De Imitatione Christi

(strange, this)

   You held up a stage coach in the rain
   And I'm doing the same
   Saw you hanging from a tree
   And I made believe it was me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuV3ElYHYe4&NR=1

The singing is amateurish beyond calculation.  Yet -- judge not lest ye be judged -- suffer little children to come unto Me !  Suddenly it is as if she is your very own daughter -- your heart goes out.

[Update June 2013]  The conspiracy of gray-faced deatheaters now blocks this video, with this note:  "Not available in your country."  What -- North Korea?  No, America.
[To view it, use an anonymizer, like TOR.]

-- OK no worries, here's another post of the same thing ("I'm Sticking With You", by the Velvet Underground).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5je_eK0V1w

~     ~      ~

And this -- as simple as can be, in singing, tune, and instrumentation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqqt0vtYT5s&NR=1

("Juno" soundtrack; sung by Kimya Dawson.)
Complication comes in only later in the song, when it becomes a round.  And yet.... this canon-form we learn by kindergarten, with "Row, Row, Row Your Boat".   Elementary in each part, yet as a whole, giving even young children a glimpse of the infinite.

Musical/Emotional Minimalism

After taking in half a dozen renditions of the Rondo alla Turca by celebrated pianists, I hit upon this one, performed  -- if that is the right word -- “put forth”, perhaps -- by a computer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCSevzJQ2-Y&feature=related

Surprisingly, it has something valid and additional to offer. Just as a structure, this is not minimalist -- all the notes are there.  But it deftly removes the layer of human emotion.

No doubt much of the early keyboard music would pass over pretty well on MIDI -- sort of a gussied-up player piano.  After all, the limitations of the harpsichord  filter out a lot of human expression.   But surely very little thereafter, even from the purely piano literature.   To include the lovely and emotionally varied first movement of Mozart’s Sonata in A.  (The second movement, by contrast, though I kind of like it, always struck me as opaque and rather inhuman.  It perhaps were best transformed by an autist or extraterrestrial.)

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Yet more minimalist, in that strictly analytical:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mYfltBwrNY&feature=related

“Für Elise” was the first piece I learned -- indeed, I took up piano (albeit briefly) as an adult, in large part  lured on  by this.   Yet I didn’t quite realize what I was playing.  The pictured keyboard is much more intuitive and immediate than the (late-learned) staves.

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Einstein, re Bach (his favorite composer):

Listen to his work, play it, love it, honor it … and otherwise shut up about it.

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Minimalism and the faux-naif:

Kimya Dawson’s “My Rollercoaster”, Juno version

(Yet not unrelated to Bach ...)

A-A-and... this:
http://www.youtube.com/user/coffeescup#p/u/8/-c_ba2VD-vM