Patrick Nickleson is the author of The Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art, Music, and Historiography in Dispute, an academic study that radically reconsiders the origins and boundaries of musical minimalism. Uninterested in searching for the earliest work of musical minimalism, or even in doing the admittedly necessary work of expanding the canon to include lesser known but equally important figures, Nickleson instead underscores a different set of shared traits that he sees in (early) minimalism: the importance of collective authorship, often collaborating in a form of “bandness”; the priority of recording to tape over written scores; and distinguishing between “(early) minimalism” and the later canonization of Minimalism as we know it since the early 1980s. In addition to the book, we discuss searching for obscure records online, our shared love of Constellation Records, and the influence of Tony Conrad.  (Joseph Sannicandro)

Episode 32: INDISCREET MUSIC – with Patrick Nickleson

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Interview recorded between Montreal and Edmonton, April 2023
Edited somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, October 2023
Produced and mixed in Montreal, November 2023

Patrick Nickleson is assistant professor of musicology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and his work focuses on American experimental music, the politics of authorship, and the political-aesthetic thought of the philosopher Jacques Rancière. All of these currents are present in his first book, The Names of Minimalism. Another key figure in Nickleson’s thinking is Tony Conrad, who figures in the book not just as a musician but also as a theoretician and historian of music. Conrad’s contributions to the Theatre of Eternal Music are at the core of a chapter about a well-known authorial dispute with La Monte Young, and Conrad hangs over the book in other significant ways. The book begins with Conrad picketing a La Monte Young concert in Buffalo during April of 1990, a scene which is also depicted on the book’s cover.

While Nickleson might have his own sympathies, his interest isn’t in re-adjudicating these disputes; The Names of Minimalism isn’t that kind of polemic. But these disputes over compositional authorship are at the heart of what does concern Nickleson here, namely that “minimalism” in music emerged out of collective practices, in complex dialogue with not only other musicians and artists but also with technology (the 60 cycle hum of the North American energy grid, the tape machine, microphones and amplifiers). Recording to tape opened up new possibilities for composition, moving beyond the abstraction of the score as musical ideal, and the confines of Western art music’s (white) musical frame. The fact of amplification also shouldn’t be taken for granted; it was no easy thing to amplify acoustic instruments at that time. Even standard microphones were radical in their implications. The “crooner” style of singing associated with Frank Sinatra couldn’t have existed without microphones, and I once heard Steve Reich speak about Miles Davis’s instrument as being specifically the conjunction of his horn with a microphone. This is no less true in early minimalism, but such facts seem to evade traditional musicological analysis.

Nickleson first noticed a disconnect between his own understanding of minimalism and how it is taught in academia when he began studying music as an undergraduate student at the University of Windsor. But luckily while there he met professors who, in the context of performance rather than music theory, found ways to explore the music of composers including Michael Gordon and Steve Reich alongside that of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, as part of the Noiseborder Ensemble (Brent Lee, Nicholas Papador, and others), which also performed student compositions.

Before going on to work on his doctorate at the University of Toronto, Patrick was also our colleague at TSB, where he contributed about a dozen reviews towards the end of that site’s existence, before Rich, Jeremy and I left to found ACL (see episode 29). Back then we covered mostly post-rock, but also instrumental music in general, including IDM, ambient, and various strains of “new music” that at the time was emerging as a kind of scene without a name, in which classically trained composers and performers were increasingly moving outside the concert hall and engaging with other genres of music, including indie venues and labels outside the usual classical institutions. Groups including Alarm Will Sound, So Percussion, Kronos Quartet, and many other crossover acts appeared on our pages, blurring the line between popular and classical that here at ACL we’ve chosen to lump together in the category “Modern Composition.”

Being of the same generation, Patrick and I share many formative musical influences which encouraged us to seek out such “modern composition.” In this episode, he singles out Radiohead’s Kid A and Godspeed’s Lift Your Skinny Fists as particularly important. Released around the same time in 2000, these records spurred both Patrick and I, and legions of others, to follow every breadcrumb to discover more challenging sounds, from Glenn Branca to Sonic Youth to Messiaen. I’m fairly certain that the first time I encountered the name “Steve Reich” was in the title of a track from Godspeed’s Peel Session. Napster suddenly made it possible to listen more widely than we could have imagined, and searching for Steve Reich led me to Philip Glass’s “Two Pages,” which was labeled as “Two Pages for Steve Reich.” (The attribution of this dedication is discussed at length in Chapter 3.) Similarly, it was in downloading works by John Coltrane that I first discovered Albert Ayler, via his “For John Coltrane,” a dedication which has a much less contentious history.

But Nickleson is drawn to disputes, and Napster led him to the Theatre of Eternal Music, which had at the time even more of a reputation for being the most obscure music out there. This is owing to the fact that the tapes of their music, recorded over several years in the 1960s, are in the possession of La Monte Young, who claims complete compositional authority and refuses to release them, since other musicians who were part of the group, including Tony Conrad and John Cale, dispute his claim. It is this dispute to which he attends in Chapter 2 of his book, as well as in a recent article, “‘On which they (merely) held drones’: Fugitive Tapes from the Theatre of Eternal Music Archive, 1963–6.” Nickleson stops short of taking sides, but in his close analysis of the group’s development, untangles a historical narrative that has been muddied by the dispute to demonstrate the collective dynamic of the group. When Angus MacLise left the group, for instance, the loss of their percussionist served as a catalyst for Young to lay down his saxophone, instead vocalizing a drone alongside Marian Zazeela, in relation to the dual amplified strings of Tony Conrad and John Cale. The decision to amplify their strings, and the creative means by which they managed to do so, is part of Conrad and Cale’s particular contributions to the sound of the group.

The Theatre of Eternal Music, or the Dream Syndicate as the members besides Young & Zazeela have referred to it, remains very obscure as so very few recordings are publicly available. This has changed somewhat, however, as recordings have trickled out over the last few decades, including in records released by MacLise, Conrad, and Cale. One of the clearest windows into their practice comes from a poor quality live recording which was duplicated by Arnold Dreyblatt when he was Young’s archivist in the mid-70s, a 1965 performance which was later released by Table of the Elements without Young’s approval in 2000 as Inside the Dream Syndicate, Vol. I: Day of Niagara.

In an open letter to Young and Conrad written at the time of that record’s release, Dreyblatt writes of Conrad’s influence, “the mathematical and acoustic rationalization of harmonic relationships first appears along with his membership in this group. La Monte … tended to apply the notational language of European classical music.” Nickleson draws a similar conclusion, demonstrating that Conrad was responsible for introducing Young to just intonation and working out the math that made it possible for the group to pursue this direction.

Despite this, I still come out of the book with great sympathy for La Monte Young’s right to control the context in which his work is heard. In this, I think of Terre Thaemlitz (aka DJ Sprinkles) who has cogently argued for her right as composer to issue take down notices when fan’s upload her recordings to services such as YouTube and SoundCloud (cf. “Please Don’t Upload!”). This also resonates with a shift in Nickleson’s thinking, that he describes in our conversation, and attributes particularly to the influence of Dylan Robinson, with whom he’s collaborated, as well as the scores of Raven Chacon and other indigenous artists. Punk was motivated by a rejection of authority, and the influence of John Cage had a similar effect in allowing us to hear anything as musical. But Nickelson sees this as a less benevolent gesture than he once did, at worst a potential form of colonization, as when early musicologists recorded indigenous songs which were later incorporated into musical contexts in which they do not have any right to be.

Interpersonal dispute is just one of the structuring principles of The Names of Minimalism. One of the important concepts in Patrick’s book, which comes from Ranciere, is the attention to homonyms. Elsewhere Nickleson explains that he’s

drawn to those moments when we speak at cross-purposes, using the same name to misunderstand each other. Where much critical thought points towards polysemy—the capacity for a word to mean differently for different people—I think of homonyms: instances where we use the same word and mean entirely different things by it. (146)

For Ranciere, this is histoire, which in French means both history and story (a homonym that exists in many other languages as well, but not in English). For Nickleson, the main homonym that interests him in this book is minimalism itself. By the early 1980s, the “Big Four” minimalist composers (Young, Terry Riley, Reich, and Glass) had begun the process of their own canonization and historicization, as minimalism became Minimalism. Nicholson resists shutting down these disputes by referring to (early) minimalism, underscoring the importance of collectivity and “bandness” to the development of musical minimalism. He also emphasizes the important influence that jazz had on each of the “Big Four,” as well as minimalism’s relationship with free jazz, punk and no-wave. This is an important aspect of Nickleson’s argument, in so far as he denies that minimalism can be viewed as a post-Cagean “art music.” Nickleson’s attention to primary documents is crucial here, as he demonstrates how punk was often received as a form of “minimalism,” a thread he follows in Chapter 4, covering the work of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca.

This episode revolves around Patrick’s book, which is written for an academic audience. We’ve both got PhDs, we’re both academics, so unsurprisingly many other scholarly books come up in our discussion, including: Stephen M. Best’s The Fugitive’s Properties: Law and the P ties: Law and the Poetics of Possession (2004); Liz Kotz’s Words to Be Looked At: Language in 1960s Art (2007); Branden W. Joseph’s Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (2008); Natilee Harren’s Fluxus Forms Scores, Multiples, and the Eternal Network (2020); Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (2020); Dan DiPiero’s Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (2022); and many others.

But each of us has a somewhat uncomfortable relationship to disciplinarity. I’m relatively anti-disciplinary, or what others might less generously describe as undisciplined, methodologically agnostic at best. Neither of us is interested in gatekeeping, and a lot of our conversation revolves around the problems of strict disciplinarity and a desire to expand access and possibilities, including pedagogically and in the form of canon expansion. Another recent book we discuss is Kerry O’Brien and William Robin’s collection On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement (2023), which is just such an exercise of widening the frame of what is considered minimalist.  A conversation with the editors of that volume will appear on a future episode of Sound Propositions. But until then, please enjoy with episode about Patrick’s book, The Names of Minimalism, as we big into “bandness,” homonyms, and the politics of collective authorship.

 

LINKS

Patrick Nickleson
The Names of Minimalism
Noiseborder Ensemble
Come Worry With Us

TRACKLIST
ARTIST – “TITLE” (ALBUM, LABEL, YEAR)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “Steve Reich” (Live @ VPRO Radio ‘de Avonden’, Studio Amstel, Amsterdam, 24 November 1998)

SP INTRO

John Cale – “Terry’s Cha-Cha” (Stainless Gamelan: Inside the Dream Syndicate, Volume III, Table of the Elements, 2001)

[Glenn] Branca – “Lesson No. 3 (Tribute To Steve Reich)” (The Ascension: The Sequel, Systems Neutralizers, 2010)

Terry Riley – “[Excerpt]” (In C, Columbia Masterworks, 1968)

Steve Reich – “Pulses (2)”  (Music for 18 Musicians, ECM, 1978)

Philip Glass – “Part 5 (Beginning)” (Music in Twelve Parts, Venture, 1988)

Rhys Chatham & His Guitar Trio All-Stars – “Guitar Trio Pt. 1, Buffalo” (Guitar Trio Is My Life! Radium, 2008)

Glenn Branca – “Structure” (The Ascension, 99 Records, 1981)

Tony Conrad – “Tony Conrad  April 1965” (Early Minimalism – Volume One, Table of Contents, 1997)

Angus MacLise / Tony Conrad – “Untitled (recorded October 18, 1968 at Tony Conrad’s apartment)” (Dreamweapon III, Boo-Hooray, 2011)

La Monte Young – “Pre-Tortoise Dream Music” (The Theatre Of Eternal Music, 1995)

Tony Conrad – “The Heterophony Of The Avenging Democrats, Outside, Cheers The Incineration Of The Pythagorean Elite, Whose Shrill Harmonic Agonies Merge And Shimmer Inside Their Torched Meeting House [excerpt]” (Slapping Pythagoras, Table of the Elements, 1995)

Tony Conrad with Faust – “From The Side Of Machine” (Outside The Dream Syndicate, Caroline, 1973)

John Coltrane – “Africa” (Africa/Brass, Impulse!, 1961)

GENG PTP – “(alice coltrane)” (Slowness as the Vehicle III (archive 0828121), PTP, 2021)

Dickie Landry – “Kitchen Solos” (Fifteen Saxophones, Wergo, 1977)

Eliane Radigue – CHRY-PTUS (Version 2006, Giuseppe Ielasi) (CHRY-PTUS, Schoolmap, 2007)

Morton Feldman – “Page 1, System 1, Measure 1” (Feldman Edition 8: Triadic Memories (mode136), 2004)

John Coltrane (McCoy Tyner solo) – “Naima [excerpt]” (Blue World, Impulse!, 1964/2019)

Observer All Stars and King Tubby – “Rebel Dance” (Dubbing with the Observer (King Tubby’s Special), Observer / Attack, 1975)

Philip Glass – “Two Pages (For Steve Reich)” (Two Pages; Contrary Motion; Music In Fifths; Music In Similar Motion, Elektra Nonesuch, 1994)

Albert Ayler – “For John Coltrane” (Live At The Village Theatre, Impulse!, 1967/1998)

Radiohead – “How To Disappear Completely” (Kid A, Capitol, 2000)

Godspeed – “Deathkamp Drone” (Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven, kranky / Constellation, 2000)

Nicholas Papador and the University of Windsor Percussion Ensemble – “Stasis” (Marimba Collage: Open Score Works by Jordan Nobles, 2022)

The Noiseborder Ensemble – [Improvisation on A-Ha’s “Take on Me”]  (Live at Media City, Windsor ON, 2009)

The Dream Syndicate with La Monte Young – “Day Of The Holy Mountain (excerpt 2)” (Day Of The Holy Mountain, 1964)

Jon Gibson – “Cycles” (Two Solo Pieces, Chatham Square, 1973)

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra – “Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montreal)” (Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything, Constellation, 2014)

Ornette Coleman – “Friends and Neighbors (instrumental) / “Friends and Neighbors (vocal)” (Friends And Neighbors – Ornette Live At Prince Street, Flying Dutchman, 1970)

Rhys Chatham – “Two Gongs (1971)” (Two Gongs (1971), Table of the Elements, 2006)

La Monte Young – “B Flat Dorian Blues 19 X 63 (5th day of the Hammer)” (The Theatre Of Eternal Music, 1995)

Terry Riley /  Don Cherry “Descending Moonshine Dervishes” (Köln  February 23 1975, modern silence, 2016)

Sonic Youth – “Pendulum Music (Steve Reich, 1968)” (SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century, Sonic Youth Records, 1999 )

Tony Conrad – “ten years alive on the infinite plain (#1)” [Live at the Kitchen, 1972] (Ten Years Alive On The Infinite Plain, Superior Viaduct, 2017)

Tony Conrad, “Four Violins (1964)” (Four Violins (1964), Table of the Elements, 1996)

Henry Flynt – “You Are My Everlovin” (You Are My Everlovin / Celestial Power, Edition Hundertmark, 1986)

Catherine Christer Hennix – “The Electric Harpsichord [excerpt]”  The Electric Harpsichord, Die Schachtel, 2010)

Raven Chacon –  “Singing Toward The Wind Now / Singing Toward The Sun Now”  (An Anthology of Chants Operations, Ouidah, 2020)

Angus MacLise / Tony Conrad / John Cale – “Trance #2” (An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music / First A-Chronology 1921-2001, Sub Rosa, 2002)

John Cale – “A Midnight Rain of Green Wrens at the World’s Tallest Building” (Dream Interpretation: Inside the Dream Syndicate Volume II, Table of the Elements, 2001)

Angus MacLise / Jack Smith / Tony Conrad – S.O.S. (Ca. 1968) (Dreamweapon I, Boo-Hooray, 2011)

The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-la-la Band (with choir) – “side one _ sow some lonesome corner so many flowers bloom” (“this is our punk rock,” thee rusted satellites gather + sing”, cst, 2003)

Angus MacLise – “Tunnel Music #2” [1965] (The Cloud Doctrine, Sub Rosa, 2003)

John Cale / Tony Conrad / Angus MacLise / La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela – “Inside the Dream Syndicate Volume I: Day of Niagara” (Inside the Dream Syndicate Volume I: Day of Niagara (1965) Table of the Elements, 2000)

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Sound Propositions is written, recorded, mixed, and produced by Joseph Sannicandro.