The Minimalist Aesthetic in the Plastic Arts and in Music

INIMALISM, AS A characterization of music composed by La Monte Young, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass, among others, has been criticized for its inaccurate and misleading connotations. Wim Mertens, for example, asks whether extreme reduction of the musical means implied by the term important enough to function as a fundamental characteristic of this and concludes that minimal music is only partially satisfactory as a label for this tendency.l Mertens is typical of those who have written on the subject, however, in devoting no more than cursory attention to the meaning of minimalism in American sculpture and painting, where the term originated.2 The circumstantial evidence linking minimalism in music to minimalism in the plastic arts has, of course, always been strong. Many of the earliest performances of Reich's and Glass's music, for instance, took place in art galleries and artists' lofts, and some of the earliest commercially available recordings of their music