[seanhunter]

Really lovely idea and brilliant execution.

For people who don't get the reference, one of the defining pieces of the Minimalist movement in 20th century music[1] was "In C" by Terry Riley[2]. Minimalist pieces often (but don't always) include elements of non-determinsm like in this.

[1] Minimalism here doesn't mean "not many notes" it means deliberately restricting the range of harmonic and rhythmic materials available to the composer. Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Adams, and Arvo Part represent well-known composers with very different takes on the style if you want to check out more.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_C to read about "In C" or try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbTn79x-mrI&pp=ygUQaW4gYyB0Z... as an example performance.

[coldtea]

>For people who don't get the reference, one of the defining pieces of the Minimalist movement in 20th century music[1] was "In C" by Terry Riley

So they missed the opportunity to call this "In B#".

[W0lf]

"In Bb" that is?

[foolswisdom]

B# == C.

I assume B# was intentional in that comment.

[jahnu]

Agreed! Such a lovely simple effective idea.

Also reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me_symphonique

[chasil]

This reminds me of "Quiet City" by Aaron Copeland.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FBAB8jHAhdw

[gnulinux]

> Minimalism here doesn't mean "not many notes" it means deliberately restricting the range of harmonic and rhythmic materials available to the composer

This is not necessarily what minimalism means. Minimalism is just an abstraction for certain kinds of art, possibly with various incompatible techniques. For some artists (not just musicians, but also painters, poets etc) minimalism means "repetition"-ism i.e. art with excessive amount of repetition to the point that you'd normally expect it to be "boring" but it somehow uses it to its favor with rhythmic, harmonic, or formal techniques. Philip Glass is the pioneer of this idea in music, and I personally consider him one of the most creative and groundbreaking artists ever lived. His music is very tonal, "simple" and repetitive in his oeuvre (i.e. repetition not just in one work, but repetition among his body of works like minimalist painters Mondrian and Rothko) which makes him a very very controversial musician, some critics considering him a charlatan. To me, he's a Schoenbergian figure who is making a bombastic and over-the-top artistic statement by going against the current of his artistic tradition while remaining firmly in it. Similarly, Schoenberg was also considered a charlatan during his life, especially early on.

For those interested, I recommend this composition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKJoQ8BfQhw (full on spotify, sorry)

Oh also if you ever think "classical music doesn't have a cultural force anymore" please pay attention to contemporary film music that's not neo-romanticist. You'll see that there is tons of minimalist influence from Glass, Reich, Andriessen, Richter etc...

[chasil]

How does this relate to Schoenberg?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-tone_technique

Or to the whole of impressionism in music?

"In 1912, the French composer Ernest Fanelli (1860–1917) received significant attention and coverage in the Parisian press following a performance of a symphonic poem he wrote in 1886, titled Thèbes, incorporating elements associated with Impressionism, such as extended chords and whole-tone scales.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism_in_music

Writing in 1958, the critic Rudolph Reti summarised six features of Debussy's music, which he asserted "established a new concept of tonality in European music": the frequent use of lengthy pedal points – "not merely bass pedals in the actual sense of the term, but sustained 'pedals' in any voice"; glittering passages and webs of figurations which distract from occasional absence of tonality; frequent use of parallel chords which are "in essence not harmonies at all, but rather 'chordal melodies', enriched unisons", described by some writers as non-functional harmonies; bitonality, or at least bitonal chords; use of the whole-tone and pentatonic scales; and unprepared modulations, "without any harmonic bridge". Reti concludes that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy

[BeFlatXIII]

> Oh also if you ever think "classical music doesn't have a cultural force anymore" please pay attention to contemporary film music that's not neo-romanticist. You'll see that there is tons of minimalist influence from Glass, Reich, Andriessen, Richter etc...

And music from horror movies and battle scenes if you want to hear the contemporary influence of serialism and new complexity.

[croisillon]

that reminds me Nyman's "In Re Don Giovanni"