Comment by Gendun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Gendun | Hacker News Reader

For me their greatest similarity is structural, and it is not so much that they are similar to each other; rather, they both differ in similar ways from what we usually think of as the canonical form of composition in classical music - specifically, the sonata form, which prevailed precisely during the period just after Bach and just before Glass.

In the music of Mozart or Beethoven, for example, you have a primary leading melodic voice, and the music is organized by the progression of chords that support the main melody. This is why they wrote such good concertos.

In Glass and in Bach, the music is more "textural" as it were, but for different reasons. In Bach's case, owing to his use of polyphony, the shape of his musical ideas is distributed in the harmonic interactions between independent voices, each with its own melody. In Glass's case, we don't typically find voice leading, but repeating arpeggios.

For what it's worth, in my opinion pretty much everything of value in Glass he took from Steve Reich, and I have yet to meet a single Glass composition that doesn't seem implicit in Reich's "Piano Phase".

I agree with everything you say until the last paragraph. My perception of Reich and Glass as composers is that despite coming from the same city, during the same period, and being lumped together by history they feel like two composers whose style and methods run parallel but never quite meet. They've both built reputations around styles reliant on repetition, but the ways they employ it and the character of their music are very different.

While the musical motif of Reich's 'Piano Phase' - an ostinato arpgeggio - is something that Glass also employs in his own music, their individual uses of such a fundamental and common musical figure diverges tremendously. Reich (for the most part) fixates on that single motif and the patterns that appear by "phasing" it in and out with it's copy. Glass' typical approach for this period is to develop the figure through harmonic development or through the contraction or expansion of the phrase's length.

While you could argue that Glass' style developed from Reich's initial idea. To suggest that Glass' entire catalog of the period is somehow fully contained and found in the content of 'Piano Phase' and never added anything new is a major stretch.

That would be like arguing that everything Led Zeppelin wrote was already implicit in 'Johnny B. Goode'.

> style and methods run parallel but never quite meet

Or as if they were on the same tracks but on... different trains?

Glass generates a rhythmic tension that is similar to Reich's loops moving in and out of phase by changing the time signature feel (eg duplets vs. triplets). These are not the same mechanisms but for me both generate a curious shifting feeling where suddenly I'm listening to the "wrong" line. With Glass, I'm now also feeling the "wrong" beat! The effect from Reich's loop asynchrony is more gradual, transformational, just as surprising (perhaps even more so) but they are definitely different animals.

Interesting what you did there with Different Trains.

> That would be like arguing that everything Led Zeppelin wrote was already implicit in 'Johnny B. Goode'.

I hadn't thought of that, but now that you mention it, there is definitely some truth there ;-)

Well, there is not much similarity, i.e. no more similarity than with any other randomly selectd composer. But Bach certainly was no "minimalist", and he apparently lived in another epoch. And both undoubtedly have a lot to do with music. The article is probably meant more as a homage than as a scientific treatise. Actually, I neither see much similarities with Steve Reich (besides both are known to be "minimalists").

For me the similarity is primarily constant motion. There's a strong element of continuo in both but for different reasons.

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