Seven composers who changed how I think about music

Introduction

I'm sitting at the piano, playing a single chord. I let it ring out. I listen to how it fades and what remains after it's gone. That moment — when a single tone becomes an entire world — is exactly what drew me into minimalist music years ago. And what keeps me there.

I want to introduce you to seven composers who fundamentally changed the way I think about music. These aren't textbook profiles. This is a personal selection from someone who listens to this music, studies it, and tries to draw from it for his own compositions. You don't need to be a musician to understand what makes it special. Just play one of the videos and let yourself be drawn in.

Terry Riley — music that lives a life of its own

In 1964, Terry Riley wrote a piece called In C. The score fits on a single page. Fifty-three short musical phrases. The players perform them one after another, each at their own pace. Nobody tells them when to move on to the next one. The only rule is that no one should be more than two or three phrases ahead of the others.

What comes out of it? Something different every time. A living organism that evolves on its own. The dynamics and plasticity are in the hands of the players, creating an unrepeatable experience.

Riley showed that music doesn't have to be written out precisely from the first note to the last. It can be like a river — it has a direction, but the flow is slightly different each time.

Steve Reich — once a process is set in motion, it runs itself

In 1968, Steve Reich wrote a short essay that changed modern music. In it, he said one crucial thing: music can be a process that, once set in motion, runs on its own. Like an hourglass. You turn it over and watch the sand.

What fascinates me is the paradox. The composer has total control — he designs the system, the rules, the material. And then he surrenders. He doesn't touch the outcome. He accepts everything the process produces.

Reich compared it to standing with your feet in the sand at the beach while waves gradually wash over them. You feel it slowly. You can't stop it. And that's exactly how his music sounds — the changes are so gradual that you only notice them if you stay with them for a while.

The most beautiful thing about process music is the moment when sound begins to live its own life. Inside the repeating patterns, you start hearing melodies that no one actually wrote. They emerge on their own. That's not a flaw. That's the point.

Philip Glass — when a single note changes everything

In the 1960s, Philip Glass met Ravi Shankar, the legendary Indian sitarist, in Paris. It was an encounter that changed the course of Western music. Glass realized that in Indian music, rhythm isn't divided from the top down but built from the bottom up. Instead of breaking a bar into smaller parts, short phrases are assembled into larger structures.

This is how the additive process was born — the core of Glass's style. A simple phrase repeats. Then one note is added. The phrase takes on an entirely different rhythmic shape, even though the melody stays the same. Another note. Another transformation. It's like watching a tree grow from a single seed.

Glass wrote nine string quartets. I study them in detail because quartets are the most important format for me right now. There's something vulnerable and raw about them. Each player is completely exposed — no orchestra to hide behind. And that rawness is exactly where the power lies.

Arvo Pärt — two voices, one searching, one forgiving

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt went through a deep creative crisis in the early 1970s. For years, he didn't write a single note. And then he came back with something that changed everything — the tintinnabuli technique. The name comes from the Latin word for a small bell.

The principle is simple and beautiful. Two voices sound together. One moves along the scale step by step — searching, wandering, human. The other uses only the notes of a single chord — still, calm, eternal. Pärt himself says: the melodic voice is the sinner. The tintinnabuli voice is forgiveness.

For me, there is something divine about Arvo Pärt's mathematical approach to minimalism. It holds both precision and deep spirituality at once. Time stops. You don't wait for anything. You simply exist inside the music.

Listen to Spiegel im Spiegel — mirror in mirror. The piano plays a broken chord, the violin ascends and descends along the scale. That's all there is. And yet it's one of the most beautiful compositions I know.

Michael Nyman — I take it apart and put it back together

Of all the minimalists, Nyman is probably the most free-spirited. His approach can be described in one word: bricolage. He takes existing music, breaks it into pieces, and reassembles it in his own way. It might be a fragment of Vivaldi, a scrap of baroque melody, or an excerpt from a folk song.

You probably know him from the film The Piano. That main theme — The Heart Asks Pleasure First — is a perfect example of his style. Pulsating, energetic, with an urgency that won't let you sit still. It combines classical music, the energy of rock, and minimalism.

For me, Nyman is proof that a minimalist composer doesn't have to work only with original material. He can take anything — a raga fragment, a Vivaldi theme, a Balinese motif — and rebuild it according to his own rules.

Max Richter — beauty that sparks a healthy envy

Max Richter took Vivaldi's Four Seasons and recomposed them. He kept about twenty-five percent of the original material and rewrote the rest. The result is stunning — you hear Vivaldi, but at the same time something entirely contemporary.

I love Richter's music. Honestly, it's more like envy — the good kind. His music is beautiful, and the only thing that bothers me about it is that it stirs up self-doubt. But that doubt is healthy. It pushes me forward.

After listening to Richter, I once asked myself whether melody is even necessary. Whether it's something I carry from the past, something too powerful for me to work with compositionally. Richter showed me that the answer lies somewhere in between — between melody and texture, between classical and minimalism.

Yann Tiersen — a melody that stays with you forever

Most people know Tiersen from the film Amélie. That small, fragile piano melody that stays with everyone who has seen it. There's a simplicity to it that doesn't mean emptiness. Every note is exactly where it belongs.

Tiersen isn't a minimalist in the academic sense. But his approach to reduction — using little to say a lot — resonates with what all the composers in this article do. And it shows that this way of thinking can be accessible to absolutely anyone. You don't need to understand music theory. You just need to listen and feel.

Why I'm writing this

I've been studying minimalism for several years. It's not a matter of a few listens — it's a journey. I read research, analyze scores, consult with mentors. I experiment and often fail. But every small step forward confirms that this is a direction that makes sense to me.

For me, it's a way to let go of everything I learned before and find my own voice. It's not about playing fewer notes. It's about finding exactly the right notes and giving them space.

Right now, I'm working on string quartets. I've finished the first one. Others are in the sketch and experiment phase. One day, I'd love to release an album with a string quartet — and all seven composers I've written about here will somehow be present in it. Not as quotations, but as a way of thinking they passed on to me.

If any of these composers caught your attention, put on their music in the evening, while reading, or before sleep. This kind of music works best when you give it space and quiet.