Musicology - Minimalist and Post-minimalist Music

Bangor has rapidly developed into a centre of expertise on minimalist music in the UK. The first international conference of its kind on minimalist music was held from 31 August – 2 September 2007, and received widespread coverage on Radios 3, 4 (on the ‘Today’ programme) and 5 Live (see review by Kyle Gann). The Society for Minimalist Music was established during this time, along with a dedicated website, and the next conference is scheduled to take place in Missouri, Kansas City, in 2009. Conference organizers Dr Pwyll ap Siôn and Mr Tristian Evans are both active researchers in this area. In October 2007 they were invited by the Cardiff Millennium Centre to deliver lectures on the subject to coincide with the European Premiere of Glass’s Book of Longing, and ap Siôn regularly contributes reviews on the subject for Gramophone magazine. His book, The music of Michael Nyman (2007) is the first English-language study of its kind on the composer.

Pwyll ap Siôn

Dr Pwyll ap Siôn’s recent publications include:

The music of Michael Nyman: Texts, Contexts and Intertexts (Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing, 2007)

ap Siôn, P. and Tristian Evans (forthcoming): ‘Parallel Symmetries? Exploring Relationships between Minimalism and Multimedia Forms’, in the Continuum Companion to Sound in Film and the Visual Media (ed. Graeme Harper), New York: Continuum Press

ap Siôn, P., and Ruth Barnett: ‘Nearly Stationary’: The use of silence in Cage’s String Quartet in four parts’, published in the proceeding of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Bologna, August 22-26, 2006 (CD-ROM, ISBN 88-7395-155-4)

ap Siôn, P. with Tristian Evans and Ruth Barnett: ‘Towards an understanding of the perception of sounds, silences and repetition in American experimental and minimal music’ (Rhythms In The Brain conference, School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, 26-28 May 2006)

Tristian Evans

Evans, Tristian: ‘From Nucleus to the ‘Lynx Effect’’: Karl Jenkins’s musical journeys’, Ninth Conference of the Centre for Advanced Welsh Music Studies, University of Wales Bangor, 22 June 2007