The concept of "Minimalism" in music was only named as such in the late 1960s, but its roots go further back, arguably to the late 19th-century work of Erik Satie. Minimalist music is generally typified by its challenging characteristics, such as the use of silence and repetition, or "looping," of specific phrases at varying time intervals. A minimalist composer might also deliberately restrict the tonal range of the piece, use drones or employ an extremely slow tempo. Modern forms of electronic dance music such as techno owe much to the minimalist school of composition.
Pre-Minimalism: Anton Webern and Serialism
Anton Webern (1883-1945) composed short pieces using Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone technique, whereby all 12 notes on the chromatic scale are treated as equally as possible. He employed a "serialist" technique, repeating specific patterns throughout his compositions. A musical "series" is a specific set or row of notes. Webern focused on the notes' mathematical relationship, rather than their relationship in terms of key. Such repetition became a key element in the minimalist compositions that would follow later in the 20th century, although major minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass would also bring widely varying influences into play.
Philip Glass
Philip Glass (1937- ) learned Schoenberg's 12-tone technique at university, but his early career was heavily influenced by eastern music and he spent time researching in India and North Africa. Glass composed music which featured repeated musical "cells" which would gradually vary, for example by the addition or subtraction of a note. He tended to write pieces for small ensembles, especially for vocalists, organists and wind instruments. Glass has said that he prefers the term "music with repetitive structures" to "minimalism" when describing the majority of his output.
Steve Reich
Steve Reich (1936- ) has incorporated elements of rock, jazz and non-Western music into his work, having studied drumming in Ghana, Indonesian music at the American Society for Eastern Arts and cantillation (traditional chanting) in Jerusalem. Reich's music tends to feature a hypnotic, rhythmic "pulse." He pioneered the use of tape loops, by using two identical tape recordings which were played together at slightly different speeds. Although the two recordings would start identically, they would gradually move out of phase with each other, creating unfamiliar harmonies and rhythms. Reich also used this technique with instruments for "Piano Phase" and "Violin Phase" (both 1967).
John Adams
John Adams (1947- ) said in 2006 that minimalist music must contain "a perceptible pulse, emphatic tonality within a relatively slow harmonic rhythm and a repetition of small cells or motifs, which over time create larger architectonic structures." Rapid harmonic or rhythmic changes are out, as is "the rhetoric of closure", as a minimalist piece is more likely to stop abruptly than to use a traditional ending. In his 1977 piece "Phrygian Gates," Adams limited himself to the Phrygian and Lydian modes; this restriction allowed him to explore the harmonic possibilities of these scales.
