Ingram Marshall, a minimalist composer known for the mystery and melancholy of his work, which features sounds as different as San Francisco’s foghorn and Bali’s bamboo flute, died on May 31 in New Haven, Connecticut. He was 80 years old.
His wife, Veronica Tomasic, said the cause was a complication of Parkinson’s disease.
Marshall was an influential figure in American experimental music, and since the 1960s he has been a member of a group of composers who have broken down music into the basic elements of rhythm and tempo and incorporated digital sound.Self-proclaimed “expressivist”, he An unforgettable, mysterious work It blends various traditions such as European Romanticism, Indonesian Gamelan, and electronic devices.
“The musical experience should be wrapped up,” Marshall said in 1996. interview For Yale University Oral history of American music.. “Almost in a narcotic way. It should actually be built in it, not exactly zoned or tranced. If you can do that, I’ve done something for you. I think.”
He is Kronos Quartet, brass sextet, Chorus work When Solo guitar piece. Much of his music is a blend of traditional instruments and pre-recorded computer-operated sounds.
“His music was very emotional, but not the neo-romantic way of saccharin,” longtime friend composer John Adams said in an interview. “It was his own very unique and very sentimental style, but in the best of the words sentimental.”
Admiring Romantic composers like Sibelius and Bruckner, Marshall had a deep knowledge of the Western classic canon that influenced his style, even if he went in a new direction.
“He wasn’t afraid to be very direct and expressive,” said oboist Libby Van Cleeve, who directed the Yale University Oral History Project and wrote three works by Marshall. I did. “His greatest influence was the courage to write such heartfelt and expressive music in the electronic realm.”
Ingram Douglas Marshall was born on May 10, 1942 in Westchester County, Mount Vernon, New York, to banker Harry Rainhard Marshall Sr. and amateur pianist Bernice (Douglas) Marshall.
With the encouragement of her mother, she started singing from an early age and joined the church choir. His interest in music grew and he graduated in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in music from Lake Forest College, Illinois. After that, he attended Columbia University and California Institute of the Arts, earned a master’s degree in art in 1971, and taught electronic music classes.
While at the California Institute, he met several Indonesian performers and was fascinated by their music. He received a Fulbright grant and traveled to Indonesia for four months in 1971 with the aim of immersing himself in the sounds of Indonesia.
The visit was a turning point. He soon began incorporating into his musical elements of Indonesian culture. gambuh, Traditional Balinese flute. He adopted a more laid-back style. This is a development due to his devotion to Indonesian music.
“I realized that formalized electronic music like’zip and zap, bleep and rap’that I was trying to do wasn’t just my way,” Marshall said in an interview with Yale University. Talked about him. Experience in Indonesia. “I needed to find a slower and deeper way to approach electronic music.”
In 1981, he created one of his most famous works, “Fog Trope”. This is a gloomy meditation that combines field recordings of fog horns in the San Francisco Bay Area with brass instruments.
“Many people remember San Francisco when they hear this piece, but I don’t,” Marshall once said. “To me, it’s just fog, it’s lost in the fog. The brass player should sound like he’s riding a raft in the middle of a foggy bay.”
Marshall’s fans praised the spiritual quality of his work. Some have drawn comparisons with the so-called holy minimalists of Eastern Europe, including the prominent Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
“Sure, he doesn’t explicitly write liturgical music and doesn’t foster a priestly atmosphere,” Adam Schatz wrote in a 2001 article about The New York Times’ Marshall. “But his music is some of the most exciting spiritual art we see in America today.”
Another friend, composer Steve Reich, said the mystery of Marshall’s work made it stand out. He described music as a mix of American spirituality, “mysterious and mysterious northern fog and fog,” and gamelan.
“It’s not easy to identify Ingram,” Reich said in an interview. “It’s not minimalism, or any other monica you want to attach to it, but it’s brilliant, intelligent and beautiful.”
After spending more than 15 years in California, Marshall returned to the East Coast in 1990 and settled in Hamden, Connecticut, on the outskirts of New Haven. He continued to compose and teach and was a part-time teacher at the Yale Music School from 2004 to 2014.
Marshall, along with his wife, survives with his son Clement. Juliet Simon, a daughter from a previous relationship. And four grandchildren.
He wasn’t religious, but Marshall sometimes talked about the spiritual power of music. He said he hopes to be able to help artists bring understanding to the world after a disaster.
“Composers, poets and artists always find it useless in the wake of disaster,” he told the Times in 2001. We are not philanthropists or inspirational speakers. But I think what we are trying to understand is the tragic and tragic things in life. This is part of our life as an artist. “