The Thenomenon «Musical Work» in the Minimalism

Main Article Content

Anna S. Meshkova

Abstract

Many traditional categories of European professional compositional music were transformed in the second half of the twentieth century as a result of e experimental searches of avant-garde composers. One of them is a musical work. The article discusses the features of the functioning of the work in the minimalism. They are described according to the following characteristics: the presence of an individual author’s idea, the presence of a form, written fixation with the necessary and sufficient completeness, preservation of identity during further reproductions, a differentiated type of communicative situation. Minimalist opuses are still fixed in the musical notation, which the performer must follow, exclude improvisation and function in the terms of “artistic” communication methods. However, there is no compositional organization of the music, and the musical text is reduced to an “index sign”. Aesthetics and technique of composition play an important role in the transformation of the category of “work”. The principles of inactivity, movement in time, which has no past and no future, realized through repetitive method, have modified this dominant form of the existence of the composition for several centuries. According to some parameters (incomplete correspondence of the musical text to the “sound subject” of the composition, a high degree of performing initiative in organizing the musical process), the minimalist opus similarities with the forms of existence of ancient music.


Keywords: minimalism, musical work, avant-garde, composition technique, form of existence of music, signs of the musical work.

Article Details

How to Cite
Meshkova А. С. (2023). The Thenomenon «Musical Work» in the Minimalism. Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal’noj Nauki, 52(3), 26–35. Retrieved from https://musicscholar.ru/index.php/PMN/article/view/1461
Section
Music of the XX–XXI Centuries
Author Biography

Anna S. Meshkova, Urals M.P. Mussorgsky State Conservatory, Yekaterinburg, Russia

PhD (Arts), Associate Professor at the Theory Music Department