The second instalment of this festival (the first of which took place in 2016) largely ignores the Glasses, Reichs and Rileys who pioneered minimalism in classical music and instead explores an alternative, largely female canon. The only old-school figure represented is Morton Feldman, however, and a rare recital of his 1981 piano solo Triadic Memories is a low point of this weekend-long festival: a few minutes of harmonic and rhythmic leitmotifs are dragged out over a rambling and interminable 90 minutes.
Minimalism, with its restoration of tonality and emphasis on hypnotic repetition, often has much in common with early music. It is a tradition maintained here by Laura Cannell, whose chordal, multiphonic improvisations (sometimes playing two recorders at once, sometimes playing slack-bowed violin and sounding like a hurdy-gurdy) are a curious mix of medieval and modern. But other composers at the festival use minimalism to explore abstraction rather than order. A lengthy installation by the veteran French composer Éliane Radigue features only three pulsating notes, each lasting an hour, which constantly generate harmonics and secondary overtones – the sonic equivalent of a Rothko painting.
Often the backstories are more interesting than the compositions. Several pieces of “mathematical music” by the German conceptual artist Hanne Darboven were plotted on graph paper, her symbols then assigned to random notes (her Requiem for organ sounds like a Philip Glass piece programmed for an 8-bit computer game). And most people here will be unaware that the recordings by the American musique concrète pioneer Tod Dockstrader feature bleeps, whoops and terrifying cackles that were used in his soundtracks for Tom and Jerry cartoons.
It’s arguable whether the electro-acoustic mix of field recordings, clunky piano and harmonised vocals made by Nivhek’s Liz Harris (the Portland-based composer who also makes music under the name Grouper) counts as minimalism at all, although it is quietly compelling to watch. The highlight of the weekend is One Life by the maverick French composer Malibu. She sits at a laptop, generating a babble of vocal samples, while an ensemble of 16 cellists play slowly mutating lines. It is immersive, ambient pop music that succeeds in being groundbreaking but also physically compelling – generating an emotional response that’s rare for this music.
