Downtown music in the context of "Minimalism in music"

Dada (/ˈdɑːdɑː/) or Dadaism was an international art movement that developed in the context of the Great War and Futurism first established in Zürich, Switzerland, and later quickly spread to Berlin, Paris, New York City and a variety of artistic centers in Europe and Asia. The Dada movement's principles were first collected in Hugo Ball's Dada Manifesto in 1916. Ball is seen as the founder of the Dada movement. Key figures in the movement included Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Jean Arp, Johannes Baader, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Richard Huelsenbeck, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Tristan Tzara, and Beatrice Wood, among others. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, and groups including Surrealism, nouveau réalisme, pop art, and Fluxus.

Minimal music (also called minimalism) is a form of art music or other compositional practice that employs limited or minimal musical materials. Prominent features of minimalist music include repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones, consonant harmony, and reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units. It may include features such as phase shifting, resulting in what is termed phase music, or process techniques that follow strict rules, usually described as process music. The approach is marked by a non-narrative, non-teleological, and non-representational approach, and calls attention to the activity of listening by focusing on the internal processes of the music.

The approach originated on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly around the Bay Area, where La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Steve Reich were studying and living at the time. After the three composers moved to the East Coast, their music became associated with the New York Downtown music scene of the mid-1960s, where it was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School. In the Western art music tradition, the American composers Moondog, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass are credited with being among the first to develop compositional techniques that exploit a minimal approach. The movement originally involved dozens of composers, although only five (Young, Riley, Reich, Glass, and later John Adams) emerged to become publicly associated with American minimal music; other lesser known pioneers included Dennis Johnson, Terry Jennings, Richard Maxfield, Pauline Oliveros, Phill Niblock, and James Tenney. In Europe, the music of Louis Andriessen, Karel Goeyvaerts, Michael Nyman, Howard Skempton, Éliane Radigue, Gavin Bryars, Steve Martland, Peter Michael Hamel, Henryk Górecki, Arvo Pärt and John Tavener exhibits minimalist traits.

La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in post-war avant-garde music. He is best known for his exploration of sustained tones, beginning with his 1958 composition Trio for Strings. His compositions have called into question the nature and definition of music, most prominently in the text scores of his Compositions 1960. While few of his recordings remain in print, his work has inspired prominent musicians across various genres, including avant-garde, rock, and ambient music.

Young played jazz saxophone and studied composition in California during the 1950s, and subsequently moved to New York in 1960, where he was a central figure in the downtown music and Fluxus art scenes. He then became known for his pioneering work in drone music (originally called dream music) with his Theatre of Eternal Music collective, alongside collaborators such as Tony Conrad, John Cale, and his wife, the multimedia artist Marian Zazeela. In 1964, he began work on his unfinished improvisatory composition The Well-Tuned Piano, iterations of which he has performed throughout subsequent decades.