Systems music is music with sound continua which evolve gradually, often over very long periods of time. Historically, the American
minimalists Steve Reich
Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer best known as a pioneer of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich descr ...
,
La Monte Young
La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best k ...
and
Philip Glass
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...
are considered the principal proponents of this compositional approach. Works by this group of composers are often characterized by features such as
stasis or repetitiveness.
A number of English experimental composers have also developed systems based music particularly
Michael Parsons,
Howard Skempton,
John White, and
Michael Nyman
Michael Laurence Nyman, Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer, pianist, libretto, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film soundtrack, scores (many written during his lengthy ...
.
In the realm of
computer music
Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ...
, "systems music" refers to
fractal
In mathematics, a fractal is a Shape, geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scale ...
-based, computer-assisted composition, and in particular
iterated function system
In mathematics, iterated function systems (IFSs) are a method of constructing fractals; the resulting fractals are often self-similar. IFS fractals are more related to set theory than fractal geometry. They were introduced in 1981.
IFS fractals ...
s music, in which a function "is applied repeatedly, each time taking as argument its value at the previous application",
References
Sources
*
*
Further reading
* Anderson, Virginia (2013a). "Systems and Other Minimalism in Britain". In ''The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music'', edited by Keith Potter,
Kyle Gann
Kyle Eugene Gann (born November 21, 1955, in Dallas, Texas) is an American composer, professor of music, critic, analyst, and musicologist who has worked primarily in the New York City area. As a music critic for ''The Village Voice'' (from 1986 ...
, and Pwyll ap Siôn, 87–106. London and New York: Routledge. .
* Anderson, Virginia (2013b). "Whatever Remains, However Improbable". In ''Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research'', edited by Michael Schwab, 55–67. Leuven: Leuven University Press. .
*
Dennis, Brian (1974). "Repetitive and Systemic Music". ''
The Musical Times
''The Musical Times'' was an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom.
It was originally created by Joseph Mainzer in 1842 as ''Mainzer's Musical Times and Singing Circular'', but in 1844 he sold it to Alfr ...
'' 115, no. 1582 (December), pp. 1036–1038.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Systems Music
Contemporary classical music
Experimental music genres