Shots Fired from Inside the Fortress

Ha! Alex Ross can take a holiday hiatus, but here at Postclassic, the all-important week between Christmas and New Year's is when we get moving. I am pleased to announce that the official web site for the Society for Minimalist Music went online yesterday. Its first offerings include seven downloadable papers delivered at the first international minimalism conference in Wales that I blogged about, including several of the best papers I heard there:

Triadic Transformation and Harmonic Coherence in the Music of Gavin Bryars, by Scott Alexander Cook

An Examination of Minimalist Tendencies in Two Early Works by Terry Riley Wednesday, by Ann Glazer Niren [the two works in question being his almost unknown String Trio and String Quartet from around 1960)

Steve Reich: stories of machines and minimalism, by John Pymm

Sudoku Music: Systems and Readymades, by Christopher Hobbs (with musical excerpts)

British Readymades and Systems Music, by Virginia Anderson (the last word on systems music versus minimalism terminology)

1976 and All That: Minimalism and Post-Minimalism, Analysis and Listening Strategies, by Keith Potter (the keynote address)

Parallel Symmetries? Exploring Relationships between Minimalist Music and Multimedia Forms, by Pwyll ap Siôn & Tristian Evans (who organized the festival; in addition, Pwyll is author of a fine new book on Michael Nyman)

You may feel free to make the usual reflexive comments about the alleged absurdity of translating such accessible music into academese, but it's all part of a historical process, and this is true progress. As someone whose college professors tried to convince him that minimalism was a hoax, I find it rather thrilling.