimalism was a movement from the mid-'50s to the late '70s
0:00:51 > 0:00:53pioneered by experimental West Coast
0:00:53 > 0:00:55composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley.
0:01:00 > 0:01:04The movement spread east to New York and this film looks at its
0:01:04 > 0:01:06incarnation in that city.
0:01:06 > 0:01:10The moment it went from avant-garde to the world stage in the work of
0:01:10 > 0:01:12Philip Glass and Steve Reich.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18Unlike the chilled vibes of Californian minimalism,
0:01:18 > 0:01:20this was the soundtrack of the city.
0:01:20 > 0:01:25Angular, unrelenting, as powerful as rock and roll,
0:01:25 > 0:01:29and it shook the classical music world to its roots.
0:01:51 > 0:01:55Minimalism is music based on the transcendental powers of repetition,
0:01:55 > 0:01:57coupled with gradual change.
0:02:03 > 0:02:07It totally transformed the way we listen to music.
0:02:13 > 0:02:15I was reading John Cage's books,
0:02:15 > 0:02:18and he said the music is completed by the listener.
0:02:18 > 0:02:20Well, that's exactly what it was.
0:02:39 > 0:02:41The most important part in any piece of music
0:02:41 > 0:02:44- is its emotional effect on everyone involved.- Yes.
0:02:44 > 0:02:46Because without that we wouldn't be sitting on this couch
0:02:46 > 0:02:47talking about it.
0:02:50 > 0:02:54In some ways, it's music that tries to take you into another dimension.
0:02:54 > 0:02:56So you're not listening to it in a normal, like, "Oh,
0:02:56 > 0:03:00"where is the tune coming from?" or, "Can I start dancing soon?"
0:03:02 > 0:03:04A lot of what this landscape is, when you shut your eyes,
0:03:04 > 0:03:06comes from you, yourself,
0:03:06 > 0:03:10because it's how that music is maybe through repetition,
0:03:10 > 0:03:11it's kind of acting on you
0:03:11 > 0:03:14and bringing things out that are within you.
0:03:15 > 0:03:17It's like taking some medicine or something.
0:03:17 > 0:03:19You're waiting for it to start working on you
0:03:19 > 0:03:20and take you somewhere.
0:03:23 > 0:03:24ORGAN MUSIC SWELLS
0:03:47 > 0:03:50This is an exploration of the two biggest, most successful
0:03:50 > 0:03:52living composers on the planet.
0:03:53 > 0:03:56Steve Reich and Philip Glass kicked down the barriers
0:03:56 > 0:03:59between classical music and rock and roll
0:03:59 > 0:04:02and paved the way for a brand-new approach to music.
0:04:04 > 0:04:08Their sound was described as the sound of New York.
0:04:08 > 0:04:10And it was known as minimalism.
0:04:18 > 0:04:20It all began with tape recorders.
0:04:23 > 0:04:25Born in New York in 1936,
0:04:25 > 0:04:28Steve Reich studied composition at the Juilliard School of Music
0:04:28 > 0:04:32before going on to further studies in California.
0:04:32 > 0:04:34In the early '60s, Reich developed his interest
0:04:34 > 0:04:38in electronics at the San Francisco Tape Music Center...
0:04:42 > 0:04:46..where he encountered Californian minimalist pioneer Terry Riley,
0:04:46 > 0:04:51and worked on rehearsals of his trailblazing composition, In C.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58I had to like open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood
0:04:58 > 0:05:00come out to show them.
0:05:00 > 0:05:04In 1965, Reich returned to New York working on experiments
0:05:04 > 0:05:06without a phase tape loop,
0:05:06 > 0:05:09a technique he discovered by accident.
0:05:09 > 0:05:13Come out to show them, come out to show them, come out to show them,
0:05:13 > 0:05:16come out to show them, come out to show them, come out to show them,
0:05:16 > 0:05:18come out to show them, come out to show them.
0:05:18 > 0:05:23He went around the streets of San Francisco and later New York,
0:05:23 > 0:05:26and recorded sounds, recorded people's voices,
0:05:26 > 0:05:28recorded everyday life.
0:05:28 > 0:05:31Come up to show them, come out to show them, come out to show them,
0:05:31 > 0:05:35come out to show them, come out to show them, come out to show them.
0:05:35 > 0:05:38And then he tried it on another tape recorder,
0:05:38 > 0:05:40at the same time on a loop.
0:05:40 > 0:05:43And they got slightly out of sync with each other and he thought,
0:05:43 > 0:05:46gosh, this is interesting.
0:05:46 > 0:05:49I'm getting a sort of polyphony here,
0:05:49 > 0:05:54I'm getting the music becoming instantly blurred,
0:05:54 > 0:05:59and then complex rhythms emerging as the tapes get more and more and more
0:05:59 > 0:06:03out of sync. And you get these amazing rhythms starting to happen.
0:06:03 > 0:06:07Come out to show them, come out to show them, come out to show them,
0:06:07 > 0:06:09come out to show them.
0:06:09 > 0:06:13So he immediately saw this incredible potential
0:06:13 > 0:06:18for making music, for making sound art out of the simple means
0:06:18 > 0:06:20of one human voice and a tape recorder.
0:06:20 > 0:06:23- OUT-OF-SYNC VOICES:- Come out to show them, come out to show them,
0:06:23 > 0:06:26come out to show them, come out to show them, come out to show them.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30In 1966, the 30-year-old New Yorker had a small idea
0:06:30 > 0:06:33that would change the course of music.
0:06:35 > 0:06:39Come Out was an idea of kind of, being more worked out,
0:06:39 > 0:06:43where they're trying to achieve a certain, you know,
0:06:43 > 0:06:46kind of knowing what you could do at this time.
0:06:46 > 0:06:48And then after come out, I thought, you know,
0:06:48 > 0:06:49if I'm going to spin with tape the rest of my life,
0:06:49 > 0:06:51I'm going to go out of my mind.
0:06:53 > 0:06:58- INCREASINGLY OUT-OF-SYNC VOICES: - Come out and show them. Come out.
0:06:58 > 0:07:00So, yeah, this has got to work with instruments.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04One day I just said, I have a second tape recorder.
0:07:04 > 0:07:08And then I made a tape with the piano phase
0:07:08 > 0:07:11and the notes and pattern, and put it on a...made a loop of that,
0:07:11 > 0:07:12put it on a tape recorder,
0:07:12 > 0:07:14sat down at the piano, closed my eyes and said, here we go.
0:07:14 > 0:07:16And, wow, I can do it.
0:07:26 > 0:07:29In transferring electronic processes to humans,
0:07:29 > 0:07:34Reich lifted the lid on a universe of musical possibilities.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43Piano phase is about as wonderfully mad as minimalism could get.
0:07:43 > 0:07:47It's one of Reich's first attempts to transplant the phasing effect he
0:07:47 > 0:07:51achieved in his tape machine pieces into the real world.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55Two pianists began playing the same 12-tone sequence,
0:07:55 > 0:07:56and then, bit by bit,
0:07:56 > 0:07:59one of the pianist starts to get ahead of the other,
0:07:59 > 0:08:02creating a mind-bending phasing effect.
0:08:02 > 0:08:04Bit by bit, that pianist gets further and further
0:08:04 > 0:08:06and further ahead at the other one until, eventually,
0:08:06 > 0:08:09they come full circle and they're playing once again
0:08:09 > 0:08:10in perfect unison.
0:08:17 > 0:08:19When you're playing phase pieces, that's not,
0:08:19 > 0:08:25you know what you have to do, which is to move 1/16 note ahead,
0:08:25 > 0:08:28without going too far without slipping back into unison.
0:08:28 > 0:08:30But how do you do it?
0:08:30 > 0:08:33You close your eyes and listen very, very, very hard.
0:08:33 > 0:08:35It's a very human experience.
0:08:35 > 0:08:37So when I ended up doing it, I thought, you know,
0:08:37 > 0:08:41wow, this is great. I'm not improvising and I'm not reading.
0:08:41 > 0:08:44It's clear, I can memorise the pattern quickly.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47So what I am doing is listening and the kind of focus
0:08:47 > 0:08:49I had never experienced before.
0:08:49 > 0:08:50And you're just like, how is it possible?
0:08:50 > 0:08:52You know, they have to be so, like,
0:08:52 > 0:08:56absolutely Zen masters at their kind of centre of the musical storm
0:08:56 > 0:08:58to get there. And something like piano phase,
0:08:58 > 0:09:01we hear that kind of virtuosity going in between,
0:09:01 > 0:09:02that's mind-boggling.
0:09:02 > 0:09:05If you're going to try and write down what's happening, you know,
0:09:05 > 0:09:09it defeats the highest achievements of music notation,
0:09:09 > 0:09:10that kind of thing.
0:09:10 > 0:09:12It was like, one small step for man,
0:09:12 > 0:09:14one giant leap for Steve Reich
0:09:14 > 0:09:18when he went from Come Out to Piano Phase.
0:09:19 > 0:09:21Because Come Out was really interesting
0:09:21 > 0:09:25and seems like a technology piece, and then when he demonstrated
0:09:25 > 0:09:27you could transfer this to live performance,
0:09:27 > 0:09:30then all of a sudden it's all these implications
0:09:30 > 0:09:32became much more obvious.
0:09:44 > 0:09:49Reich's compositions sound excessively complex but, in fact,
0:09:49 > 0:09:53they're underpinned by a remarkably simple dogma.
0:09:53 > 0:09:55You know how it is, the notes don't seem to change,
0:09:55 > 0:09:56the instruments don't seem to change,
0:09:56 > 0:09:58the harmony doesn't seem to change,
0:09:58 > 0:10:01or at least, if it does, only very gradually.
0:10:01 > 0:10:04Well, in 1968, Reich wrote a landmark essay
0:10:04 > 0:10:06to explain his premise.
0:10:06 > 0:10:09It's called Music As A Gradual Process and he says,
0:10:09 > 0:10:13"I'm interested in perceptible processes.
0:10:13 > 0:10:15I want to be able to hear the process happening
0:10:15 > 0:10:17throughout the sounding music.
0:10:17 > 0:10:20To facilitate closely detailed listening,
0:10:20 > 0:10:24a musical process should happen extremely gradually.
0:11:02 > 0:11:05My first audiences were the art world and the dance world
0:11:05 > 0:11:06and the theatre world.
0:11:06 > 0:11:09It wasn't the world of contemporary music, they stayed away.
0:11:16 > 0:11:18And you know what?
0:11:18 > 0:11:21I was good with that, I was really fine with that,
0:11:21 > 0:11:22because I had no-one bothering me.
0:11:24 > 0:11:28I just wrote for... I was writing music for people who just wanted to
0:11:28 > 0:11:31listen, lying on the floors of the loft.
0:11:34 > 0:11:36Most of my friends, they were artists.
0:11:36 > 0:11:38I always hang out with artists.
0:11:38 > 0:11:39I liked them because, uh...
0:11:40 > 0:11:44..the art world was always on the verge of something new,
0:11:44 > 0:11:47whereas the music world was always on the verge of collapsing.
0:11:47 > 0:11:52I mean, of falling into some deep pit of history.
0:11:52 > 0:11:53And that wasn't true for the artists,
0:11:53 > 0:11:55they were of a very different attitude.
0:12:05 > 0:12:08Born in Baltimore in 1937,
0:12:08 > 0:12:12Philip Glass attended New York's Julliard before going to Paris,
0:12:12 > 0:12:16on a Fulbright scholarship, where he also studied Indian music
0:12:16 > 0:12:17with Ravi Shankar.
0:12:21 > 0:12:24Returning to New York in 1967,
0:12:24 > 0:12:27Glass turned his back on the classical music world.
0:12:29 > 0:12:31This is New York's East Village,
0:12:31 > 0:12:33which is a pretty glamorous location these days,
0:12:33 > 0:12:37but before these apartments were home for bankers, here,
0:12:37 > 0:12:42there was a thriving and gritty downtown art scene and in the '60s,
0:12:42 > 0:12:45cheap rents made it very attractive to poets and painters,
0:12:45 > 0:12:49and artists and musicians like Steve Reich and Philip Glass,
0:12:49 > 0:12:54and these lofts became experimental laboratories for minimalism.
0:12:59 > 0:13:01Fillmore East is only a block away.
0:13:01 > 0:13:04I'm on 3rd Street, Fillmore East was on 4th Street.
0:13:04 > 0:13:05Look where I'm living.
0:13:07 > 0:13:08CBGBs was over there and...
0:13:10 > 0:13:13..you could hear Frank Zappa right up the street.
0:13:13 > 0:13:14I mean, I was right where I was supposed to be.
0:13:24 > 0:13:27In this heady musical melting pot,
0:13:27 > 0:13:30Glass was also exposed to the early work of Steve Reich,
0:13:30 > 0:13:32an acquaintance he'd made at Julliard,
0:13:32 > 0:13:36and he began to write what he called music with a constant vocabulary,
0:13:36 > 0:13:40process music based on repetition and change.
0:13:43 > 0:13:46My favourite Philip Glass music, of any of it,
0:13:46 > 0:13:51is the very simple music that he was writing at the start
0:13:51 > 0:13:54of his writing career, pieces like Music In Fifths...
0:13:55 > 0:14:00..where you are listening to a very, very simple musical idea,
0:14:00 > 0:14:02just linking music to numbers, linking music
0:14:02 > 0:14:05to the simplest pattern, because that music made us think about music
0:14:05 > 0:14:07in a completely different way.
0:14:07 > 0:14:09What happens when you repeat that?
0:14:09 > 0:14:13What happens in your head when you hear the simplest patterns repeated
0:14:13 > 0:14:14over and over again?
0:14:18 > 0:14:23I would say that what defines much of Philip's early music...
0:14:24 > 0:14:32..is a very intense and fast surface energy and motor,
0:14:32 > 0:14:37but with a severe economy of pitch.
0:14:37 > 0:14:39And so what you have in Two Pages...
0:14:39 > 0:14:42HE PLAYS A FIVE-NOTE SEQUENCE
0:14:47 > 0:14:50You have this five-note sequence and he divides it up in a million ways
0:14:50 > 0:14:51and says, "OK, we have five things,
0:14:51 > 0:14:53what if we repeat the last two things
0:14:53 > 0:14:56and then increase how much we repeat it, and what if...?"
0:14:56 > 0:14:59So, it's this sort of elasticated music, but built on a grid.
0:15:07 > 0:15:12Philip Glass' music has the lustrous veneer of New York about it.
0:15:12 > 0:15:15Its metropolitan cool suits the city of its birth.
0:15:15 > 0:15:19The angles, the high-rises, the endless repetition,
0:15:19 > 0:15:24the relentlessness, the energy, all on the surface, and underneath,
0:15:24 > 0:15:28more humanity and emotion than you could shake a stick at.
0:15:34 > 0:15:37I didn't really understand, you know,
0:15:37 > 0:15:41Glass and Reich's music at all until I had visited New York.
0:15:42 > 0:15:45You know, when you're walking around Manhattan and you look up
0:15:45 > 0:15:49and you see these interlocking grids of windows and,
0:15:49 > 0:15:52you know, it just makes sense, it's just, "Oh, I get it.
0:15:52 > 0:15:55"This music is about New York."
0:15:56 > 0:15:59If you think about the experience of being in a place where -
0:15:59 > 0:16:01like in New York - where the streets are, you know,
0:16:01 > 0:16:04kind of hemmed in by the 90-degree angles everywhere,
0:16:04 > 0:16:06the perpendicularity.
0:16:06 > 0:16:08You know, you look up and you feel like you're in a tunnel
0:16:08 > 0:16:10of skyscrapers. Well, in a way, you know, that kind of hypnotic,
0:16:10 > 0:16:14repetitive structure of the city is mapped onto the way
0:16:14 > 0:16:16that the music works.
0:16:19 > 0:16:22This was music for modern New York
0:16:22 > 0:16:24and it contained the shock of the new.
0:16:27 > 0:16:31Glass' early works were as radical a gesture as punk rock in their
0:16:31 > 0:16:36outright rejection of everything composition stood for at the time.
0:16:38 > 0:16:42One of the defining hallmarks of almost all great 20th-century art
0:16:42 > 0:16:47music is that it is dissonant, atonal.
0:16:47 > 0:16:48Now, to make a pretty bold point,
0:16:48 > 0:16:51I would suggest that on some level that has to be to do with the fact
0:16:51 > 0:16:54that the 20th century was the century of war,
0:16:54 > 0:16:57it was the century of global crises,
0:16:57 > 0:17:00the like of which no-one had ever witnessed before, and, of course,
0:17:00 > 0:17:04the response of the artist was to express some of that disjunct,
0:17:04 > 0:17:05some of that pain.
0:17:13 > 0:17:17And there was a system devised to kind of explicate it
0:17:17 > 0:17:20or to organise it in music, which is known as serialism.
0:17:20 > 0:17:24So, along come the minimalists in the 1960s and they're thinking,
0:17:24 > 0:17:28"To hell with this arts music, which is so alienating!
0:17:28 > 0:17:30"Why can't we reclaim melody, harmony, pulse,
0:17:30 > 0:17:33"and some of the energy, by the way, of rock and roll?"
0:17:33 > 0:17:36My view of it was that I loved it all, actually,
0:17:36 > 0:17:38but I didn't want to write it.
0:17:38 > 0:17:39There's no point in my writing it.
0:17:39 > 0:17:40I said, "Why would I...?
0:17:42 > 0:17:45"After Stockhausen did that, why would I do that?"
0:17:45 > 0:17:47I mean, I could never do what he did.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51I invented a table that rotates very easily and I put a loudspeaker
0:17:51 > 0:17:56in the centre and four microphones at a 90-degree angle
0:17:56 > 0:18:00around the table, and these four microphones are connected
0:18:00 > 0:18:03with the four channels of a four-channel tape recorder.
0:18:03 > 0:18:08The sound which passes by a microphone has exactly the same
0:18:08 > 0:18:11qualities on the recording as a car that would pass by.
0:18:16 > 0:18:19The German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen introduced chance
0:18:19 > 0:18:20into serialism.
0:18:23 > 0:18:26He may have been "far out", but in Glass' eyes,
0:18:26 > 0:18:29the world he belonged to was old hat.
0:18:29 > 0:18:33It wasn't that we didn't like the music,
0:18:33 > 0:18:35it seemed clear to us that that was over.
0:18:36 > 0:18:39It was like looking at a swimmer coming,
0:18:39 > 0:18:45doing the last of their 90 laps and they're on lap 85, and they're...
0:18:45 > 0:18:46It's tired. You know?
0:18:46 > 0:18:48They're just not going to make it,
0:18:48 > 0:18:50it's not going to look that good any more.
0:18:54 > 0:18:59America was overdue a return to harmony and concord,
0:18:59 > 0:19:01and not just in music.
0:19:01 > 0:19:07The 1960s were an extremely uptight period, not only in music,
0:19:07 > 0:19:10but in our culture in general.
0:19:13 > 0:19:15From the Cold War mentality
0:19:15 > 0:19:19and the House Un-American Activities Committee...
0:19:23 > 0:19:26..to logical positivism in philosophy
0:19:26 > 0:19:29and post-Webernite serialism in music.
0:19:29 > 0:19:35It was a very uptight period and music needed to break out
0:19:35 > 0:19:40of that and get back to the basics, to a sense of flow,
0:19:40 > 0:19:43to the expression of emotions.
0:19:49 > 0:19:52The persuasive rhythms in Glass' and Reich's early works
0:19:52 > 0:19:56made minimalism the sound of modernity, humanity
0:19:56 > 0:19:58and social change.
0:20:01 > 0:20:04Reich and Glass thumbed their nose at the recent musical past
0:20:04 > 0:20:09and instead turned to 1960s America for inspiration.
0:20:09 > 0:20:13Not for them, what Reich called the "dark brown angst"
0:20:13 > 0:20:14of post-war Europe.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17Instead, the optimistic and heady world of tail fins,
0:20:17 > 0:20:21burgers and thriving metropolises.
0:20:21 > 0:20:23# Roll over, Beethoven
0:20:23 > 0:20:27# Roll over, Beethoven
0:20:27 > 0:20:31# Roll over, Beethoven,
0:20:31 > 0:20:34# Roll over, Beethoven
0:20:34 > 0:20:36# Roll over, Beethoven and dig these rhythm and blues. #
0:20:40 > 0:20:44The term minimalism was first used in visual art to describe the clean
0:20:44 > 0:20:47lines in the work of Richard Serra and Sol LeWitt.
0:20:47 > 0:20:51Now, both Glass and Reich knew these artists in downtown New York.
0:20:51 > 0:20:54Glass even worked for Serra for a while in his 30s.
0:20:54 > 0:20:58And yet, the two versions of minimalism are quite different.
0:20:58 > 0:21:02Minimalism in the art world was also a mid-'60s scene,
0:21:02 > 0:21:05but the ideas underpinning it were unrelated.
0:21:06 > 0:21:11In visual art, a minimalist chooses a single idea, say, a straight line.
0:21:11 > 0:21:14The material itself is minimal.
0:21:14 > 0:21:18Yet the minimalist composer uses lots of ideas and variations,
0:21:18 > 0:21:21but the contrast between them is minimal.
0:21:23 > 0:21:27Glass claims it was the Village Voice writer Tom Johnson that first
0:21:27 > 0:21:29applied the word to music,
0:21:29 > 0:21:34whilst Reich said it was the British composer Michael Nyman in 1968 -
0:21:34 > 0:21:37he was working as a critic for The Spectator at the time.
0:21:40 > 0:21:44Whichever, from the 1970s the word minimalism was out there in musical
0:21:44 > 0:21:46terms, and it stuck.
0:21:53 > 0:21:58By 1972, the word minimalism was used by a critical cognoscenti
0:21:58 > 0:22:00to bracket Reich and Glass,
0:22:00 > 0:22:04along with Californian pioneers La Monte Young and Terry Riley,
0:22:04 > 0:22:08as leaders in a new school of American music.
0:22:10 > 0:22:14But musicians and labels never make happy bedfellows.
0:22:15 > 0:22:21Well, I wonder, you know, cos I often wonder where, um,
0:22:21 > 0:22:23musical labels come from.
0:22:23 > 0:22:27And I wonder whether the composers who were thought of as minimalist
0:22:27 > 0:22:30actually think of themselves as minimalist.
0:22:30 > 0:22:34Was it something applied to them, you know?
0:22:34 > 0:22:37I somehow think probably it was,
0:22:37 > 0:22:40cos I can't imagine somebody just waking up one day and going,
0:22:40 > 0:22:42"I'm a minimalist! Come on!"
0:22:42 > 0:22:45What do you think of the term minimalism?
0:22:46 > 0:22:49Can you bear for me to go through my routine, which I...?
0:22:49 > 0:22:50- I have a routine.- Do you?
0:22:50 > 0:22:51Go on, then, I would love you to go through your routine.
0:22:51 > 0:22:55OK, this is my routine. Are you ready to go to Paris?
0:22:55 > 0:22:57- Yeah.- OK. I'm actually going in a few days,
0:22:57 > 0:22:59but this is a special trip.
0:22:59 > 0:23:01And don't forget your shovel. Have you got your shovel?
0:23:01 > 0:23:03OK. We've both got two shovels.
0:23:03 > 0:23:04Ne-e-e-e-o-o-o-ow.
0:23:04 > 0:23:07OK, we're there, and we'll take a taxi to the cemetery
0:23:07 > 0:23:09where Claude Debussy is buried.
0:23:10 > 0:23:13We're there. OK, now, there's the grave.
0:23:13 > 0:23:14Are you ready?
0:23:20 > 0:23:22HE IMITATES CREAKING
0:23:24 > 0:23:25TAPPING WOOD
0:23:36 > 0:23:37I wasn't asking whether you were one, really,
0:23:37 > 0:23:39I was just asking what you thought of the term.
0:23:39 > 0:23:40Well, I think I gave you...
0:23:40 > 0:23:42What more can I say?
0:23:44 > 0:23:45I was a music critic for 25 years.
0:23:45 > 0:23:48I think terms are always helpful.
0:23:48 > 0:23:53Musicians don't like them, but the mass of music lovers
0:23:53 > 0:24:00cannot understand the music scene in all of its detailed complexity.
0:24:00 > 0:24:05You can't package culture for people without coming up with the words
0:24:05 > 0:24:08to associate things with.
0:24:13 > 0:24:16By 1972, the music had a label,
0:24:16 > 0:24:19but only amongst a comparatively small audience.
0:24:19 > 0:24:23Few people were buying records or putting on concerts
0:24:23 > 0:24:24outside of lofts.
0:24:33 > 0:24:38Such was the outsider status of this new music that it was difficult,
0:24:38 > 0:24:42if not impossible, for the composers to support themselves.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45Living bohemian lives in their downtown lofts,
0:24:45 > 0:24:47they still had bills to pay.
0:24:47 > 0:24:48So they odd-jobbed.
0:24:48 > 0:24:51Philip Glass worked as a plumber and as an artist's assistant,
0:24:51 > 0:24:55and at night both he and Reich took to the streets
0:24:55 > 0:24:56to drive yellow taxis.
0:24:56 > 0:24:58I imagine they drew a lot of inspiration
0:24:58 > 0:24:59from such a colourful job.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06The problem with driving a cab was that it was very dangerous.
0:25:06 > 0:25:08Six to eight guys got killed every year.
0:25:09 > 0:25:11Murdered in their cabs.
0:25:11 > 0:25:13And when you went and you picked up your car,
0:25:13 > 0:25:15you knew that it was possible that someone, that night,
0:25:15 > 0:25:17was going to die.
0:25:17 > 0:25:22It didn't happen every night, of course, but it happened enough.
0:25:24 > 0:25:26When did you get your composing done?
0:25:26 > 0:25:27I had a good system.
0:25:27 > 0:25:30I would pick up the car around four in the afternoon,
0:25:30 > 0:25:32three or four, and I would drive till one or two.
0:25:32 > 0:25:34I would go home and write music till seven,
0:25:35 > 0:25:39take my kids to school, go home, and go to sleep.
0:25:56 > 0:25:58While it may have been tough to get by,
0:25:58 > 0:26:02momentum was gathering around minimalism and by the early '70s,
0:26:02 > 0:26:05Glass and his electronic ensemble were ready to take it
0:26:05 > 0:26:07out of the lofts and go uptown.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15Music In Twelve Parts, written between 1971 and 1974,
0:26:15 > 0:26:19was a deliberate attempt by Glass to combine all the minimalist
0:26:19 > 0:26:23experiments he'd been making since the late 1960s
0:26:23 > 0:26:24into one colossal work.
0:26:25 > 0:26:28For the premiere of this ambitious new piece,
0:26:28 > 0:26:31Glass knew he needed a significant venue.
0:26:31 > 0:26:34So he chose this - New York's Town Hall.
0:26:35 > 0:26:41Now, the hire of this 1,400-seat venue was a colossal 8,000 -
0:26:41 > 0:26:44quite a gamble for a composer just approaching his 40th year
0:26:44 > 0:26:47and whose typical loft audience had numbered
0:26:47 > 0:26:49somewhere between 40 and 50 people.
0:26:50 > 0:26:54But somehow or other, by dint of magic, or perhaps word of mouth,
0:26:54 > 0:26:56on the 1st of June 1974,
0:26:56 > 0:27:00a capacity crowd witnessed a four-and-a-half-hour marathon
0:27:00 > 0:27:04celebration of Glass's achievements in minimalism to date.
0:27:09 > 0:27:13The Philip Glass Ensemble featured cheap keyboards bought by a composer
0:27:13 > 0:27:15who couldn't afford a roomful of pianos.
0:27:19 > 0:27:23So the original ensemble had three keyboards, four keyboards sometimes.
0:27:23 > 0:27:25Well, you don't have four pianos and three pianos,
0:27:25 > 0:27:29so I went out and got these little Farfisa organs things...
0:27:29 > 0:27:33- Mm...- You could get them for about 200 in January...
0:27:35 > 0:27:39..because, uh, kids usually got them as Christmas presents
0:27:39 > 0:27:42and they ended up in the basement within a month.
0:27:42 > 0:27:44And I knew exactly where they would be. I would go up to Queens...
0:27:46 > 0:27:50..and it would be in somebody's basement with, you know,
0:27:50 > 0:27:54knotty pine walls and pool tables and these things would be there,
0:27:54 > 0:27:58and you could buy 'em two or three weeks after Christmas and, you know,
0:27:58 > 0:27:59for 200 bucks.
0:27:59 > 0:28:01I... At one point, we had four or five of them
0:28:01 > 0:28:03because they also broke down.
0:28:10 > 0:28:12I personally think that Music In Twelve Parts is the most kind of
0:28:12 > 0:28:14beautiful and delicious thing,
0:28:14 > 0:28:16but it's not something that you would say,
0:28:16 > 0:28:19"Oh, you've got to come along, this will be a really fun kind of hour,"
0:28:19 > 0:28:21because it's, like, seven hours long.
0:28:21 > 0:28:24But then I think that, you know, there is an appeal, where...
0:28:26 > 0:28:28..to the music where it's sort of hypnotic
0:28:28 > 0:28:34and I think that was something that a lot of people keyed into.
0:28:41 > 0:28:47They're playing music of almost superhuman virtuosity,
0:28:47 > 0:28:50it is so repetitive, it is so fast,
0:28:50 > 0:28:54you just can't believe that human beings are actually performing those
0:28:54 > 0:28:58kind of patterns for such a long period of time
0:28:58 > 0:29:02and I think this is where he's trying to blur the boundaries
0:29:02 > 0:29:05between electronic music, between taped music,
0:29:05 > 0:29:08you think this can't be human beings.
0:29:23 > 0:29:24It is terrifying to play,
0:29:24 > 0:29:27because you really can't check out for a second
0:29:27 > 0:29:30and you have to be in this constant state
0:29:30 > 0:29:32of very high-intensity counting.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35It's definitely not something you can have a glass of wine before!
0:29:38 > 0:29:42Music In Twelve Parts contained the thrill of a rock gig,
0:29:42 > 0:29:46amplified electronic instruments all mixed live on stage,
0:29:46 > 0:29:49but it was still classical music, too.
0:29:57 > 0:30:01Music In Twelve Parts contains a sting in the tail.
0:30:01 > 0:30:03Somewhere in the middle of the last section
0:30:03 > 0:30:06there is a little 12-tone row, a technique borrowed
0:30:06 > 0:30:09from the largely atonal world of serialism,
0:30:09 > 0:30:13an affectionate joke perhaps on Glass's part against the musical
0:30:13 > 0:30:16establishment he was determined to leave behind.
0:30:26 > 0:30:29When you wrote the music for Twelve Parts, you - rather naughtily -
0:30:29 > 0:30:31you put a 12-tone row in, didn't you?
0:30:31 > 0:30:34I did it at the end, I did it just for fun.
0:30:34 > 0:30:36I did it... I was showing off.
0:30:36 > 0:30:40I put a tone row in it, but I did things like that when I was young...
0:30:40 > 0:30:43I still do. I'll do a thing just for the hell of it.
0:30:43 > 0:30:48But did you have any idea back then, Philip, that you would go on
0:30:48 > 0:30:52to create a music which somehow bridged that gap...
0:30:52 > 0:30:54That's why the music that you wrote, for me, when I was young,
0:30:54 > 0:30:56was so important, because I, of course,
0:30:56 > 0:30:59was classically trained and developing as a conductor,
0:30:59 > 0:31:02but I was also listening to the Grateful Dead and I couldn't see the
0:31:02 > 0:31:04reason why these two worlds were kept apart as they were.
0:31:04 > 0:31:06- Well, I put them back together. - You did!
0:31:09 > 0:31:13The scale and ambition of works like Music In Twelve Parts
0:31:13 > 0:31:16meant that minimalism was truly crossing over.
0:31:17 > 0:31:21Brian Eno and David Bowie gave it the royal seal of approval
0:31:21 > 0:31:24by attending Glass and Reich concerts in the UK.
0:31:25 > 0:31:29But the biggest crossover moment was a rock album released in 1973
0:31:29 > 0:31:34which owed its very being to Californian minimalist Terry Riley.
0:31:36 > 0:31:40Terry began by experimenting with cutting-edge technology -
0:31:40 > 0:31:43in particular, early synthesisers and tape recorders.
0:31:47 > 0:31:48And what Terry started,
0:31:48 > 0:31:51Mike Oldfield took to the top of the charts.
0:31:53 > 0:31:58MUSIC: Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield.
0:32:16 > 0:32:21If minimalism at its core is about creating a whole world from the most
0:32:21 > 0:32:25minimal number of ingredients, in this case minimal number of notes,
0:32:25 > 0:32:28then Tubular Bells is it, with bells on!
0:32:34 > 0:32:36MUSIC: Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield
0:32:45 > 0:32:50Imagine if you're a teenage boy with prodigious musical gifts -
0:32:50 > 0:32:52your name is Mike Oldfield, by the way -
0:32:52 > 0:32:56and you spend all of your spare time in your house playing every
0:32:56 > 0:32:58instrument you can lay your hands on and trying to master it,
0:32:58 > 0:33:02because you've been listening relentlessly and obsessively
0:33:02 > 0:33:05to Terry Riley's A Rainbow In Curved Air, a piece,
0:33:05 > 0:33:09a record which famously was made by one man using multiple instruments,
0:33:09 > 0:33:12overdubbing, repeating, collaging
0:33:12 > 0:33:14all the different instruments together.
0:33:14 > 0:33:16So it's all his work, all his fingers,
0:33:16 > 0:33:20all his essence contained in multiple forms on one record.
0:33:20 > 0:33:23Mike Oldfield is determined to do the same thing
0:33:23 > 0:33:25and the result was Tubular Bells.
0:34:37 > 0:34:42Tubular Bells was the third biggest-selling album of the 1970s
0:34:42 > 0:34:45in the UK. Meanwhile, by the mid-decade,
0:34:45 > 0:34:47New York minimalism had earnt its place
0:34:47 > 0:34:49not just at the top of the charts,
0:34:49 > 0:34:52but also at the table of high culture.
0:34:54 > 0:34:581976 wasn't just the year of punk, Abba, Kraftwerk,
0:34:58 > 0:35:02it was also the year for minimalism.
0:35:02 > 0:35:04Major new works from Steve Reich and Philip Glass
0:35:04 > 0:35:06was putting the music on a world stage.
0:35:06 > 0:35:09Perhaps more importantly for the composers themselves,
0:35:09 > 0:35:11it was allowing them to make a living from it
0:35:11 > 0:35:13for the very first time.
0:35:15 > 0:35:18On April the 24th, 1976, at the Town Hall,
0:35:18 > 0:35:21the very same venue that Philip Glass had used
0:35:21 > 0:35:22for Music In Twelve Parts,
0:35:22 > 0:35:26Steve Reich premiered what would become his breakthrough work -
0:35:26 > 0:35:29Music For 18 Musicians.
0:35:46 > 0:35:50The piece marked the moment when Reich moved away from simple phase
0:35:50 > 0:35:55shifting to more elaborate and imaginatively scored composition.
0:35:55 > 0:35:59He chooses for Music For 18 Musicians a sumptuous,
0:35:59 > 0:36:07upholstered sound of an orchestra of clarinets, strings,
0:36:07 > 0:36:10pianos and keyboards, and percussion, and female voices.
0:36:13 > 0:36:19He controls this form for nearly an hour himself as a composer.
0:36:19 > 0:36:22It's not just that he's set up a process and he lets it happen.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28And that, for me, is a whole new phase of music.
0:36:28 > 0:36:32It is a whole new phase of what we call minimalism, where the composer,
0:36:32 > 0:36:36as an artist, is making their own choices.
0:36:36 > 0:36:40This was his first piece for a large ensemble and there's more harmonic
0:36:40 > 0:36:43movement, that's the difference in colour between chords,
0:36:43 > 0:36:46in the first five minutes than in pretty much
0:36:46 > 0:36:47all of his previous music.
0:36:51 > 0:36:53You know, it's sort of chugging along and then, suddenly,
0:36:53 > 0:36:57it just turns into a different piece of music.
0:36:57 > 0:37:00And you have this sense of there are sort of forces which you can't
0:37:00 > 0:37:02comprehend, which have made this change inevitable.
0:37:04 > 0:37:08This is rarely seen BBC film archive capturing Steve Reich in his prime
0:37:08 > 0:37:11from 1979's Reich's Revolution.
0:38:10 > 0:38:15Well, the first time I watched that, I could hardly cope with it,
0:38:15 > 0:38:20actually, the repetition. It made me twitchy and...
0:38:22 > 0:38:25...it has since become one of my favourite pieces of his.
0:38:25 > 0:38:30Um, it's so brilliantly written within the style that he has been
0:38:30 > 0:38:33developing over all these years.
0:38:39 > 0:38:41All the techniques that I had used before,
0:38:41 > 0:38:45substitution of beats for rests, constant pulse, are there,
0:38:45 > 0:38:50but they are living in a world of relatively frequently changing
0:38:50 > 0:38:54harmony and it definitely affected almost everything
0:38:54 > 0:38:56that came afterwards.
0:39:03 > 0:39:06Music For 18 was probably the first thing that really rocked my world,
0:39:06 > 0:39:11just the sound of that piece was so amazing,
0:39:11 > 0:39:15just the way it resonates and, um, just the way the music is made.
0:39:30 > 0:39:33You cannot not love Music For 18 Musicians, it's so good,
0:39:33 > 0:39:35and I think what's great about it is, again,
0:39:35 > 0:39:37there is this surface activity.
0:39:37 > 0:39:40Right, you can sort of happily kind of bob on the surface of it,
0:39:40 > 0:39:42but what's actually going on are there are these big chords at the
0:39:42 > 0:39:45beginning, that he presents at the beginning and the end,
0:39:45 > 0:39:50and then he explores them in variations or double variations.
0:40:02 > 0:40:07That piece is so joyful, and so slow and fast at the same time,
0:40:07 > 0:40:10so it feels like you're walking and flying over the same landscape.
0:40:45 > 0:40:47When it was finally released on record in 1978,
0:40:47 > 0:40:50it sold a staggering 100,000 copies,
0:40:50 > 0:40:54an unheard-of amount for a living composer in the 1970s.
0:40:54 > 0:40:58All of this gave this experimental, avant-garde,
0:40:58 > 0:41:02contemporary, classical or new jazz, or however...
0:41:02 > 0:41:04That's how the first...
0:41:04 > 0:41:06You know, the first issue of Music For 18 Musicians,
0:41:06 > 0:41:08they didn't know where to put it in the record store,
0:41:08 > 0:41:10so it was kind of in the jazz section, so...
0:41:10 > 0:41:13It gave though all of that sort of bleeding edge of musical
0:41:13 > 0:41:15experimentation, whichever genre it ends up belonging to,
0:41:15 > 0:41:21a place at the table of a bigger cultural conversation,
0:41:21 > 0:41:23and that's massively important.
0:41:25 > 0:41:28With minimalism now firmly established,
0:41:28 > 0:41:30it could grow into other forms.
0:41:30 > 0:41:32When it began in 1958,
0:41:32 > 0:41:35it was unimaginable that it could transform the world
0:41:35 > 0:41:39of international opera, but in 1976, it did.
0:41:53 > 0:41:55Einstein On The Beach was a collaboration
0:41:55 > 0:41:59between theatre director Robert Wilson and Philip Glass.
0:41:59 > 0:42:03It was commissioned by the Avignon Festival and premiered on July 25,
0:42:03 > 0:42:071976, before playing to a packed Metropolitan Opera House
0:42:07 > 0:42:09later that same year.
0:42:09 > 0:42:13An uptown triumph for New York's performing arts scene,
0:42:13 > 0:42:17Einstein expanded opera's creative boundaries,
0:42:17 > 0:42:21paving the way for the modern production era, as we know it.
0:42:23 > 0:42:31Einstein On The Beach was so new in that its materials could be spread
0:42:31 > 0:42:38throughout the entire opera, uh, completely changing the usual sense
0:42:38 > 0:42:42of form in opera, it was not a linear structure any more.
0:42:42 > 0:42:46And we thought, "OK, this is the new form opera's going to take,
0:42:46 > 0:42:48"this is what we're going to do from now on."
0:42:58 > 0:43:03Despite the reputation of extreme simplicity attached to minimalism
0:43:03 > 0:43:06in general, there's something very complex about Einstein.
0:43:07 > 0:43:12And you don't know it until you get in the middle of it,
0:43:12 > 0:43:14and these things...
0:43:14 > 0:43:18You think you can start predicting what's going to happen
0:43:18 > 0:43:21and the changes always take you by surprise.
0:43:21 > 0:43:25It's a very pleasant, suspended feeling.
0:43:37 > 0:43:39It..it..it... it blows your mind
0:43:39 > 0:43:42because there's so much going on and it's so magical
0:43:42 > 0:43:44how fluent the collaboration is,
0:43:44 > 0:43:47but also how it can work completely in tandem,
0:43:47 > 0:43:49but then also in counterpoint, all the different elements.
0:43:59 > 0:44:02As with a lot of Philip's music,
0:44:02 > 0:44:05the last eight minutes are some of the most beautiful in the world,
0:44:05 > 0:44:06it was just this...
0:44:10 > 0:44:11With these little holes.
0:44:14 > 0:44:15So, you know, again, it's repetitive,
0:44:15 > 0:44:18but there are little surprises and that beautiful,
0:44:18 > 0:44:20beautiful piece of text.
0:44:20 > 0:44:21Um... Ooh!
0:44:21 > 0:44:23I get gooseflesh even thinking about it!
0:44:23 > 0:44:27The day with its cares and perplexities is ended,
0:44:27 > 0:44:30and the night is now upon us.
0:44:30 > 0:44:36The night should be a time of peace and tranquillity...
0:44:37 > 0:44:39Einstein was a real kind of...
0:44:39 > 0:44:40It felt like the culmination of something,
0:44:40 > 0:44:43would you agree with that, in terms of your work to that point?
0:44:43 > 0:44:46Yes, it's the... Yes, it's the end of a... It's the end of a period,
0:44:46 > 0:44:51not the beginning. Uh, that's... It begins with Two Pages
0:44:51 > 0:44:53and Music In Fifths, and then...
0:44:53 > 0:44:55Like, that's '67.
0:44:55 > 0:44:58By '76, nine years later, it's Einstein On The Beach.
0:44:58 > 0:45:00So that's the end of it.
0:45:00 > 0:45:05It is the old, old story of love.
0:45:08 > 0:45:11Two lovers sat on a park bench...
0:45:11 > 0:45:15Einstein was the end point of what Philip Glass regards
0:45:15 > 0:45:16as his minimalist years.
0:45:16 > 0:45:20Both he and Reich were now commissioned composers,
0:45:20 > 0:45:23successful enough to be able to write ambitious works
0:45:23 > 0:45:24for larger ensembles.
0:45:24 > 0:45:29But minimalism's fundamentals of phasing and repetition
0:45:29 > 0:45:32would remain a crucial part of their work,
0:45:32 > 0:45:35and I'm going to show you how by getting under the skin
0:45:35 > 0:45:38of Reich's first work for large orchestra,
0:45:38 > 0:45:41Variations For Winds, Strings And Keyboards.
0:46:10 > 0:46:14A key part of the compelling way that Steve Reich builds textures is
0:46:14 > 0:46:17through putting instruments slightly out of phase with each other.
0:46:17 > 0:46:20It's like those very early tape experiments,
0:46:20 > 0:46:24he's been completely obsessing with the same core ingredient ever since,
0:46:24 > 0:46:27and so, for this, his first orchestral piece from 1980,
0:46:27 > 0:46:30Variations For Winds, Strings And Keyboards, he does absolutely that.
0:46:30 > 0:46:33He's got a flute playing the theme and another flute playing
0:46:33 > 0:46:36just a note behind. So here's the theme on its own...
0:46:42 > 0:46:45Now, let's hear that again with the other flute playing
0:46:45 > 0:46:46out of phase with it.
0:46:51 > 0:46:56So you've got that exquisite flute burbling along, as it were,
0:46:56 > 0:46:59with the pianos, and with the organs kind of in the background.
0:46:59 > 0:47:01And then the flutes and the pianos are suddenly gone,
0:47:01 > 0:47:04and they are replaced by three oboes and the organs come into the fore as
0:47:04 > 0:47:08well, so you get this complete sort of shimmer of colour change in an
0:47:08 > 0:47:10instant turning on a dial.
0:47:31 > 0:47:33I've talked about phasing in the most obvious way
0:47:33 > 0:47:35that it occurs all the way through this piece,
0:47:35 > 0:47:37but there's a less obvious and really wonderful
0:47:37 > 0:47:40way, a kind of extreme form of phasing that takes place.
0:47:40 > 0:47:44Imagine if you had seven voices all playing one note out of phase with
0:47:44 > 0:47:46each other on that melody that we looked at,
0:47:46 > 0:47:48and then if you just chose one moment in time
0:47:48 > 0:47:51just to freeze-frame it, and you would get this amazing harmony.
0:47:51 > 0:47:53It's made up of two sets of harmony,
0:47:53 > 0:47:54I'm going to break it down like that anyway.
0:47:54 > 0:47:56The first one is this...
0:47:56 > 0:47:59SLOW, LOW CHORDS
0:48:00 > 0:48:02And then the other one is this...
0:48:02 > 0:48:03HIGHER CHORDS
0:48:03 > 0:48:06Now, those two chords occur simultaneously.
0:48:06 > 0:48:08As I say, seven pure notes,
0:48:08 > 0:48:11all of them from the melody that we heard from the flutes.
0:48:16 > 0:48:20It's almost as if these chords are like a kind of vast iceberg.
0:48:20 > 0:48:23Sort of like a hot iceberg, if that's not a contradiction in terms,
0:48:23 > 0:48:27just floating incredibly slowly across a turbulent sea.
0:49:03 > 0:49:07Steve Reich and Philip Glass' minimalist journey through the '70s
0:49:07 > 0:49:12changed music forever and slowed down time.
0:49:14 > 0:49:17In breaking down the musical establishment's doors,
0:49:17 > 0:49:20they gave permission to new generations
0:49:20 > 0:49:23of minimalism-infused New Yorkers.
0:49:25 > 0:49:29I think there's a very direct lineage from Steve Reich,
0:49:29 > 0:49:35Philip Glass, the New York School of Minimalism, to younger composers.
0:49:35 > 0:49:38Um... There's a generation of composers who are now
0:49:38 > 0:49:41in their late 50s or so who are known as Bang On A Can...
0:49:43 > 0:49:48..and that is David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe,
0:49:48 > 0:49:53and I think they've taken the Steve Reich, the Philip Glass aesthetic
0:49:53 > 0:50:00and really put it into a post-rock 'n' roll, post-punk era.
0:50:00 > 0:50:07So their music is a lot more hard-edged, it still is repetitive,
0:50:07 > 0:50:09it still has a simplicity about it,
0:50:09 > 0:50:12but I'm particularly thinking of Julia Wolfe.
0:50:12 > 0:50:14Her music tells stories.
0:50:15 > 0:50:20She writes music about, pieces about mining disasters,
0:50:20 > 0:50:25she writes songs, she writes wonderfully powerful folk-influenced
0:50:25 > 0:50:28soundscapes for string orchestras.
0:50:29 > 0:50:34They are in a direct lineage to the New York School
0:50:34 > 0:50:36of minimalist composers.
0:50:46 > 0:50:49But I think what we took from minimalism
0:50:49 > 0:50:53is this interest in music being very direct.
0:50:54 > 0:50:57It's not like I consciously say I'm only going to use these materials,
0:50:57 > 0:51:00but I definitely work in that way.
0:51:00 > 0:51:02So I think economically.
0:51:02 > 0:51:05Like, I don't necessarily use every percussion instrument
0:51:05 > 0:51:09and the kitchen sink, I think, "I only need these instruments."
0:51:14 > 0:51:16And I think in terms of development, as opposed to, "Well,
0:51:16 > 0:51:19"I'll do a little bit of that and I'll do a little bit of this," and
0:51:19 > 0:51:22that's... I think that's something that came, partly, from the purity
0:51:22 > 0:51:24and directness of minimalism.
0:51:24 > 0:51:28Like, when you've left the hall, what...
0:51:28 > 0:51:29what do you remember about the piece?
0:51:29 > 0:51:31What was the experience of that piece?
0:51:35 > 0:51:37There's a kind of third generation of those composers.
0:51:37 > 0:51:40I'm thinking of Nico Muhly, I'm thinking of Bryce Dessner,
0:51:40 > 0:51:46from The National, who are very much in that
0:51:46 > 0:51:54New York milieu, but who have processed the simplicity
0:51:54 > 0:51:57of the 1960s, '70s generation of minimalists
0:51:57 > 0:52:00and it's come out in a very different way,
0:52:00 > 0:52:04it's come out much more lush, it's more, um, symphonic.
0:52:10 > 0:52:14There are big operas, there are great, big orchestral pieces.
0:52:23 > 0:52:27I think we're sort of done with self-identification in terms of,
0:52:27 > 0:52:32"I am part of this score, this is what I believe in," or whatever, and
0:52:32 > 0:52:35I think it's much more about thinking about...
0:52:37 > 0:52:41Thinking about our ancestors, our musical ancestors,
0:52:41 > 0:52:44as things from which you can always borrow recipes,
0:52:44 > 0:52:45and I think it's not about...
0:52:45 > 0:52:47It's no longer about...
0:52:48 > 0:52:50..you know, this is a fusion restaurant,
0:52:50 > 0:52:53it's, like, French-Asian, or whatever. You know, it's much more
0:52:53 > 0:52:55about, "This is what I do, this is what the craft is."
0:53:19 > 0:53:23I think sometimes we reduce the power of minimalism
0:53:23 > 0:53:26and especially of these individual voices,
0:53:26 > 0:53:28whether they be La Monte Young or Terry Riley,
0:53:28 > 0:53:30or Steve Reich or Philip Glass,
0:53:30 > 0:53:32who are all kind of these living giants among us now
0:53:32 > 0:53:36and who really have opened many windows, they've opened doors
0:53:36 > 0:53:39into all kinds of music, all kinds of expression, and more than that,
0:53:39 > 0:53:42they've kind of broken down barriers in terms of the way we hear music,
0:53:42 > 0:53:44the way we present music, the way music is performed.
0:53:45 > 0:53:47They have really expanded the boundaries
0:53:47 > 0:53:49of where music can travel.
0:54:09 > 0:54:11La Monte Young, Terry Riley,
0:54:11 > 0:54:15Steve Reich and Philip Glass are still thoroughly active today.
0:54:15 > 0:54:21Unremitting, unflinching, I think, happy experimenting musicians.
0:54:21 > 0:54:23It's proof perhaps that minimalism has come of age
0:54:23 > 0:54:27and has thrown off some of the doctrinaire rigidity of its origins.
0:54:30 > 0:54:33It is the last big thing in classical music...
0:54:34 > 0:54:35..and until a new one comes along,
0:54:35 > 0:54:38it will always have the thrill of the new.
0:55:04 > 0:55:08It's impossible to overstate the influence of this music because it's
0:55:08 > 0:55:10literally everywhere.
0:55:10 > 0:55:14In our pop music with loops and repetitions...
0:55:15 > 0:55:17The way that cells and fragments have gone
0:55:17 > 0:55:19straight into classical music traditions as well.
0:55:19 > 0:55:21You know, all of those things come from this moment.
0:55:23 > 0:55:25There is a kind of transcendence about it,
0:55:25 > 0:55:26or transcendental quality to it.
0:55:26 > 0:55:28It's a spiritual... There's something spiritual
0:55:28 > 0:55:29- about your music.- No.
0:55:29 > 0:55:33Well, you see, you probably don't see that at all, or you now see it,
0:55:33 > 0:55:35but in a very different way. I would apply that to...
0:55:35 > 0:55:37I mean, even the really early pieces.
0:55:37 > 0:55:42That is the nitty-gritty of all great music.
0:55:43 > 0:55:47But it turns out that all great music that has that
0:55:47 > 0:55:51is also founded on some very... very, very strong
0:55:51 > 0:55:54structural development and creation,
0:55:54 > 0:56:02and that without the marriage of the thinking process
0:56:02 > 0:56:04and the emotional process, then...
0:56:04 > 0:56:05..it doesn't matter.
0:56:23 > 0:56:26I can't really overstate how important minimalism has been
0:56:26 > 0:56:28for me as a musician, for me as an artist.
0:56:28 > 0:56:31You know, I emerged with all that classical training,
0:56:31 > 0:56:33conservatoire training,
0:56:33 > 0:56:37absolutely in to conducting my Stockhausen, and my Schoenberg,
0:56:37 > 0:56:40but equally very interested in what Kraftwerk were doing
0:56:40 > 0:56:43and some of the experiments of bands like the Grateful Dead.
0:56:43 > 0:56:47How to join these things together when the world I was living in
0:56:47 > 0:56:49was so about mutually exclusive categories?
0:56:52 > 0:56:55And somehow minimalism was the form which made it OK,
0:56:55 > 0:56:58which squared the circle, which joined the dots,
0:56:58 > 0:57:01and so for that I will be forever grateful
0:57:01 > 0:57:03to these four extraordinary men.
0:57:06 > 0:57:09What's your view of the term minimalism?
0:57:09 > 0:57:13Well, I think, as I used to say, it was pretty good for its day,
0:57:13 > 0:57:15but now there's other music.
0:57:15 > 0:57:17But now I'm going back to certain elements of it.
0:57:17 > 0:57:19I'm just doing a big minimalist piece in the Carnegie Hall
0:57:19 > 0:57:23in a couple of months and most of it is the original.
0:57:23 > 0:57:24I've added to it.
0:57:24 > 0:57:27So, I would say that...
0:57:27 > 0:57:29I used to say, "Well, it's something that we used to do,
0:57:29 > 0:57:30"we don't do any more," but I have to...
0:57:30 > 0:57:35I think I have to change that and say that it's definitely a tool box
0:57:35 > 0:57:39of its own and if you know how the tools work,
0:57:39 > 0:57:41they can be used for a long time in very different ways.