# Rank your Minimalists from These Five



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

1 Philip Glass
2 Terry Riley
3 Steve Reich
4 John Adams
5 Michael Nyman


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## Myriadi (Mar 6, 2016)

1 Reich
2 Riley
3 Glass

Sorry, never cared for Adams (whose namesake John Luther is much more interesting to me) or Nyman.


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## chesapeake bay (Aug 3, 2015)

1 Philip Glass
2 Steve Reich
3 Michael Nyman 
4 John Adams
5 Terry Riley


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

1. Reich
2.Adams
3. Glass

4. Riley

5. Nyman


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

1. Glass
2. Adams

Haven't heard the others.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Art Rock said:


> 1. Reich
> 2.Adams
> 3. Glass
> 
> ...


+1.....................................


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Art Rock said:


> 1. Reich
> 2.Adams
> 3. Glass
> 
> ...


I agree, except personally, I would put Adams above Reich. I just think he has done more to expand the genre of process music /minimalism than the others.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

1. Adams
2. Riley
3. Nyman
4. Reich
5. Glass

Why i like Adams is he puts the music in familiar classical settings (more in romantic era), without it feeling pretentious like Glass. Harmonielehre is my favourite minimalist work (doesn't take itself too seriously), above in C by Riley. Reich's Come Out is for me the hardest piece of music to listen to (I don't mean in terms of understanding), and prefer the silence of Cage's 4'33".


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

regenmusic said:


> 1 Philip Glass
> 2 Terry Riley
> 3 Steve Reich
> 4 John Adams
> 5 Michael Nyman


Great thread! :cheers::cheers::cheers:


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I don't rate minimalists


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

DavidA said:


> I don't rate minimalists


Then don't participate.

1 Adams
2 Reich
3 Riley
4 Glass
5 Nyman


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

1. Reich
2. Glass
3. Adams
4. Nyman
5. Riley

Reich and Glass are among my favourites of all composers; Adams and Nyman rank very highly as well. For some reason I've never got into Riley, though I love _In C_ (of course).

Though I have to also point out that Adams sticks out among the 5 as the one who's no longer a minimalist.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

1 John Adams
2 Steve Reich
3 Terry Riley
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.4 Michael Nyman
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5 Philip Glass


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

1. Glass
2. Adams
3. Reich

Glass is simply one of my favourite composers. I enjoy Adams and Reich slightly less, but not by much, and I certainly consider some of their works to be masterpieces.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

I've grown to respect Nyman more. Glass hit his peak early and I admire his discipline to creating new music, I don't find myself coming back to him. Riley was very innovative early, but doesn't seem to have much more to say. Reich doesn't do much for me at all, but I can understand people respecting him because of early innovation, which may have just been a popularization of what unknowns were doing around him at the time, like It's Going to Rain. Some of this stuff was done in Eastern music. I admire Adams for his scope of vision. In a sense, he's the most true "great master" of them all, but not one of my favorite composers.


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## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

1. Glass
2. Reich
3. Riley
4. Adams

I don't know Nyman, so can't say anything about him.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

John Coolidge Adams is nothing and Nyman is less than that. The others... oh, I don't know, I go back and forth on this. I asked myself in a different thread recently: Are they more like Gounod or more like Stravinsky? That said, even being like Gounod isn't nothing.

I'm not even sure if Reich is greater or less than daddy La Monte Young, or whether La Monte Young's later work is greater or less than or equal to his earlier work - though on the other hand, the minimalism-related judgments that I'm most confident making are: there is something sublime in the 1962-1963 Theater of Eternal Music records made by La Monte Young and others, and they changed music.


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