Minimal Music Guide: Sounds and History of Minimalist Music

Minimal music, or minimalist music, is a subgenre of classical music associated with American composers like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young. Several prominent minimalist composers also hail from Europe, including the Dutch Louis Andriessen and British composers Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman.

The minimalist aesthetic relies on repetition, subtle rhythmic changes, and selective harmonic dissonance that resolves over the course of a movement. Many minimalist pieces incorporate steady pulses, drones, phasing tape loops, and African and Indian rhythmic concepts. Still, most minimal music is played using standard instruments from the classical tradition, including piano, violin, viola, cello, bass, clarinet, flute, vocals, and various percussion instruments.

The minimalist movement began in New York's avant-garde classical scene in the 1960s. It quickly expanded to the San Francisco Bay Area, and over the course of the twentieth century, spread to concert houses and music academies throughout the world.

• The first minimalist composer: American composer La Monte Young frequently claims credit as the first minimalist composer. His Trio for Strings (1958) and The Well-Tuned Piano (1964) experiment with droning textures and slow harmonic progressions. Young closely associated himself with the Fluxus movement, which embraced avant-garde expression in music and visual arts. He was heavily influenced by radical classical composer John Cage and Cage's frequent collaborator, David Tudor. Young incorporated many of Cage's performance aesthetics.
• Minimalism spreads: While Young is often considered the first true minimalist, the movement quickly grew beyond him. In the San Francisco Bay Area, pianist and composer Terry Riley wrote his seminal In C in 1960. The group improvisational work would serve as a template for the possibilities of minimalist music.
• Steve Reich’s influence: One of Riley's early collaborators was Steve Reich, a New Yorker who studied at the Juilliard School and also spent time at Mills College in Oakland, California (where he encountered Riley). Reich also volunteered at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which advocated for the creation of musical compositions using magnetic tape recordings. Reich’s first true minimalist composition, It's Gonna Rain, is based on a heavily manipulated tape recording of a sermon from well-known San Francisco street preacher Brother Walter. Eventually Reich returned to New York where he produced his most enduring works, including Music For 18 Musicians, Different Trains, and Four Organs.
• Introducing Philip Glass: Philip Glass, a classmate of Reich's at Juilliard, also had an impact on minimalist music. Glass studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, which he considered the most formative part of his education. With Boulanger, Glass focused heavily on the works of J.S. Bach, which would greatly influence his approach to form and harmony.
• Integrating Eastern music: In 1966, Philip Glass made the first of his many trips to India. Before long, the Hindustani classical music of northern India would be as much an influence on him as Bach and Mozart. Glass's professional breakthrough was his opera, Einstein on the Beach, co-conceived with director Robert Wilson. Glass produced numerous operas, film scores, string quartets, and orchestral pieces that explored various timbres and tonalities.
• Beyond Young, Riley, Reich, and Glass: Numerous composers have explored minimalism while remaining tied to more traditional classical music. John Adams, Henryk Górecki, and Arvo Pärt all have works that fit the qualities of minimalism while showing allegiance to the tonal music and traditional forms that have guided much of classical music.

Some of these later composers, such as John Adams and his fellow American Pauline Oliveros, are considered leaders of "postminimalism." This style merges classic minimalism with new music concepts.

Minimalist music varies by composer and by time period, but several characteristics help define the genre:

1. 1. Repetition with gradual changes: Many minimalist compositions feature repeated phrases that very gradually change by adding extra beats, altering durations, or changing single notes.
2. 2. Phasing: Phasing is based on the classical tradition of the canon, where multiple performances of the same line of music played at different start times. Steve Reich is a notable master of phasing, which can be heard in works like Piano Phase, Violin Phase, and It's Gonna Rain.
3. 3. Standard classical instrumentation mixed with technology: Although many minimalist pieces radically differ from traditional classical music, most are based in classical instrumentation, with strings, woodwinds, and voices playing major roles. Saxophones and electric guitars often make appearances; electronic devices, such as tape machines and samplers, are occasionally added to the mix. Twenty-first century postminimalist composers will often include technological flourishes to distinguish their music from the minimalism of the 1960s.
4. 4. Additive composition: Minimalist composers often use an additive composition technique, where musical lines constantly repeat, as if played on a loop. To each "loop," additional lines are added, creating a dense tapestry of consonant music. This has been an element of minimalism since Terry Riley's In C.
5. 5. Drones: The original minimalist La Monte Young made sustained drones a key part of his music. Subsequent minimalists have also embraced this element. This is partly due to the influence of Young and partly because of the influence of Hindustani classical music and Indian ragas.

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