(8) Composer to composer - conversations about contemporary music by Andrew Ford

Opening and closing doors - Steve Reich

[A.F.] “At this point I note that the interview has been going for half an hour and the world ‘minimalism’ has yet to be employed by either of us.” p. 64

[S.R.] “I don’t mention that word at all” p. 64

[A.F.] “So I ask him, aware that I sound like Senator McCarthy, whether, if he isn’t a minimalist now, he has ever been a minimalist.” P. 64

[S.R.] “This is a stock answer I have, but it’s a good one: Debussy didn’t like being called an Impressionist and Schoenberg didn’t like being called an Expressionist. All these terms — impressionism, expressionism, minimalism — were taken from the visual arts and were applied to composers. I can perfectly well understand why Michael Nyman coined the term in about 1970, and I can even sympathise with it; given the possibilities — hypnotic music? Transe music? — it could have been a lot worse. But what I really object to is a way of thinking which I think composers have always objected to, and that is that it’s my job to write the next piece, and what interests me in the next piece is what I didn’t do in the last piece. And if I know I’m a — fill in the blank — then it’s as if I’ve got a box around my imagination. Whenever I find a composer tasing about their own work and applying a label, I always say, 'Stop that! You’re hurting yourself — don’t you know that’s like a substance abuse?’ You can describe a piece of music without having to give it a term. But codifying it is the job of a music historian or a journalist and I have no bones to pick with them — it’s simply not my job.” p. 64