Process music

The introduction to this doesn't actually explain what the process is or how it is made audible and provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject. Please help improve the article with a good introductory style. (October 2009)

Process music is music that arises from a process^[specify], and more specifically, music that makes that process audible.

History

Although today often used synonymously with minimalism, the term predates the appearance of this style by at least twenty years. Elliott Carter, for example, used the word "process" to describe the complex compositional shapes he began using around 1944 (Edwards 1971, 90–91; Brandt 1974, 27–28), with works like the Piano Sonata and First String Quartet, and continues to use down to the present time.

Michael Nyman has stated that "the origins of this minimal process music lie in serialism" (Nyman 1974, 119). Kyle Gann (1987) also sees many similarities between serialism and minimalism, and Herman Sabbe (1977, 68–73) has demonstrated how process music functions in the early serial works of the Belgian composer Karel Goeyvaerts, especially in his electronic compositions Nr. 4, met dode tonen [with dead tones] (1952) and Nr. 5, met zuivere tonen [with pure tones] (1953). Elsewhere, Sabbe (1981, 18–21) makes a similar demonstration for Kreuzspiel (1951) by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Beginning in the early 1960s, Stockhausen composed several instrumental works which he called "process compositions", in which symbols including plus, minus, and equal signs are used to indicate successive transformations of sounds which are unspecified or unforeseeable by the composer. In these compositions, "structure is a system of invariants; these invariants are not substances but relations.… Stockhausen's Process Planning is structural analysis in reversed time-direction. Composition as abstraction, as generalization. Analysis of reality before its entry into existence" (Fritsch 1979, 114–15). These works include Plus-Minus (1963), Prozession (1967), Kurzwellen, and Spiral (both 1968), and led to the verbally described processes of the intuitive music compositions in the cycles Aus den sieben Tagen (1968) and Für kommende Zeiten (1968–71) (Kohl 1978 and 1981; Hopp 1998).

György Ligeti's Poème symphonique (1962), in which a hundred metronomes are set to different tempos and allowed to run down, is another notable example.

The term Process Music (in the minimalist sense) was coined by composer Steve Reich in his 1968 manifesto entitled "Music as a Gradual Process" in which he very carefully yet briefly described the entire concept including such definitions as phasing and the use of phrases in composing or creating this music, as well as his ideas as to its purpose and a brief history of his discovery of it.

A number of Steve Reich's early works are examples of this form of process music, particularly a specific process called phasing. In his 1968 work Pendulum Music, a number of microphones are connected to a number of loudspeakers, and each is allowed to swing freely above the loudspeaker it is connected to until it is still—the feedback that results from this process, as each microphone passes above its loudspeaker, makes up the music.

Process music can also be created using relatively traditional instrumental techniques—Reich's Piano Phase is an example. James Tenney is another composer who is concerned with process, such as in his tribute to Steve Reich, Chromatic Canon, in which a tone row is eventually built up, one note at a time, from what started as a repeated open fifth, before returning by the same path.

Within the field of popular music, process music made its strongest early appearance in the ambient works of Brian Eno, notably his first foray into the genre, Discreet Music. On several of the tracks of this album, musicians were instructed to play a small section of Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D major in different ways. On one piece, for instance, musicians played the section at different speeds, the speed determined purely by the pitch of the instrument used. Thus the bass instruments played the section at a slower rate than the treble instruments, and the new piece created was shaped by these melodic lines drifting in and out of phase with each other.

Notable works

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• William Basinski

The Disintegration Loops I-IV (2003)

The River

• Elliott Carter

Sonata for Cello and Piano (1948)

String Quartet No. 1 (1950–51)

Piano Concerto (1964–65)

A Mirror on Which to Dwell (1975)

Night Fantasies (1980)

Symphonia: Sum Fluxae Pretium Spei (1993–1996)

• Brian Eno

Discreet Music (1975)

Neroli (1993)

• Karel Goeyvaerts

Nr. 4, met dode tonen (1952) (Sabbe 1977, 68–70)

Nr. 5, met zuivere tonen (1953) (Sabbe 1977, 70–73)

• György Ligeti (1923–2006)

Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes

• Annea Lockwood

Piano Transplant No. 1. Burning Piano (Oteri 2004)

• Alvin Lucier

I am sitting in a room

Music On A Long Thin Wire

• Steve Reich

It's Gonna Rain (1965)

Come Out (1966)

Piano Phase (1967)

Violin Phase (1967)

Pendulum Music (1968)

Clapping Music (1972)

• Frederic Rzewski

Les Moutons de Panurge (1969)

• Karlheinz Stockhausen

Kreuzspiel (1951) (Sabbe 1981, 18–21)

Plus-Minus (1963) (Kohl 1981, 192)

Mikrophonie I (1964) (Kohl 1981, 192)

Solo (1965–66) (Kohl 1981, 192)

Prozession (1967) (Fritsch 1979; Kohl 1981, 192)

Kurzwellen (1968) (Hopp 1998; Kohl 1981, 192–226)

Aus den sieben Tagen (1968) (Kohl 1981, 227–52)

Spiral (1968) (Kohl 1981, 192–93)

Pole (1969–70) (Kohl 1981, 192–93)

Expo (1969–70) (Kohl 1981, 192–93)

Für kommende Zeiten (1968–70) (Kohl 1981, 227–32)

Ylem (1972) (Kohl 1981, 232)

• James Tenney

For Ann (rising) (1969)

Chromatic Canon (1980/83)

This list of songs or music-related items is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

See also

• Tom Johnson
• Alvin Lucier
• Conlon Nancarrow

External links

• Music as a Gradual Process by Steve Reich
• Whitney Music Box by Jim Bumgardner

Sources

• Edwards, Allen. 1971. Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds: A Conversation with Elliott Carter. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc.
• Brandt, William E. 1974. "The Music of Elliott Carter: Simultaneity and Complexity". Music Educators Journal 60, no. 9 (May): 24–32.
• Fritsch, Johannes. 1979. "Prozeßplanung". In Improvisation und neue Musik, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung Darmstadt 20, edited by Reinhold Brinkmann, 108–17. Mainz: B. Schott's Söhne.
• Gann, Kyle. 1987. "Let X = X: Minimalism vs. Serialism". Village Voice (24 February): 76.
• Hopp, Winrich. 1998. Kurzwellen von Karlheinz Stockhausen: Konzeption und musikalische Poiesis. Kölner Schriften zur neuen Musik 6. Mainz ; New York: Schott.
• Kohl, Jerome. 1978. "Intuitive Music and Serial Determinism: An Analysis of Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben Tagen." In Theory Only 3, no. 2 (March): 7–19.
• ———. 1981. "Serial and Non-Serial Techniques in the Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1962–1968." Ph.D. diss., Seattle: University of Washington.
• Nyman, Michael. 1974. Experimental Music. Cage and Beyond. London: Studio Vista. ISBN 0289701821 (Second Edition, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 0521652979 (cloth); ISBN 0521653835 (pbk))
• Oteri, Frank J. 2004. "Annea Lockwood Beside the Hudson River: Piano Transplants". New Music Box: The Web Magazine from the American Music Center (January 1).
• Quinn, Ian. 2006. "Minimal Challenges: Process Music and the Uses of Formalist Analysis". Contemporary Music Review 25, no. 3:283–94.
• Reich, Steve. 1974. "Music as a Gradual Process (1968)". In his Writings about Music, 9-11. Halifax:Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
• Sabbe, Herman. 1977. Het muzikale serialisme als techniek en als denkmethode: Een onderzoek naar de logische en historische samenhang van de onderscheiden toepassingen van het seriërend beginsel in de muziek van de periode 1950–1975. Ghent: Rijksuniversiteit te Gent.
• Sabbe, Herman. 1981. “Die Einheit der Stockhausen-Zeit ...: Neue Erkenntnismöglichkeiten der seriellen Entwicklung anhand des frühen Wirkens von Stockhausen und Goeyvaerts. Dargestellt aufgrund der Briefe Stockhausens an Goevaerts”. In Musik-Konzepte 19: Karlheinz Stockhausen: ... wie die Zeit verging ..., edited by Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn, 5–96. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik.
• Stockhausen, Karlheinz. 1989. "Musik als Prozeß (Gespräch mit Rudolf Frisius am 25. August 1982 in Kürten)", in his Texte zur Musik 6, edited by Christoph von Blumröder, 399–426. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag. ISBN 3-7701-2249-6