Riley, John Adams, and Arvo Pärt, has all been lumped together under this
category.Minimalist music springs from the exploratory work started by John Cage
and is a genre concerned with finding the absolute right note or rhythm for a
piece of music. Philip Glass’s work has been earmarked by his songs built
around complex rhythms and early use of the synthesizer. In the 1970s, Arvo
Pärt put Estonia on the musical map by introducing a new style of composi-
tion he called tintinnabuli, based on a two-part homophonic texture that is
simply breathtaking in its incredible sparseness. In the 1960s, Steve Reich
was one of the first to work tape loops into his rhythm-oriented composi-
tions, possibly making him responsible for inspiring much of the electronic
loop-based music to come nearly 20 years later.Jazz.................................................................................................................
One unexpected side effect of the Civil War in the United States was that after
it ended, pawn shops all over the South were suddenly stocked with brass
and percussive instruments hocked by former members of military bands.
Suddenly, instruments that had never been owned by anyone outside of the
military or nobility were now readily available to the common man. One thing
led to another, and, well, jazz hasbeen called the one truly American art form.Early jazz (roughly 1890–1930) .........................................................
New Orleans was a fitting home for the birthplace of jazz. The city was a thriv-
ing international center of commerce at the turn of the century — unlike the
rest of the economically devastated South. Because of its seaport location at
the delta of the Mississippi River, it became a melting pot for seemingly a
whole world of cultures. Musical influences from Africa, Spain, Italy, South
America, and France combined with blues, folk music, and ragtime to create
New Orleans jazz, which was invented and further developed by African
Americans. Later, in the 1920s, jazz migrated to Chicago, New York, and
Kansas City when the black population of the segregated South moved up
North to find better job opportunities.Some of the amazing characters from this time were pianist/composer Jelly
Roll Morton, whose massive hands could bang out four octaves’ worth of
chords at a time. On the brass, Joe “King” Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Louis
Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Jimmy Noone, and Kid Ory blazed a new trail
through the tame and timid (and mostly white) music scene of the day with
their wild improvisation, unorthodox instrumentation, and obvious sheer
delight in just playing music. Anyone who thinks that jazz is something con-
fined to snooty and sophisticated cocktail bars has obviously not checked
out any of the guys mentioned above.Chapter 23: Ten Periods of Music History to Explore 283