When Too Little is More Than Enough;
KYLE GANN and STEVE LAYTON

by Michael Berest
Contributing Editor



At the time the style of Minimalism came into vogue, the music critic of the Los Angeles Times, Martin Bernheimer, devised the xeroxed arpeggio award for pieces he thought carried the aesthetic just a little too far. I'm not sure he rejected Minimalism outright; he just felt it was still an approach looking for a master to keep it from becoming yet another idiosyncratic fad, the way symphonic jazz became after Gershwin.

It's hard to believe it's been 23 years since Koyaanisqatsi made the world dance a ballet to what many people probably think of the quintessential Minimalist score by Philip Glass. Koyaanisqatsi was not the first product of the xeroxed arpeggio school, but it was the one the average person thinks of as typical of the style.

No sooner did Minimalism arrive than others started maneuvering to make the process their own. John Adams, in works like Harmonliere and the Grand Pianola Music, chose not to be doctrinaire with it. He could interject non-minimalist middle movements, or (as he did in Pianola) make a finale revolve around a self-consciously old-fashioned tune.

The essence of minimalism is essentially gutting form. Instead of development, music goes from point A to point D, then back to a varied A, followed by a varied B, a varied C and a varied D. This, of course, is a twist on theme and variations, except there really is no theme. It's all a constantly evolving filigree over a vague pattern of harmonic progression, closer to the older forms of chaconne or passacaglia, yet still different because what's repeating is more rhythmically amorphous than a ground bass.

Glass's approach in Koyaanisqatsi was repetition, repetition, repetition, with slight changes. It was hypnotic music. In a sense, it was a revolt against music, not only casting aside recognizable forms, but also the abstractions of composers like Boulez, Stockhausen, or Cage. Yet music still can only be music.

The rejection of total serialism and traditional form was, of course, perfectly valid, but the hypnotic repetition was not, at least in terms of what later composers could reuse without simply imitating hypnotic repetition.

The music of Kyle Gann and Steve Layton is not specifically Minimalistic. On first hearing, Gann's music may sound of the neoclassical Stravinski, or even of the "classical rock" of Andrew Lloyd Weber. Layton's music may, in its eclecticism, echo anything from Webern to John Barry.

Gann and Layton, nonetheless, create music that can be considered Post-Minimalist, or rather music that reconciles Minimalist concepts with more traditional sounds.

Gann's works are often based on a sequences of triads that underlie constantly transforming texture above. That structure, however, is hidden by chromatic progressions that blur what would be considered the "tonic" chord, making it difficult to keep track of where the next repetition of the progression begins. This allows Gann to create music that seems both dynamic and static at the same time.

A choral work like Faith does not in any way seem repetitious or redundant, yet re-hearings will disclose little harmonic movement. It's still difficult to trace, though, because Gann's music is also always rhythm-dominated. It's not that we hear incessant xeroxed arpeggios; the rhythms Gann uses are syncopated, irregular. This gives them a sense of direction rather than the stasis we hear in Glass.

Stravinski's Symphony of Psalms may still come to mind as a model, but Gann does not mirror Stravinski's desire to sound objective even when he is trying to express religious Ecstasy. In a work like Word, Gann more reminds us of the fervid Mahler than the cool Igor.



Steve Layton's work is more radical, yet paradoxically also more conservative, than Gann's. A piece like This Pink Is For You is more harmonically complex than what we find in Gann, but is much closer in its distinct repetitions to what we would hear in the passacaglia finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony.

Pink, however, is only one shade of Layton. A piano piece like Dasamuka is distinctly Post-Webernian rather than Post-Minimalist, its controlled intervallic structure and jaggedness making it reminiscent of the avant garde works of the 1950's. Yet, something like Sky and Sand, with its application of ostinatos and slowly changing melodies to the medium of electro-acoustic music, produces something more original than either Minimalist or EA music.

While I may seem to be implying Gann's music is not as varied as Layton's, this is not so. The distinctions between Faith and Word are not stylistic, but of mood, in the manner of traditional music. The apocalyptic urgency of Faith is as removed from the vibrant tranquility of Word as one can get. Gann is a master of portraying the specificity of an emotion.

On the other hand, I would be remiss to give the impression that Layton's work is coldly cerebral. Although a first impression of Faith may be the work of Lloyd Weber, and a first impression of Dasamuka or Sky and Sand may be the work of Webern, Gann's is not that, and neither is Layton's. The Layton who revels in the pure enjoyment of sounds that is present in Pink is present in the other works. One has to keep in mind Layton is trying to expand the range of sounds that we would describe as sumptuous beyond just those of his simpler works and this is something that becomes clear on repeated hearings.

Music is a continuum. Schoenberg would as much acknowledge the influence of Brahms as Brahms would acknowledge the influence of Beethoven, but Schoenberg would no more duplicate Brahms in his own music than Brahms would imitate Beethoven. The measure of Brahms and Schoenberg's greatness is the ability to apply a pre-existing idea in a way no one had done before to create something individual and unique.

Minimalism clearly has more to make use of than xeroxed arpeggios, and Kyle Gann and Steve Layton have, like Brahms and Schoenberg the ability to take from it only what can be used to create something distinctively theirs.