Looking inward: La Monte Young, Arvo Pärt, and the spatiotemporal dwelling environment of minimalist music

Abstract

Mid-century phenomenology suggested that works of art disclose a sort of ‘world’, which can be understood as a phenomenal ‘space’, or the total lived experience. Indeed, this is found to be a common theme throughout the writings of philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. As both contend, although the phenomenal realm encompasses sensory stimuli, it is concerned with essences and will, at some point, transcend the merely perceptual. In minimalist music, the essential typically points inward, toward dwelling inside a sound, process, or texture. The aim of this paper is to posit the effect of certain minimalist devices namely reduction, stasis, and automatism in constructing a particularly innate spatiotemporal environment, and to distinguish between the perceptual and phenomenal experiences associated with the music of La Monte Young and Arvo Part. Young has expressed notions of entering inside the ‘world’ of sound, and, although less explicit, several of the works Part composed during his tintinnabuli period can be considered an extension of reaching into the sensorial experience. However, whereas Young’s landscapes evoke the suspended moment, the circularity of Part’s work impresses a sort of mythic or immersed time and space. Thus, although the psychosomatic particularities diverge in certain ways with each composer, the common appearance of outer stasis nevertheless exposes the more meaningful movements that occur within.