Systems music is music with sound continua which evolve gradually, often over very long periods of time. Historically, the American
minimalists
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
Steve Reich,
La Monte Young and
Philip Glass are considered the principal proponents of this compositional approach. Works by this group of composers are often characterized by features such as
stasis
Stasis (from Greek στάσις "a standing still") may refer to:
* A state in stability theory, in which all forces are equal and opposing, therefore they cancel out each other
* Stasis (political history), a period of civil war within an ancient ...
or repetitiveness.
A number of English experimental composers have also developed systems based music particularly
Michael Parsons Michael Parsons may refer to:
*Michael Parsons (composer) (born 1938), British composer
*Michael Parsons (cricketer) (born 1984), English cricketer
*Michael Parsons (engineer) (1928–2021), designer of major suspension bridges
*Michael Parsons (A ...
,
Howard Skempton
Howard While Skempton (born 31 October 1947) is an English composer, pianist, and accordionist.
Since the late 1960s, when he helped to organise the Scratch Orchestra, he has been associated with the English school of experimental music. Skempt ...
,
John White, and
Michael Nyman
Michael Laurence Nyman, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer, pianist, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film scores (many written during his lengthy collaboration with the filmmaker Peter Green ...
.
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 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 scales, as il ...
-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, 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'' is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom and currently the oldest such journal still being published in the country.
It was originally created by Joseph Mainzer in 1842 as ''Mainze ...
'' 115, no. 1582 (December), pp. 1036–1038.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Systems Music
Contemporary classical music
Experimental music genres