Min Oh: Movement as Material
By Andy St. Louis
When American composer John Cage disrupted the historical discourse of Western music in the 20th century by challenging basic assumptions of composition and performance, he precipitated a fundamental reconsideration of musical linguistics. One pillar of his legacy is an understanding of music not as a language of tonal harmony, but of configurations of sounds generated through specific movements of the performer’s body. As such, the work of contemporary composers can be seen as designing sequences of movements that yield patterns of sound—at least, that’s the way that Min Oh thinks about it.