foreignsubst replied to your post: i’m listening to music for 18 musicians and it’s...
What is it?
basically it's the minimalist work and it's incredibly beautiful in my opinion, and a lot easier to listen to than most minimalist music. because i'm lazy, this is what groves dictionary has to say about it:
The ensemble is rather similar to that of Music for Mallet Instruments but a little larger, comprising percussion, female voices and sustaining instruments (pairs of strings and clarinets). The music, though, is sharper in its attacks and more harmonically driven. Emerging out of pulsations – which are regular but constantly feature new notes and colours coming forward, and which continue throughout – the piece moves smoothly through several sections in which repeating patterns are joined by duplications and counterpoints, but in more complex textures and against the background not only of the pulsations but of grand harmonic progressions. A cycle of 11 chords, played slowly in the opening section, is played even more slowly in those that follow, providing the scaffolding for less glacial harmonic movements as well as for the contrapuntal inventions that had gradually ousted Reich's simple phasing process while keeping its repetitive frame. Typically these inventions start with a repeating figure, to which other figures are added one by one, each figure, including the first, subject to gradual alteration, so that within a context of constant recycling there is constant change. This was to be Reich's essential technique from then on. The work also defined his essential texture, combining up to three tempos: the allegro molto of the restless pulsation, the slower feel of the repeating patterns moving to that pulse, and adagio waves of notes and harmonies defined by the length of a breath. What results is a radiant wash of sound around fascinating activity.
