Circadian Shift

A change of pace from my 80s New Wave binge-a-thon of late....

Fans of 20th Century (should be 21st, now, surely) Minimalist Classical music will want to visit The Zombizi Mishap, who is featuring the work "Shaker Loops" by composer John Adams:

• Parts I and II, "Shaking and Trembling" and "Hymning Slews"
• Part III, "Loops and Verses"
• Part IV, "A Final Shaking"

As John Adams writes about the piece:

"Shaker Loops" began as a string quartet with the title "Wavemaker". At the time, like many a young composer, I was essentially unaware of the nature of those musical materials I had chosen for my tools. Having experienced a few of the seminal pieces of American Minimalism during the early 1970's, I thought their combination of stripped-down harmonic and rhythmic discourse might be just the ticket for my own unformed yearnings. I gradually developed a scheme for composing that was partly indebted to the repetitive procedures of Minimalism and partly an outgrowth of my interest in waveforms...

...I held on to the idea of the oscillating patterns and made an overall structure that could embrace much more variety and emotional range. Most importantly the quartet became a septet, thereby adding a sonic mass and the potential for more acoustical power. The "loops" idea was a technique from the era of tape music where small lengths of prerecorded tape attached end to end could repeat melodic or rhythmic figures ad infinitum. (Steve Reich's "It's Gonna Rain" is the paradigm of this technique.) The Shakers got into the act partly as a pun on the musical term "to shake", meaning either to make a tremolo with the bow across the string or else to trill rapidly from one note to another.

This particular recording of the piece is performed by the London Chamber Orchestra, taken from a collection of pieces simply titled Minimalist -- a great addition to your collection if you can find it (I have it -- haha!); there's more information about the disc here.

Should that whet your appetite for more minimalism, here's a great discussion thread on 20th Century Avant Garde Composers that provides several more listening suggestions.