Musical Minimalism and Russian Musicology: History of Research, Genesis and Evolution

The article presents an analysis of the main versions of the emergence and evolution of minimalism, proposed by both domestic and foreign art history. In the domestic literature of the 80-90s, there was an opinion that the origin of musical minimalism was a reaction to the European avant-garde that preceded it. However, today this statement looks somewhat speculative and not entirely reliable, due to objective historical reasons. The lack of information about Western art in all its diversity that existed at that time made it necessary to fill in the informational gaps with theoretical constructions and assumptions, one of which turned into a sincere conviction of many researchers that each new avant-garde phenomenon arose as a reaction to the previous one. Given the lack of facts, such a view could be considered quite justified, but it did not make it possible to recognize the true nature of minimalism. The modern level of information accessibility makes it possible to overcome the prevailing stereotype regarding the genesis and evolution of minimalism. The role of the international creative association “Fluxus” was very important in its development, in the ranks of which both representatives of the European avant-garde and American experimenters freely exchanged ideas. Very different and sometimes underestimated sources merged in musical minimalism, among which are the heritage of the musical and non-musical avant-garde, abstractionist and visual minimal art, experimental audio technicism and actionism, and an appeal to non-European music. This fusion of ideas and artistic techniques eventually formed a new synthetic phenomenon; a special minimalist style of a number of American composers - T. Riley, S. Reich, F. Glass, J. Adams, as well as European composers, among which M. Nyman became the most prominent figure. It was Nyman who proposed to extend the term ‘minimalism’ to the art of music, starting with the creative searches of J. Cage and his followers. In recent decades, among domestic musicologists, in relation to minimalism, the prefix ‘post’ has been increasingly added, heralding the transition to the era of postminimalism. However, in the avant-garde currents, such a transition was never synchronous and occurred gradually, when the subject of artistic reflection consistently rejected and replaced the former modernist conceptualism, actualizing direct perception and emotional reactivity. However, in musical minimalism, including its Russian branch, the mentioned process has not yet reached its final stage.