Repetitive music

See also: Ostinato

Repetitive music is music that features a relatively high degree of repetition in its creation or reception. Examples include minimalist music, krautrock, disco (and its later derivatives such as house music), some techno, some of Igor Stravinsky's compositions, barococo and the Suzuki method. (Fink 2005, p. 5)

Other important genres with repetitive songwriting are Post Rock, Ambient/Dark Ambient[1] and Black Metal.[2]

Psychological interpretations

Repetitive music has often been negatively linked with Freudian thanatos. Theodor Adorno (1948, p. 178) provides an example in his criticism of Igor Stravinsky, whose, "rhythmic procedures ostinato closely resemble the schema of catatonic conditions. In certain schizophrenics, the process by which the motor apparatus becomes independent leads to infinite repetition of gestures or words, following the decay of the ego." Similar criticism was levelled at Ravel's Bolero.

Wim Mertens (1980, p. 123-124) argues that "In repetitive music, repetition in the service of the death instinct prevails. Repetition is not repetition of identical elements, so it is not reproduction, but the repetition of the identical in another guise. In traditional music, repetition is a device for creating recognizability, reproduction for the sake of the representing ego. In repetitive music, repetition does not refer to eros and the ego, but to the libido and to the death instinct."

Repetitive music has also been linked with Lacanian jouissance. David Schawrz (1992, p. 134) argues that the repetition in John Adams's Nixon in China "trapping listeners in a narrow acoustic corridor of the Real" while Naomi Cumming (1997, p. 129-152) argues that the repetitive string ostinatos of Steve Reich's Different Trains are "prearticulate" pieces of the Real providing a refuge from the Holocaust and its "horror of identification."

Genres that use repetitive music

DJs at disco clubs in the 1970s played a smooth mix of long single disco records to keep people dancing all night long. The twelve-inch single was popularized as a means to this end. While disco songs do have some repetitive elements, such as a persistent throbbing beat, these repetitive elements were counterbalanced by the musical variety provided by orchestral arrangements and disco mixes that added different sound textures to the music, ranging from a full, orchestral sound to stripped-down break sections.

The electronic dance music genres that followed disco in the 1980s and 1990s, such as house music and techno kept the bass drum rhythm introduced by disco but did not use the orchestral arrangements or horn sections. House and techno had a more minimalist sound that layered electronic sounds and samples over a drum machine drum part and a repetitive synth bass bassline.

In the 1990s, an offshoot of one form of house music (acid house) developed into rave music, a high-energy electronic music for dancing that depends heavily on samples. Initially rave music was considered a particular style that was a combination of fast breakbeat and more hardcore forms of techno. Rave music was played at massive dance parties, called raves, where many dancers would dance all night to the throbbing, repetitive beat of rave songs.

Extremely repetitive song structures are also used by some black metal bands like Burzum,[3] Darkthrone Forgotten Woods and Striborg.

Sources

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Further reading