MINIMALIST MUSIC

'Minimalist music' is an originally American genre of experimental or Downtown music named in the 1960s based mostly in consonant harmony, steady pulse (if not immobile drones), stasis and slow transformation, and often reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units such as figures, motifs, and cells. Starting in the early 1960s as a scruffy underground scene in San Francisco alternative spaces and New York lofts, minimalism spread to become the most popular experimental music style of the late 20th century. The movement originally involved dozens of composers, although only four - Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and, less visibly if more seminally, La Monte Young - emerged to become publicly associated with it in America. In Europe, its chief exponents were Louis Andriessen, Karel Goeyvaerts, Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars, Steve Martland, Henryk Górecki, Arvo Pärt, and John Tavener. Its emphasis on accessibility, periodic rhythm, consonance, and pleasant and often even pretty sonorities drew millions of fans, especially among pop-music lovers, who had turned away from modern music, while simultaneously enraging many classical and academic musicians who saw it as a cheap throwback to a kind of mindless simplicity. The term ''minimalist music'' is derived from the concept of minimalism, which was earlier applied to the visual arts. For some of the music, especially that which transforms itself according to strict rules, the term ''process music'' has also been used.

Contents

Brief history

Early development

Minimalist style in music

Critical reception of minimalism

Minimalist composers

Notes

See also

Sources

Further reading

External links

Brief history

The word "minimalism" was first used in relation to music in 1968 by Michael Nyman in a review of Cornelius Cardew's piece ''The Great Digest''. Nyman later expanded his definition of minimalism in music in his 1974 book ''Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond''. Tom Johnson, one of the few composers to self-identify as minimalist, also claims to have been first to use the word as new music critic for ''The Village Voice''. He describes "minimalism" (1989, 5):

The idea of minimalism is much larger than most people realize. It includes, by definition, any music that works with limited or minimal materials: pieces that use only a few notes, pieces that use only a few words of text, or pieces written for very limited instruments, such as antique cymbals, bicycle wheels, or whisky glasses. It includes pieces that sustain one basic electronic rumble for a long time. It includes pieces made exclusively from recordings of rivers and streams. It includes pieces that move in endless circles. It includes pieces that set up an unmoving wall of saxophone sound. It includes pieces that take a very long time to move gradually from one kind of music to another kind. It includes pieces that permit all possible pitches, as long as they fall between C and D. It includes pieces that slow the tempo down to two or three notes per minute.

Many people, especially popular music fans, find minimalist music less difficult music to listen to than serialism and other avant-garde classical music. For some, especially romantic and earlier music fans, it is easy music to find annoying, due to the repetition, perceived lack of complexity, or rigidity of process music. The most prominent minimalist composers are John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley; while the less well known La Monte Young is generally credited as the "father" of minimalism. Female composers such as Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, Maryanne Amacher and Laurie Spiegel have been said to have been as innovative as the "big four" minimalist composers.
There is much variety in the music called minimal, from instrumentation to structure to technique. The early compositions of Glass and Reich tended to be very austere, with little embellishment on the principal theme, and written for small instrumental ensembles (of which the composers were members), made up, in Glass's case, of organs, winds—particularly saxophones—and vocalists, in Reich's case with more emphasis on mallet and percussion instruments. (These works are scored for any combination of such instruments: one piece by Reich, the aptly named ''Six Pianos'', is scored just so.) Adams' works have most often been written for more traditional classical forces: orchestra, string quartet, even solo piano. (Though all four major minimalists have written symphonies and quartets, etc., none have written them so exclusively as Adams.) His works tend also to be much more approachable for the classical ear; there is a minimalist core to his work, but there is also a more traditional philosophy and stylistic diversity behind his compositions, and a phrase in an Adams work is less likely to stay unchanged and in the same instrument(s) for a long time than in would be in another minimalist's work. Some of Adams' orchestral works have been described as "maximalist", although this is not a word that would be widely recognized by reviewers as having a consistent meaning. (Serialist Charles Wuorinen, for example, self-identifies as a maximalist.)
Relevance of minimalist music's relation to the eponymous art and sculpture movement is often disputed, but they both share a predilection for simple, obvious forms, strict geometry, and the avoidance of expressive decoration. The music of Reich and Glass drew early sponsorship from art galleries and museums, presented in conjunction with visual-art minimalists like Sol LeWitt. Nevertheless, most of the minimalist composers have disavowed the term, most vociferously Glass, who has reportedly said, "That word should be stamped out!" Young allows himself to be called "the father of minimalism," and otherwise perhaps only Tom Johnson has proudly self-applied the term.
The use of phase techniques and intense repetition may, in some cases, be seen as a broadening of the harmonic pallett through microtones (as in the music of Young, Riley, Oliveros and others), related to European spectral composers such as Scelsi and Dumitrescu. American and Japanese noise musicians often refer to this end of minimalism as an antecedent.

Early development

Musical minimalism had its origins in both conceptualism and twelve-tone music. The first identifiably minimalist work is the 1958 String Trio by La Monte Young. The piece is written using twelve-tone technique, but the notes are extended to tremendous length; the first note is sustained (at notated tempo) for four minutes and 33 seconds. Young had been influenced not only by the verbal-direction-based conceptual works of John Cage, but by his Idaho upbringing, which inspired an affection for the wind howling through the chinks in the log cabin in which he was raised. Subsequent to the String Trio, he began making other musical works based on long drones and harmonics played above them, culminating in his improvisation group The Theater of Eternal Music.
Other composers picked up on Young's idea, including the short-lived Terry Jennings, who in 1960 wrote a 28-minute string quartet containing only 43 notes. Also in 1960, Terry Riley wrote a string quartet in pure, ininflected C major; this was the work that brought to minimalism the idea of motionless tonality. In 1963 Riley made two electronic works using tape delay, ''Mescalin Mix'' and ''The Gift'', which injected into minimalism the idea of repetition. As he later said,

I think I was noticing that things didn’t sound the same when you heard them more than once. And the more you heard them, the more different they did sound. Even though something was staying the same, it was changing.... In those days the first psychedelic experiences were starting to happen in America, and that was changing our concept of how time passes....

Next, Riley's 1964 masterpiece In C made persuasively engaging textures from repeated phrases in performance. The work, scored for any group of instruments and fun and relatively easy to bring to performance, has been widely imitated. Steve Reich was one of the performers at the première of ''In C'', and in 1965 and '66 he produced three works—''It's Gonna Rain'' and ''Come Out'' for tape, and ''Piano Phase'' for live performers—that introduced the idea of phase-shifting, i.e., allowing two nearly identical phrases or sound samples at slightly differing lengths or speeds to repeat and slowly go out of phase with each other. Starting in 1968 with ''1 + 1'', Philip Glass wrote a series of works that incorporated additive process (form based on sequences such as 1, 1 2, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 4) into the repertoire of minimalist techniques; these works included ''Two Pages'', ''Music in Fifths'', ''Music in Contrary Motion'', and others. By this point, the minimalist style was in full swing.
Obituaries for the movement started being issued at least by 1975, and have been pronounced periodically ever since. It has been argued that the classic phase of minimalism extended to the late 1970s, with works like Glass's ''Einstein on the Beach'' (1976) and Reich's ''Eight Lines'' and ''Music for 18 Musicians''. After 1980, they (the style's two most visible proponents) began writing orchestra music and moving in directions that were no longer so structuralist. However, minimalism developed, evolved, and diffracted into, and was absorbed into, a number of related styles, including postminimalism, totalism, techno, electronica, and others.

Minimalist style in music

Kyle Gann has identified 9 traits common in minimalist music, none of them present in all pertinent examples, but together defining the historical outlines of the style:^[1]
#Static harmony (a tendency to stay on one chord, or to move back and forth among a small repertoire of chords);
#Repetition of brief motives (the most widely recognized minimalist stereotype, though absent from Young's sine-tone installations, Tony Conrad's violin improvisations, Jon Gibson's permutational pieces, Phill Niblock's drone works, and other seminal examples of the style)
#Algorithmic, linear, geometric, or gradual processes (such as pattern augmentation by 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, 1+2+3+4 and so on, systematic permutation of the type Jon Gibson used, or the phase-shifting or repeating loops of Reich's 1960s works)
#A steady beat (often motoric, but sometimes simply restricted to a small repertoire of durations)
#Static instrumentation (everyone playing all the time, an ensemble concept in which everyone participates equally)
#"Metamusic" (unplanned acoustic details that arise or are perceived as a side effect of strictly carried-out processes, as in Reich's ''Drumming'' and ''Octet'')
#Pure tuning, or just intonation (common in the early minimalism of Young, Conrad, Niblock, and Riley but abandoned in the more public Reich/Glass practice)
#Influence of non-Western musics or cultures (Young, Riley, and Glass were inspired by Indian classical music, Reich studied African drumming)
#Perhaps most important, audible structure
Some of these traits have precedents in the history of European music—Richard Wagner, for instance, opened his opera Das Rheingold with several minutes of static tonality on an E-flat chord, with a linear crescendo of figurations.
Consonant harmony is a feature much noted: it means the use of intervals which in a tonal context would be considered to be "stable", that is the form to which other chords are resolved by voice leading. In minimalism this function of stability is ignored.
Another trait of the minimalist movement established at an early point in time is the use of ''phase'' in consonant context to provide variety. A famous example is Terry Riley's ''In C'' which gives musicians fragments of music which they are to play at their own pace until they stop. The resulting texture varies with the different choices that performers make.
This means that the "texture" of much minimalist music is based on canonic imitation, exact repetitions of the same material, offset in time. Famous pieces that use this technique are the ''number'' section of Glass' ''Einstein on the Beach'' and Adams' ''Shaker Loops''.
Over time mimimalist composers adopted more and more chromatic material for repetition, for example Philip Glass' ''Symphony No. 2'', and the operas of John Adams. There was also an increasing movement to incorporate found sounds, tape, electric or electronic sources of music. Minimalism in classical music often cross fertilizes with popular experimental music, such as the work of Brian Eno and Mike Oldfield, as well as electronica and house, where DJs layer different recordings on top of each other without regard for their source.
The development of minimalist music proceeds as a movement which was consciously aware of its being a post-serialist movement in music, drawing from the use of silence and layering in Cage, but seeking a more melodic basis for its materials. Many of the individual traits of minimalist music occur in serial works of the same period, for example the use of layering in Berio's ''Sinfonia'', or the long suspended tones of Morton Feldman.
These traits were also the feature of composers who rejected 20th century chromatic harmony for other reasons, often liturgical or religious. These composers often went back to Medieval and early Renaissance harmony and practice more deliberately, producing works which had more formally worked out canonic imitation in a modal rather than tonal context. An early exponent here was the once popular American Alan Hovhaness (in his works of the 1940s and 50s), but more recently Arvo Pärt is one who has gained a wide following and had numerous recordings and performances of his work.
Minimalism is sometimes associated with an ideology that justifies the moving away from the greater complexity of modernism by arguing from the point of view of postmodernism. Specifically, postmodernism states that progress in music is illusory, and therefore there is no need to have ever more advanced and complex systems of composing, that the purpose of minimalist music is repose, rather than "western" style development, and that minimalism embodies more "eastern" values of meditation, trance and concentration. Philip Glass specifically argues that there has been a disintegration of the concept of "high" and "low" music, and that music of this movement is important because it allows incorporation of, and dialog with, popular styles in a way that previous music did not. These arguments are far from universal among listeners, composers and performers of minimalist music, but are commonly cited in the struggles for performance, attention and acceptance of minimalist music.
Minimalist music is frequently used in movie scores and other media to provide a backdrop or mood for a particular scene or opening, or as an episode in a score. It has been adopted for sections of work by composers from other styles, including the late work of Lukas Foss.
There is a branch of British minimalism called systems music in which the note-to-note procedure is determined numerically. The term was used informally as a term for all minimalism in the 1980s (due to Michael Nyman's popularity).

Critical reception of minimalism

Minimalist music has been controversial from its inception, and criticisms have been levelled from two other viewpoints specifically.
The first set of criticisms are from proponents of musical modernism who regard minimalism as a betrayal of progress, a banalization of modernity and backsliding into kitsch. They argue that minimalism represents a surrender of "high" art to the values of "popular" art. These critiques mirror other "late modern" critiques of postmodernity. Namely, there is no such thing, merely a backsliding counter-enlightenment impulse that seeks the lowest common denominator rather than pursuing the more rigorous, and important, project of advancing human knowledge and good.
The second set of criticisms is often levelled by those who are adherents of what may be called more "traditional" forms of Western classical music, particularly as they had evolved through the 19th century. They criticise minimalism for being repetitive, boring, without movement, and shallow. There have been frequent jokes whose punchline involves repeating the name of a minimalist composer over and over again, with Philip Glass being a common target. In their view, this music goes nowhere, and lacks intrinsic interest.
Ian MacDonald (MacDonald 2003) sums up a common, classical-music traditionalist view that minimalism is the passionless, sexless and emotionally blank soundtrack of the Machine Age, its utopian selfishness no more than an expression of human passivity in the face of mass-production and The Bomb. A pulse-rhythm is an artificial substitute for the energy of conviction and its 'effects' due not to any effort from artist or audience, but to a negative process of deliberate self-denial. As a music without focus or hierarchy, it is also without goal or struggle, as inert as the pre-planned corporate lifestyle for which it is the perfect accompaniment.
On the other hand, Kyle Gann has argued that minimalism represented a predictable return to simplicity after the development of an earlier style had run its course to an extreme and unsurpassable complexity.^[2] Parallels include the advent of the simple Baroque continuo style following elaborate Renaissance polyphony and the simple early classical symphony following Bach’s monumental advances in Baroque counterpoint. In addition, critics have often overstated the simplicity of even early minimalism. Michael Nyman has pointed out that much of the charm of Steve Reich’s early music had to do with perceptual phenomena that were not actually played, but resulted from subtleties in the phase-shifting process.^[3] He quotes Reich to the effect that although

everyone hears what is gradually happening in a musical process there are still enough mysteries to satisfy all. These mysteries are the impersonal, unintended, psycho-acoustic by-products of the intended process.

Something similar could be said of the musics of Phill Niblock and Tony Conrad, whose minimalism does not at all fit the Glass/Reich stereotype of diatonic scale and steady pulse. Gann has further argued that the development of music represented by serialism was a one-sided development that focused on analytical elements and structural innovations often easier to identify in the score than to hear. In this respect, minimalism offered a complementary return to more subtle acoustical and perceptual phenomena. In Gann's further analysis, during the 1980s minimalism evolved into less strict, more complex styles such as postminimalism and totalism, breaking out of the strongly framed repetition and stasis of early minimalism, and enriching it with a confluence of other rhythmic and structural influences.^[4]

Minimalist composers

Minimalist composers include:

★ Louis Andriessen (born in the Netherlands)

★ David Behrman (born in Austria)

★ Barbara Benary (born in the United States of America)

★ David Borden (born in the United States of America) (and his ensemble Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company)

★ Gavin Bryars (born in the UK)

★ Tony Conrad (born in the United States of America)

★ Julius Eastman (born and died in the United States of America)

★ Frans Geysen (born in Belgium)

★ Jon Gibson (born in the United States of America)

★ Philip Glass (born in the United States of America)

★ Karel Goeyvaerts (born and died in Belgium)

★ Christopher Hobbs (born in the UK)

★ Terry Jennings (born in the United States of America)

★ Douglas Leedy (born in the United States of America)

★ Richard Maxfield (born and died in the United States of America)

★ Angus MacLise (born in the United States of America, died in Kathmandu)

★ Robert Moran (born in the United States of America)

★ Phill Niblock (born in the United States of America)

★ Michael Nyman (born in the UK)

★ Pauline Oliveros (born in the United States of America)

★ Mike Oldfield (born in the UK)

★ Charlemagne Palestine (born in the United States of America)

★ Steve Reich (born in the United States of America)

★ Terry Riley (born in the United States of America)

★ Hugh Shrapnel (born in the UK)

★ Howard Skempton (born in the UK)

★ Dave Smith (born in the UK)

★ Ann Southam (born in Canada)

★ Yoshi Wada (born in Japan)

★ John White (born in the UK)

★ La Monte Young (born in the United States of America)
Other more current minimalists include:

★ 'Australia'

★
★ Nigel Westlake

★
★ Robert Davidson

★ 'Belgium'

★
★ Wim Mertens

★ 'Canada'

★
★ Peter Hannan

★ 'Estonia'

★
★ Arvo Pärt

★ 'Finland'

★
★ Erkki Salmenhaara

★ 'France'

★
★ Yann Tiersen

★ 'Germany'

★
★ Peter Michael Hamel

★
★ Hauke Harder

★
★ Matthias Maute

★
★ Hans Otte

★
★ Ernstalbrecht Stiebler

★
★ Harald Weiss

★ 'Hungary'

★
★ Zoltán Jeney

★
★ László Melis

★
★ László Sáry

★
★ László Vidovszky

★ 'Italy'

★
★ Fulvio Caldini

★
★ Ludovico Einaudi

★
★ Giovanni Sollima

★
★ Gianmartino Durighello

★ 'Japan'

★
★ Jo Kondo

★
★ Yoshi Wada (based in the United States)

★ 'Latvia'

★
★ Armands Strazds

★ 'Netherlands'

★
★ Simeon ten Holt

★ 'Portugal'

★
★ David Maranha

★
★ Osso Exótico

★
★ Ernesto Rodrigues

★
★ Telectu

★
★ Mossad Electronics

★ 'Serbia and Montenegro'

★
★ Vladimir Tošić

★ 'United Kingdom'

★
★ Joe Cutler

★
★ Bob Dickinson

★
★ Orlando Gough

★
★ Steve Martland

★
★ Andrew Poppy

★
★ Daniel Patrick Quinn

★
★ Malcolm Rycraft

★ 'United States'

★
★ John Adams

★
★ John Luther Adams

★
★ Glenn Branca

★
★ Harold Budd

★
★ Rhys Chatham (based in France)

★
★ Philip Corner (based in Italy)

★
★ DAC Crowell

★
★ Kurt Doles

★
★ Arnold Dreyblatt (based in Germany)

★
★ Daniel Goode

★
★ Tom Johnson (based in France)

★
★ Ingram Marshall

★
★ Meredith Monk

★
★ Tim Risher

★
★ Frederic Rzewski

★
★ Wayne Siegel (based in Denmark)
A number of composers showing a distinctly religious influence have been labeled the "mystic minimalists", or "holy minimalists":

★ Henryk Górecki

★ Alan Hovhaness (the earliest mystic minimalist)

★ Hans Otte

★ Arvo Pärt

★ John Tavener

★ Peteris Vasks

★ Giya Kancheli
Other composers whose works have been described as precedents to minimalism include:

★ Jakob van Domselaer, whose early-20th century experiments in translating the theories of Piet Mondrian's De Stijl movement into music represent an early precedent to minimalist music.

★ Alexander Mosolov, whose orchestral composition ''Iron Foundry'' (1923) is made up of mechanical and repetitive patterns

★ George Antheil, whose 1924 ''Ballet Mecanique'' is characterized by much use of motoric and repetitive patterns, as well as an instrumentation made up of multiple player pianos and mallet percussion

★ Erik Satie, seen as a precursor of minimalism as in much of his music, for example his score for Francis Picabia's 1924 film ''Entr'acte'' which consists of phrases, many borrowed from bawdy popular songs, ordered seemingly arbitrarily and repetitiously, providing a rhythmic counterpoint to the film.

★ Colin McPhee, whose ''Tabuh-Tabuhan'' for two pianos and orchestra (1936) features the use of motoric, repetitive, pentatonic patterns drawn from the music of Bali (and featuring a large section of tuned percussion)

★ Carl Orff, who, particularly in his later theater works Antigone (1940-49) and Oedipus der Tyrann (1957-58), utilized instrumentations (six pianos and multiple xylophones, in imitation of gamelan music) and musical patterns (motoric, repetitive, triadic) reminiscent of the later music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass

★ Yves Klein, whose 1947 ''Monotone Symphony'' consisted of a single sustained chord, predating similar works by La Monte Young by several years.

★ Morton Feldman, whose works prominently feature some sort of repetition as well as a sparseness

★ Alvin Lucier, whose acoustical experiments demand a stripped-down musical surface to bring out details in the phenomena

Notes

1. Kyle Gann, "Minimal Music, Maximal Impact: Thankless Attempts at a Definition of Minimalism"
2. Kyle Gann, ‘’American Music in the Twentieth Century’’, pp. 184-5
3. Michael Nyman, ‘’Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond’’, pp. 133-4
4. Kyle Gann, "Minimal Music, Maximal Impact: Minimalism's Immediate Legacy: Postminimalism"

See also

★ List of minimalistic pieces

★ Post-minimalism

★ Process music

★ Repetitive music

Sources

★ Bernard, Jonathan W. 1993. "The Minimalist Aesthetic in the Plastic Arts and in Music". ''Perspectives of New Music'' 31, no. 1 (Winter): 86–132.

★ Bernard, Jonathan W. 2003. "Minimalism, Postminimalism, and the Resurgence of Tonality in Recent American Music". ''American Music'' 21, no. 1 (Spring): 112–33.

★ Cope, David (1997). ''Techniques of the Contemporary Composer'', p. 216. New York, New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0028647378.

★ Fink, Robert (2005). ''Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice''. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520240367. ISBN 0520245504.

★ Gann, Kyle (1997). ''American Music in the Twentieth Century''. Schirmer. ISBN 002864655X.

★ Gann, Kyle (1987). "Let X = X: Minimalism vs. Serialism." ''Village Voice'' (24 February): 76.

★ Gann, Kyle (2006). ''Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice''. University of California Press. ISBN 0520229827.

★ Gotte, Ulli (2000). ''Minimal Music: Geschichte, Asthetik, Umfeld''. Taschenbucher zur Musikwissenschaft, 138. Wilhelmshaven: Noetzel. ISBN 3795907772.

★ Johnson, Timothy A. 1994. "Minimalism: Aesthetic, Style, or Technique? " ''Musical Quarterly'' 78, no. 4 (Winter): 742–73.

★ Johnson, Tom (1989). ''The Voice of New Music: New York City 1972-1982 – A Collection of Articles Originally Published by the Village Voice''. Eindhoven, Netherlands: Het Apollohuis. ISBN 90-71638-09-X.

★ Linke, Ulrich (1997). ''Minimal Music: Dimensionen eines Begriffs''. Folkwang-Texte Bd. 13. Essen, Germany: Die blaue Eule. ISBN 3892068119.

★ Lovisa, Fabian R. (1996). ''Minimal-music: Entwicklung, Komponisten, Werke''. Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

★ MacDonald, Ian. (2003) "The People's Music". Pimlico Publishing, London. UK ISBN 1844130932.

★ Mertens, Wim. 1983. ''American Minimal Music: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass''. Translated by J. Hautekiet; preface by Michael Nyman. London: Kahn & Averill; New York: Alexander Broude. (Translation of ''Amerikaanse repetitieve muziek''.) ISBN 0900707763

★ Nyman, Michael, ''Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond'', 1974, Studio Vista ISBN 0289701821; reprinted 1999 by Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521653835.

★ Potter, Keith (2000). ''Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass''. Music in the Twentieth Century series. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052148250X.

★ Schwarz, K. Robert (1996). ''Minimalists''. 20th Century Composers series. London: Phaidon. ISBN 0714833819.

★ Strickland, Edward (2000). ''Minimalism: Origins''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Corrected and somewhat revised version of the original 1993 hardback edition. ISBN 0253213886.

★ Sweeney-Turner, Steve (1995). "Weariness and Slackening in the Miserably Proliferating Field of Posts." ''Musical Times'' 136, no. 1833 (November): 599–601.

Further reading

★ Mertens, Wim (1980/1983/1988). ''American Minimal Music'', trans. J. Hautekiet. ISBN 0-912483-15-6. "Still stands as the single extended culture-critical treatment of American minimalism" (Fink 2005, p.5).

External links

★ Art and Music Since 1945: Introduction to Minimal Music by N.G.

★ Minimal Music, Maximal Impact, by Kyle Gann © 2001 NewMusicBox, Including a more comprehensive list of early minimalists

★ Art of the States: minimalist minimalist works by American composers