Four Musical Minimalists : La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass

Rating:
Summary: gnarly music theory exposition, and history too
Review: Potter's book will be best appreciated by those with a much better understanding of music theory than I. However, I learned something about the personal and musical history of so-called "minimalism." (Potter falls prey to some extent to the problem of reifying an abstraction -- having first grouped some things together into a category, then searching for the true meaning of the category.) Is there a torch passed, so to speak, from Young to Riley to Reich to Glass? Glass is the only one to adamantly deny it, but Potter documents the basis for seeing it just that way (including Reich's influence on Glass). One aspect I am keen to know more about, but which Potter doesn't stress overly much, is the striking confluence of non-Western influences. Young and Riley are both disciples of the North Indian master singer, Pandit Pran Nath, who passed on in 1996. Reich studied both African drumming as well as the gamelan music of Bali. Glass studied Indian music, after being immersed in serialism if I've got the order correct. With the European "classical" tradition at an impasse at the turn of the millennium, it seems only natural that the future would lie in creative fusions and combinations with other traditions. (Not a very original idea, I realize, as evidenced by the recent emphasis of the Kronos Quartet among others.) Minimalism seems by now to be another style that passed into history and critical assessments -- is there an opening there that is being missed?