Sharing my response to someone arguing for a reevaluation of the merits of Phillip Glass’ minimalist music.
No thanks! I will pass! Just my opinion but minimalist composers leave out the essential elements of music that allow it to dive into the very deepest part of your psyche and make you FEEL emotions you didn’t know you had, sending shivers up and down your spine. If you want to drift along, feeling nothing, detached from your emotions, then Glass (and his endless followers trying to cash in on his success) is for you! I get why minimalism is so popular today. People are bombarded so constantly, they intensely need to be numbed. They don’t want to feel more. They want to feel less. Minimalist music (and its appallingly mind numbing but popular successor, ambient music) does the trick.
From time out of memory it has been the job of artists, of all kinds, to wrench people out of their complacency and make them intensely feel the full range of human emotions. From the ancient Greek playwrights to Shakespeare, et al.
Gertrude Stein wasn’t Shakespeare. Glass isn’t Bach.
