Happy Birthday Gavin Bryars
Subversive post-minimalist composer.
English classical composer, double bass player, b. 1/16/1943.
If Gavin Bryars is a “post-minimalist” composer, is he a maximalist? Categorizing modern music is a fool’s errand, certainly with a complex figure like Bryars. He’s capable of writing lush, orchestral textures, and he’s equally comfortable undermining lush, orchestral textures.
How do we classify this early Bryars work, “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” — simple, incremental orchestration superimposed onto a repeated phrase from a street singer?
The star here is not the repetition (as it would be in a minimalist piece) and/or the variation, but the repetition versus the variation. The 24 minute piece opens up a dialogue with the listener about what music is and how we process it when we listen.
It’s not surprising that Brian Eno would release Bryars’ “Jesus’ Blood Has Never Failed Me Yet” (along with “The Sinking of the Titanic”) on his Discreet Music label, which also issued Eno’s “Three Variations on the Canon in D Major by Johann…
