# Cyclical Music



## MJongo (Aug 6, 2011)

Does anyone know of any compositions, classical or not, that are intended to continuously repeat? Aside from the thousands of rounds in existence, I'm having a hard time finding other examples, but I'd be surprised if they do not exist. One thing I should note that I'm not looking for are records with a musical locked groove at the end; I want examples where the entire piece is designed to repeat.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

something like satie's vexations?


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## MJongo (Aug 6, 2011)

norman bates said:


> something like satie's vexations?


Sort of; I'm looking for something where the end seamlessly transitions to the beginning (or where there is no specified beginning or end). Especially longer (10 minutes or more) pieces. A good visual description is this:


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Steve Roach - Darkest Before Dawn 

This album is meant for continuous play, but beware... it's an extremely minimal ambient piece meant to enhance the atmosphere of a room. It's like a continuous fog, or haze, with basicly nothing to hold on to. It is however continuously changing, but the change is hardly noticeable as there is so little to discern... so it's not the same drone fragment looped into infinity, or is it? 
So yeah, not sure this is what you're looking for.


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## MJongo (Aug 6, 2011)

DeepR said:


> Steve Roach - Darkest Before Dawn


Neat, I like a lot of Steve Roach's output, so I'll have to give this a listen.


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## MJongo (Aug 6, 2011)

I found something a little closer: Stockhausen's Zyklus, which can be started at any point in the score, but stops when you come back to the note you started at. I'm still looking, so if anyone has any suggestions, please share.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

In the first two Celtic Frost albums the "chorus" parts of the songs are stylistically the same as the "verses," more like little variating episodes. Also, a lot of the breaks have their own little breaks in them bookended by the outer breaks (think slow riff 1, slow riff 2, slow riff 1, then back to the main course). The songs are often asymmetrical, like ABA, giving you the sense you just jumped into and out of a looping pattern.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I don't know of any music that was expressly written to be played as an endless loop, but there is a LOT that could be used that way. Any kind of drone music (eg., La Monte Young), ambient music (eg., Brian Eno), cosmic rock (eg., Tangerine Dream), etc. would be well suited. Also, a lot of classical music would work (eg., Gregorian chant, Ligeti...). If you have a CD player with an A-B function, you can pick out the start and end points within a movement or piece and set the player on repeat. No doubt, this can also be done with digital files and might be less noticeable as it loops. Another example: You could pick out a theme in any piece and loop it. Make your own loop using existing music or use software to make some music of your own to loop.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

There's a section in the development of Bruckner's Fourth, first movement, that moves from the dominant of E-flat to E-flat minor (the first time a minor key appears in the piece) before cadencing in B-flat. If you go back to the dominant of E-flat, you could easily make this an endless loop.

Interestingly enough, this is not the case with the original version, where the minor-key section is in _B minor_ instead, although it ends up leading to B-flat all the same.


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

BEETHOVEN symphony 5 has a subject that is heard in other movements,TCHAIKOVSKY symphony 5 has themes that are heard in all 4 movements.


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## Guest (May 7, 2014)

Listen to The Caretaker's album with Winterreise samples. He only loops each little sample for 2-5 minutes, but sometimes I could definitely let them run longer...


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Nefertiti by Miles Davis Quintet


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

There is an early example from a medieval codex called the Chantilly Codex. It contains a piece by a certain Baude Cordier called _Tout Par Compas_ and it is a perpetual canon, so it could in theory last forever.






Here is the score:


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Bach's endlessly rising canon from Musical Offering and J. Strauss Perpetuum Mobile are both written as repeatable loops.


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## drvLock (Apr 2, 2014)

Dream Theater's Octavarium album. It starts and ends at the same place.


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