What is Minimalism?
'''Minimalism''' is a way of making [[modern art]] or [[music]] that uses simple ideas, sounds or shapes. It was most popular in America in the 1960s and 1970s. There are many different kinds of minimalism. Sometimes a simple thing is repeated many times until it seems very complicated. Today minimalism can be used to talk about many things such as design, [[architecture]], poetry, and movies. [[File:Tilted Spheres.jpg|right|thumb|220px| ''Tilted Spheres'', a sculpture by Richard Serra at Pearson International Airport, [[Toronto]]. The piece is over 12 metres long.]] == Music == In music, minimalism is a way of composing [[classical music]] which became popular during the second half of the [[20th century]]. It is a way of composing by using a simple idea which is repeated many times. A minimalist piece of music usually takes a short idea which may be a [[melody|melodic]] or a [[rhythm]]ic pattern. This idea is then repeated many times, but each time it changes slightly. Sometimes this may be done by two or more instruments which start off by playing their [[note (music)|notes]] or [[chord]]s together but, as one is going slightly faster than the other, they gradually become “out of sync” (not synchronized, i.e. not together), then eventually they catch up with one another again. Usually this music is [[tonality|tonal]] so that it is firmly in one key. ''A steady pulse is kept throughout the whole piece.'' Composers who wrote minimalist music include [[Steve Reich]] (b.1936), [[Philip Glass]] (b.1937) and [[Terry Riley]] (b.1935). Other composers like [[John Adams (composer)|John Adams]] (b.1947) have also used minimalist ways of composing, but they combined these with other techniques, so that their music is not just minimalist. Minimalist music became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Minimalist composers started writing like this, also because a lot of new music at that time was very complicated and hard to understand. It was often [[serialism|serial]] music which was [[tonality|atonal]] with no obvious mel