Composer of the Week

I regret my trip to New York did not yield a new post.  Mostly due to exhaustion between the city trip and roof work the following day, I decided to ponder this week’s composer and also the impact of Steve Reich’s music on society.
Regarding Reich, I think it is safe to say that the accessibility [...]

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Tomorrow morning I will travel to the source of many of the great developments in art and music since the early 1900’s:  New York City. I am planning my day around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, taking in everything I missed upon my last visit some 5 years ago (which is likely about 80% since [...]

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Throughout history, music has typically been defined by the art and architecture of the era in which it is written. Baroque, classical, romantic, impressionist, expressionist, minimalist, modernist — these are all categorizations of art, music, dance, architecture, and style.
To take this into consideration, we should look at what might broadly define minimalism.

Precise. Jackson Pollack, while [...]

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Reich’s writing often incorporates the use of canon, a compositional technique familiar to most.  What he refers to as phasing came from an experiment he conducted attempting to get two tape recorders to play back as identically as possible.  Sure enough, they played back almost in unison, prompting him to consider the chances of the [...]

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A master of both music and the written word, Ned Rorem has become one of America’s most honored composers.
Known primarily for his art songs (which number over 500), he has been the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his Air Music for orchestra, as well both a Fulbright (1951) and Guggenhiem (1957) Fellowship. He [...]

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