"Maximizing the Audience"

Last week, when I reorganized my music collection, I found back a cd "Maximizing the Audience" composed by Wim Mertens. The opinions are divided on the Flemish composer Wim Mertens. When I heard it the first time I was amazed, but when I let my colleagues hear, they said that it was a little too weird. Some of my friends found the music nice, but not too impressive, while I spend a whole weekend to listen and still don't know why it touched me that much.

Wim Mertens born Neerpelt, Belgium, May 14, 1953 is a Flemish Belgian composer, countertenor vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and musicologist. Mertens studied social and political science at the University of Leuven (graduating in 1975) and musicology at Ghent University; he also studied music theory and piano at the Royal Conservatories of Ghent and Brussels. Known primarily as a composer since the early 1980s, Mertens is best known for his opus "Struggle for Pleasure". He is also well known for his piece "Maximizing the Audience", which was composed for Jan Fabre's play The Power of Theatrical Madness, which premiered in 1984 in Venice, Italy.














Mertens never liked his music to be defined as "minimalist". "In the Sixties and in the Seventies, the Minimalism was an alternative to the historical avantgarde, but then people like Glass and Reich were trapped into their academic stiffness. The Minimalism is only the starting point of my job".

The Minimalism was born during the Seventies, with Philip Glass' works. His intuitions marked the musical scenes since his first tour in Europe. Glass had already met David Bowie and Brian Eno after a ceremony in the Royal Academy of Music of London in 1971. In Germany Glass had dealt with avantgarde bands and electronic pioneers like Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. And some echoes of his style could be found even in the disco-music songs written by Giorgio Moroder for Donna Summer and in British synth-pop bands like Human League. But the disciples of Glass were mainly the "new wave" composers, Michael Nyman, Lost Jockey, Regular Music, Soft Verdict and other artists of music labels like the Factory and the Belgian Disques du Crépuscule.

If you not like, than you can always skip to the next song.