Minimal music

Minimal music, often called minimalism, is a type of art music built from very limited musical materials. Its key traits include repeating patterns or pulses, steady drones, consonant harmonies, and the constant repetition of short phrases or units. Techniques like phase shifting (creating phase music) or strict rule-based processes (process music) are common. The music avoids telling a story, building toward a climax, or representing anything outside itself; instead, it draws attention to the act of listening by focusing on the music’s own internal workings.

This approach began on the U.S. West Coast in the late 1950s and early 1960s, especially in the Bay Area, where composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich were living and studying. When these three moved to the East Coast, their work became part of New York’s Downtown music scene in the mid-1960s, where it was first seen as experimental music under the name New York Hypnotic School. In the Western classical tradition, Moondog, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass are credited as early developers of minimalist techniques. Other American pioneers include John Adams, Dennis Johnson, Terry Jennings, Richard Maxfield, Pauline Oliveros, Phill Niblock, and James Tenney. In Europe, minimalist traits appear in the music of Louis Andriessen, Karel Goeyvaerts, Michael Nyman, Howard Skempton, Éliane Radigue, Gavin Bryars, Steve Martland, Peter Michael Hamel, Henryk Górecki, Arvo Pärt, and John Tavener.

No one knows exactly where the term "minimal music" came from. Steve Reich thinks Michael Nyman coined it—a view shared by scholars Jonathan Bernard and Dan Warburton. Philip Glass, however, believes Tom Johnson came up with the phrase.

The word "minimal" was possibly first used about music in 1968 by Michael Nyman, who described a recipe for a successful "minimal-music" event based on a performance by Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik at the ICA, which included Henning Christiansen’s *Springen* and several unnamed performance-art pieces. Nyman later expanded his definition in his 1974 book *Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond*. Tom Johnson, one of the few composers who called himself a minimalist, also claims to have been the first to use the word as a critic for *The Village Voice*. He defined minimalism broadly: any music working with limited materials—pieces using only a few notes, a few words of text, or very restricted instruments like antique cymbals, bicycle wheels, or whiskey glasses; pieces that sustain one electronic rumble for a long time; pieces made only from recordings of rivers; pieces that move in endless circles; pieces that create an unmoving wall of saxophone sound; pieces that shift gradually from one music to another over a very long time; pieces that allow all pitches between C and D; pieces that slow the tempo to two or three notes per minute.

As early as 1965, art historian Barbara Rose had called La Monte Young’s *Dream Music*, Morton Feldman’s soft dynamics, and various unnamed composers—all "to a greater or lesser degree, indebted to John Cage"—examples of "minimal art," but she did not use the phrase "minimal music."

The most prominent minimalist composers are La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Adams, and Louis Andriessen. Others associated with the approach include Terry Jennings, Gavin Bryars, Tom Johnson, Michael Nyman, Michael Parsons, Howard Skempton, Dave Smith, James Tenney, and John White. Among African-American composers, the minimalist aesthetic was embraced by jazz musician John Lewis and multidisciplinary artist Julius Eastman.

The early works of Glass and Reich are spare, with little decoration on the main theme. These pieces were written for small ensembles that the composers often played in. Glass’s groups used organs, winds (especially saxophones), and vocalists, while Reich’s focused more on mallet and percussion instruments. Most of Adams’s works are for traditional classical instruments, including full orchestra, string quartet, and solo piano.

Reich and Glass’s music initially received sponsorship from art galleries and museums, often presented alongside visual-art minimalists like Robert Morris (with Glass) and Richard Serra, Bruce Nauman, and filmmaker Michael Snow (who performed in Reich’s pieces).

Moondog’s music from the 1940s and 1950s—built on counterpoint that developed statically over steady pulses in unusual time signatures—influenced both Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Glass has said that he and Reich took Moondog’s work "very seriously and understood and appreciated it much more than what we were exposed to at Juilliard."

La Monte Young’s 1958 composition *Trio for Strings*, made almost entirely of long tones and rests, is often described as an origin point for minimalist music. One of the earliest minimalist pieces was Dennis Johnson’s *November*, written in 1959. This solo piano work lasted about six hours and showed many features that would later be linked to minimalism.