Have you ever thought of music while viewing a work of art? While not every movement in visual art has its parallel in music, quite often musical styles do correspond to similar periods in art. This is certainly true for both rococo and minimalist styles.

In music, the rococo style is often referred to as “gallant style.” Flourishing in the middle of the 18th century, its emphasis on lightness, elegance, flowing lines and extreme ornamentation was in marked contrast to the more substantial grandeur of Baroque music. The polyphonic style of Baroque music (consisting of interwoven melodies) gave way to a more homophonic style (a single melody harmonized by accompanying chords) that was more transparent. François Couperin in France might be considered the musical counterpart of the painter Watteau, and one of the earliest practitioners of the rococo style.

From France the movement spread to Germany (Telemann) and Italy (Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti.) While the excesses of the movement led to a deterioration of musical standards in the hands of some composers, becoming somewhat trite and too precious, it also influenced the early style of the composers of the highly refined Classical era (think Mozart and Haydn!)

The minimalist movement in music arose in the mid-1960s as a reaction to the complexity of serial, or 12-tone, music, as well as to the randomness of then-popular “chance music,” with which John Cage had been associated. (The opening exhibit at the Museum of Glass included drawings and musical scores by John Cage.)

Minimalist composers like Terry Riley, John Adams, and Phillip Glass purposely limited their musical material to a few notes—often a simple chord—with repetitive rhythmic patterns; as the work evolved, subtle almost-unperceivable changes to the rhythm or note patterns were applied, causing the musical texture to undergo a gradually shifting transformation—an almost hypnotic-like effect.

Daniel Clayman, in limiting himself to the use of only white glass and simple lines, has embraced these same principles. His works repeat the same basic shape in their structure, with subtle changes in size or color. Somewhat ironically, while minimalist composers were concerned with using limited materials, their musical works were often maximum in length—just as Clayman uses limited materials to construct massive glass sculptures.

The Festival of Love (c. 1717) by Jean-Antoine Watteau,
Oil on Canvas, 61 x 75 cm,
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden