Minimalism

In C, 1964: repetition and phase difference rebuild a tonal music.

Related

ContemporaryOstinatoPolyrhythm

Time and place

San Francisco, 1964, at the Tape Music Center. Terry Riley's In C was premiered, its fifty-three short patterns looped by any number of players; in the 1970s downtown New York became the home of minimalism.

What happened

The postwar avant-garde wrote music of growing complexity, asking players to face dense scores and uncertain instructions. Riley, Reich, Glass and La Monte Young went the other way: modal scales, short repeating patterns, a steady pulse and slow change. Reich let two identical tapes or two players drift apart until the phase difference itself became the structure; Glass layered patterns into long textures, letting listeners hear tiny shifts inside repetition.

What changed

Minimalism put listening back at the centre, so an audience could feel a process without a score. It took composers out of the concert hall into rock clubs, galleries, film and opera; Glass scored films, Reich's percussion works entered new-music ensembles, and Adams wrote minimalist language into symphonies. Repetition stopped being laziness and became a form that could carry time and feeling.

Listen to the turn

In C lets any ensemble enter through its fifty-three patterns, the whole forming without a conductor. Reich's Six Marimbas layers the same pattern out of alignment, the phase difference giving simple material a complex shadow. Glass's Dead Things, written for film, carries minimalist language into narrative, where repetition holds emotion and image.

Related

This turn belongs to Contemporary; see Ostinato and Polyrhythm.

Sources

• Potter, Four Musical Minimalists（Cambridge, 2000），用于核对赖利、赖希、格拉斯与扬的创作
• Grove Music Online 的 Minimalism 条目，用于交叉核对首演与年代

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.