Category: Listening & Reception

Temporality as an analytical approach to minimalist music: Tom Johnson’s An hour for piano

Minimalist compositions thwart most attempts at analysis given their remarkable simplicity; their structure is often deliberately obvious. The experience of a minimalist piece, however, is anything but simple. These compositions encourage the listener to ignore the past and the future, memory and expectation, and explore an extended present. 

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Time, eternity and the problem of minimal music’s alleged non-linearity in Louis Andriessen’s De Tijd

This article explores contrasts between time and eternity in Louis Andriessen’s De Tijd from 1981. The music, although inspired by the experience of “complete tranquility”, appears to establish a dialectical opposition between musical elements signifying timelessness and measured time.

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