One of the most relevant changes that have taken place in the musical avant-garde since the late 1960s is the replacement of the unique, radical and self-protectionist thinking to which young people like Stockhausen, Boulez and Nonofor an open reflection about music and composition systems. It is in that environment in which Tom Johnson (Colorado, November 18, 1939-Paris, December 31, 2024) was educated, a musician open to very different artistic motivations and whose roots are also associated with the unprejudiced American perspective that he assimilated during the years of training with Morton Feldman and John Cagefriends and seekers of the essential.
There are five decades ahead in which Johnson is recognized in different areas from the visual arts to the verbal, always on sound principles. And at all times affirming itself in minimalist structures generated on mathematical models in order to reduce the multiple to principles of simplicity and gentleness, with the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic content determined by previously established rules. On the occasion of the exhibition ‘Tom Johnson. Illustrated music’ presented at the José Guerrero Center of Granadain 2023, these ideas stood out, summarized by himself in the statement: “I want to find music and not compose it.”
Johnson was the first author to talk about musical minimalism, in 1972 in articles written for the New York tabloid ‘The Village Voice’ (Apollohuis, 1989) where he appears as the spokesperson for the current: «Minimalist music includes all music that works. from limited or minimal materials: works that use only a few notes, only a few words, or written for very limited instruments. This includes a simple electronic growl… recordings of rivers or waterways… works that evolve in endless cycles. The pioneering nature of his initiatives is reflected in the innovative ‘The Four Note Opera’ (1972). Supported in Pirandello and limited, as its title itself indicates, to a strict musical entity, its validity and success is evident as it still includes adaptations and revivals in many countries. This is the case of other successful works such as ‘Nine Bells’ (1979), a hypnotic work for nine bells, and ‘Rational Melodies’ (1982), a set of twenty-one melodies systematized and written for any melodic instrument.
Johnson arrived in Paris in the eighties and has remained there ever since with his wife, the conceptual artist and precursor of performance art. Esther Ferrer. The catalog grows with twelve operas and numerous compositions for very diverse instrumental groups. The ‘Riemannoper’ (1988) stands out, staged numerous times, or ‘Galileo’, a forty-minute piece written for an instrument oscillating on five pendulums, invented by himself. His most ambitious composition is the ‘Bonhoeffer Oratorio’ (1996), for orchestra, choir and soloists, based on a German text by the theologian. Dietrich Bonhoefferexecuted in Nazi Germany. No less is the abundance of other creations close to radio and the theoretical reflection that ‘Self-Similar Melodies’ (Editions 75, 1996) may well exemplify. Finally, after twenty-five years of interviews and browsing his archives, the French musicologist Gilbert Delor published ‘Tom Johnson ou la musique logique’ (L’Harmattan, Paris, 2021), a summary of a coherent creed, formalized in detail and in a artistic reason not exempt from an Epicurean happiness.
#Tom #Johnson #pioneer #musical #minimalism #dies
