Tom Johnson, a composer and critic whose Village Tone columns documented the renaissance of avant-garde track in downtown Pristine York all through the Seventies, and whose personal compositions embraced minimalism and mathematical readability, died on Tuesday at his house in Paris. He used to be 85.
His spouse and simplest fast survivor, the efficiency artist Esther Ferrer, mentioned the motive used to be a stroke following long-term emphysema.
Mr. Johnson used to be a tender Pristine York composer short of source of revenue in 1971 when he spotted that the thrilling performances he heard downtown weren’t being coated by way of native information shops. He introduced to put in writing in regards to the fresh track scene for The Tone, and he quickly started a weekly column.
It used to be an opportune age: Artwork galleries, lofts and venues just like the Kitchen have been presenting live shows by way of younger experimenters like Steve Reich and Meredith Monk, and Mr. Johnson turned into the rising scene’s leading chronicler.
“No one realized at the time that one of the most significant genres of serious music of the century was developing, a genre that was to become known as American minimalism, and which would find imitators all over the world,” he wrote in 1983, in his ultimate Tone column.
He charted the be on one?s feet of musical minimalism, together with the transformation of the native composer Phil Glass to a world phenomenon, however he additionally documented radical paintings by way of lesser-known figures: Yoshi Wada, who sang via large plumbing pipes; Jim Burton, who amplified bicycle wheels; and Eliane Radigue, who created uncanny drones on a synthesizer.
“I learned some interesting things about gongs on May 30 at a Centre Street loft concert,” Mr. Johnson wrote of a 1973 display by way of the younger composer Rhys Chatham. “That gongs have many different pitches, most of which don’t make much sense in terms of the overtone series; that different tones stand out, depending on how the gong is struck; that when a gong makes a crescendo, a wonderful whoosh of high sound streams into the room; that loud gongs vibrate the floor in a special way and put an odd charge in the air; that listening to gongs, played alone for over an hour, is an extraordinary experience.”
By way of describing such outré happenings in matter-of-fact, observational prose, Mr. Johnson equipped a countrywide readership with get right of entry to to performances that may well be attended by way of just a accumulation listeners, and in all probability by no means heard once more. He noticed himself as a player inside the scene, and he equipped such beneficiant protection that he turned into recognized amongst composers as “Saint Tom.”
His writings, accrued within the 1989 accumulation “The Voice of New Music,” do business in a uniquely intimate portrait of a galvanizing musical pace; for one memorable column, Mr. Johnson sang within the refrain for a practice session of Mr. Glass’s landmark opera “Einstein on the Beach.”
However Mr. Johnson used to be additionally unafraid to critique live shows that he concept didn’t paintings conceptually, or notice when he fell asleep. Some columns took formal dangers. He as soon as trustworthy 1000 phrases to reviewing “one of the most impressive performances I ever heard”: the warbling of a mockingbird on Lengthy Island.
He used to be some of the first writers to start the usage of the expression “minimal” to explain a lot of the repetitive track he heard, and he carried out the word of honour to his personal compositions, such because the hypnotic 1971 paintings “An Hour for Piano.” “I have always been very proud of it, because that’s the only word that really describes what I’m doing,” he mentioned in a 2014 interview. “I always worked with reduced materials and tried to do simple music.”
In Mr. Johnson’s dryly postmodern “Four Note Opera,” a quartet sings arias about arias — on simplest the notes A, B, D and E. The primary efficiency, in 1972, had an target audience of about 10 public; the opera has since gained greater than 100 productions. For “Nine Bells” (1979), he walked amongst a grid of suspended burglar alarm bells for almost an pace, chiming them in predetermined sequences, a feat of geometric precision and bodily exertion.
Within the Eighties, he immersed himself in Euclid’s quantity theories and Mandelbrot’s fractals, keen to seek out untouched musical buildings. His compositions of this era come with “Rational Melodies,” a sequence of entrancing miniatures constructed from easy, unbending patterns, and “The Chord Catalog,” a methodical two-hour presentation of the 8,178 chords that may be present in a unmarried octave.
Although undergirded by way of his mathematical workouts, Mr. Johnson’s track is visceral and intelligible — and incessantly intentionally predictable — in lieu than abstruse. “There is something particularly satisfying about projects where the logic (the music) seems to arise naturally from some discovery outside of myself, and where everything comes together with a minimum of tampering (of composing),” he as soon as wrote.
Thomas Floyd Johnson used to be born on Nov. 18, 1939, in Greeley, Colo., a petite farming public. His oldsters, Harold and Irene (Barber) Johnson, have been lecturers.
When he used to be about 7, Tom started taking part in the piano intermittently, and he discovered his hobby for track at pace 13 beneath the tutelage of an area piano tutor, Rita Hutcherson, who additionally inspired his composing.
Although a lot of his friends attended close by universities, Ms. Hutcherson steered Mr. Johnson to use to Yale, the place he gained a Bachelor of Arts stage in 1961 and a grasp’s in track in 1967. As an undergraduate, he took a seminar with the chief composer Elliott Carter and dabbled in 12-tone composition, the lingua franca of the musical academy. However he discovered himself embracing repetition and stasis in lieu of cerebral complexity. He moved to Pristine York in 1967 to check privately with the experimental composer Morton Feldman, who helped him to find his inventive expression.
Upcoming documenting the Pristine York scene for The Tone however suffering to have his personal paintings carried out, Mr. Johnson decamped to Paris in 1983, the place pristine alternatives awaited, as Ecu audiences have been newly interested in the American avant-garde. There he remained a scribbler, theorizing about his personal track in different books. He have been publishing his personal ratings because the Seventies, and he maintained an energetic internet presence with a video series elucidating his track.
His main works have incorporated the satirical “Riemannoper,” in keeping with excerpts from a famed German track lexicon, which has gained greater than 30 productions; and a extra critical oratorio drawing at the writings of the German dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However a lot of Mr. Johnson’s output remained resolutely summary, together with an orchestral paintings that lays out a form of 360 chords, and a sequence of new items that systematically discover numerous rhythmic mixtures.
Mr. Johnson’s marriage to the choreographer Kathy Duncan led to dissolution. He married Ms. Ferrer in 1986.
Considered one of his compositions has turn into canonic within the double-bass public: “Failing” (1975), a fiendishly tricky and hilarious workout by which a soloist is recommended to bow difficult passages moment studying a long textual content aloud that self-reflexively feedback at the track.
“These pieces all had to do with making music as real life,” Mr. Johnson mentioned of the paintings in a 2020 interview. “I wanted the performer to confront an unknown situation and deal with it as well as possible in a one-time-only context.”
