Minimalism (music) is a late 20th-century compositional movement built on repetition, slow transformation, and steady pulse — glass, reich, riley, adams.
Musical minimalism emerged in 1960s California and New York as a reaction against the complexity of postwar serialism. La Monte Young's sustained-tone works pointed the way; Terry Riley's 'In C' (1964) — fifty-three short melodic patterns played by an indeterminate ensemble — became the movement's first canonical piece. Steve Reich developed phasing and process music in works like 'Piano Phase' (1967) and the breakthrough 'Music for 18 Musicians' (1976). Philip Glass forged a more theatrical strain, culminating in the operas 'Einstein on the Beach' (1976) and 'Akhnaten' (1983). John Adams brought minimalism toward more openly romantic gestures in 'Harmonium' (1981) and the operas 'Nixon in China' (1987) and 'Doctor Atomic' (2005). Minimalism reshaped film scoring, popular music, and contemporary classical practice, and proved that radical simplicity, patiently sustained, could be as profound as any complex argument.