In art, less is often more. Music in particular can be at its most transcendent, fascinating, beautiful and rewarding when it doesn’t over-adorn or over complicate. Over two episodes, broadcaster Stuart Maconie explores the ways composers have found inspiration in the principles of simplicity. Bearing in mind that simplicity is not the same as simple, simplified or simplistic, Stuart examines how the simplest seeming music is often underpinned by rigorous philosophy, new ideas or conceptual thought.

The first episode focuses on simplicity in its most obvious form, in small and sparse sonic worlds. “I have nothing to say and I am saying it” said John Cage of his music, a little disingenuously. But Cage’s ideas have forged a distinctly modernist aesthetic. There is a powerful mystery and charge that comes from an absence of exposition and explanation. It is the mystery that comes when much is left out. This ethos can be heard in the static, lengthy beauty of Morton Feldman’s string quartets, Eliane Radigue’s suite Occam’s Ocean, which focuses on the simplest and gentlest factors in creating sound, and the chilly beauty of the modern Wandelweiser group of composers.

Produced by Rebecca Gaskell
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3 Show less