"Totalism" and/or Postmodernism

It is fruitless to recount how many times we have discussed the unwillingness and resistance of prominent Minimalist and Impressionist composers, to name a few types, to categorization.  For example, composers such as Steve Reich, LaMonte Young, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel have struggled against labels thrust upon them by critics or musicologists.  Seemingly in contrast, the group of New York avant-garde composers consisting of Mikel Rouse, Kyle Gann, Michael Gordon, and John Luther Adams have emerged as a self-branded group of "totalists."  Notably, it is Kyle Gann who wrote both the textbook chapter on Totalism and the official Grove Music Dictionary article.  Seemingly, this group aims to differentiate themselves from the minimalists with their aim to create both surface rhythmic vitality and a complex blanket of background activity.

I feel like I haven't listened to music that strikes me as odd or weird for years (my brain is warped maybe?), but while listening to Michael Gordon's piece "Four Kings Fight Five" I kept thinking, "This is really strange music.  I've never heard anything like this before."  Surely this feeling of oddity was compounded by the somewhat inadvertent realization that for the first time in a music history course, we were listening to a genre of music uniquely belonging to the generation of my parents.  The prevailing sense of metric struggle, pseudo rap/spoken lyrics in "Dennis Cleveland" by Mikel Rouse, and tonally fresh timbre created by the oboe, clarinet, percussion, electric guitar, two violins and viola in "Four Kings Fight Five"somewhat creepily reminded me of the popular music from the 1980s and 1990s.  The timbre achieved by Gordon in "Four Kings Fight Five" by combining oboe, clarinet, percussion, electric guitar, two violins and viola proved to be a stunning combination.  My ears tricked, I was convinced that the oboe had transformed into a cyborg or alien computer thrust upon the earth to subjugate my brain with its endless beeping and other electronica effects.  To hear a genuine example where the acoustic realm portrayed the complexity of the Age of the Computer was simultaneously gratifying, impressive, and difficult to sit through.

However, I was very surprised to hear the huge chasm of contrast when I switched to John Luther Adams' "Dream in White on White" and Larry Polanski's "Lonesome Road."  How could we have teleported to such a different sonic universe, but still read about it in the same chapter as the other self-proclaimed Totalists?  "Dream in White on White" presents a shimmering, high-range frequency, glistening world of frigid flatness with horizontal layers of charcoal, gray, blue, and white.  Ultimately I decided that this piece could fit into the Totalists' definition if the words "rhythm" were replaced with "overtones."  John Luther Adams creates a sound palette that at first listen seems light, subdued, but then the listen gradually realizes that the composer is presenting a tonal concept with great depth of color and overtones from the harmonic series.  Perhaps this composer ought to fall more in line with the Postmodernists or even Neo-Romantics since his music does carry a strong programmatic element.