Resulting Patterns, Palimpsests, and “Pointing Out” the Role of theListener in Reich's Drumming

RESULTING PATTERNS, PALIMPSESTS, AND “POINTING OUT” THE ROLE OF THE LISTENER IN REICH’S DRUMMING1 PHILIP DUKER XPERIENCING A MINIMALIST WORK is seldom described as an active process.2 Nor, according to many musicians, does it require a listener’s rapt attention. This would seem to be a curious anomaly compared with the diverse situations in which musicians and scholars encourage active listening. Consider for instance, the importance we place on such engaged musical activities as: tracing the entrances of a fugue subject, feeling the pull to a new key area in sonata form, or following the development of motives. It is strange then, that many music scholars claim that the opposite strategy is a preferable way to listen to minimalist pieces. E 142 Perspectives of New Music Since the first minimalist works were performed, musicians have recognized the radically different demands placed on a listener in comparison with much twentieth-century music. Timothy Johnson writes that: The earliest minimal pieces (from the late 1950s and early 1960s) . . . move sharply away from the idea of requiring the listener to recognize goals and goal-directed motion and toward the notion of listening from a nonparticipatory viewpoint suspended in time [emphasis mine].3 The idea that a listener doesn’t invest the same amount of attention that they normally would when listening continues to this day. Even some those who write sympathetically about minimalism have described the listening experience as a non-attached process. Consider the following quote from Jonathan Bernard: minimalist composers often make it a losing proposition for the listener to do more than just barely focus on differences between chords and motives, for instance—only to the threshold necessary for apprehending the temporal process.4 While minimalist works are not ambient music for these scholars, they describe a very limited kind of listening. What does it mean to experience this music if you “just barely focus on differences between chords and motives” or take a “non-participatory viewpoint.” Reinforcing this view, some minimalist composers encourage their audiences to use concerts as a chance for meditation, stressing again the idea that the music doesn’t warrant much attention from the listener.5 Yet, this approach would seem to significantly dilute how music scholars have historically used the term “listen.” Ian Quinn has remarked that if we approach minimalist works with the intent of staging a full analytical assault in order to demonstrate the depth of a composition, “process music will remain a source of frustration.”6 One might extend this comment to include the listening strategies associated with many of our analytical tools. Arguably when classical music scholars listen to minimalist works in habitual ways, there is a stark mismatch between their expectations of engagement and what the compositions offer. For listeners who actively seek relationships in the music, there often doesn’t seem to be much depth beyond the busy surface. Some may even wonder whether you can actively engage with a minimalist piece when it seems to offer so little “Pointing Out” the Role of the Listener in Reich’s Drumming 143 to engage with. Or more generously, what is the range of listening strategies that one can productively bring to a minimalist work? Robert Fink offers a largely pessimistic reply when he argues that minimalist works co-opt a kind of “mindless” repetition that dulls the senses.7 He finds the processes at work in minimalist pieces (specifically Drumming, which I examine below) are intertwined with contemporary advertising strategies; and just like the tactics of consumer marketing, we are bombarded with a constant “sameness” in this music. As with the culture of mass consumption in late capitalism, Fink finds that there is very limited room for individuality and agency when listening to such pieces.8 On the one hand, Fink has found some very interesting resonances across culture, and has provided a provocative lens with which to examine and contextualize this repertoire. Yet, on the other hand, in his view listeners of this music occupy a very diminished role, having little choice in deciding how they interact with a work. And while Fink is at pains to spare listeners from this conclusion and preserve some agency for...