List of minimalist composers

Last updated June 13, 2025

The following is a list of minimalist composers:

By country

Australia

Belgium

Finland

France

Georgia

Giya Kancheli (based in Belgium)

Germany

Hungary

Italy

Japan

Joe Hisaishi
Jo Kondo
Yoshi Wada (based in the United States)
Yasunori Mitsuda

Latvia

Pēteris Vasks

Netherlands

Poland

Russia

Serbia

Vladimir Tošić

South Africa

Kevin Volans

South Korea

Jung Hee Choi

Sweden

Catherine Christer Hennix (based in the United States)

Switzerland

Ukraine

Lubomyr Melnyk

United States

La Monte Young
Tony Conrad
Terry Riley
Steve Reich
Philip Glass
Charlemagne Palestine
Phill Niblock
Pauline Oliveros
Terry Jennings
Dennis Johnson
John Adams
Julius Eastman
Henry Flynt
James Tenney
John Luther Adams
Laurie Anderson
William Basinski
Barbara Benary
David Borden (and his ensemble Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company)
Glenn Branca
Harold Budd
Alvin Lucier
David Behrman
Joseph Byrd
Lawrence Chandler
Richard Chartier
Rhys Chatham (based in France)
Anna Clyne
Philip Corner (based in Italy)
Kurt Doles
Arnold Dreyblatt (based in Germany)
Jon Gibson
Daniel Goode
Annie Gosfield
Michael Harrison
Rafael Anton Irisarri
Scott Johnson
Tom Johnson (based in France)
Sarah Kirkland Snider
Catherine Lamb
Hannah Lash
Douglas Leedy
Angus MacLise (died in Nepal)
Kali Malone
Ingram Marshall
Richard Maxfield
Meredith Monk
Robert Moran
Tim Risher
Arthur Russell
Andrew Shapiro
Caroline Shaw
Wayne Siegel (based in Denmark)
Stars of the Lid (Adam Wiltzie & Brian McBride)
Michael Torke
Lois V. Vierk
Michael Waller
Shelley Washington
John White (born in the UK)
Julia Wolfe

By movement

Mystic minimalists

A number of composers showing a distinctly religious influence have been labelled the "mystic minimalists", or "holy minimalists":

Jakob van Domselaer, whose early-20th century experiments in translating the theories of Piet Mondrian's De Stijl movement into music represent an early precedent to minimalist music.
Alexander Mosolov, whose orchestral composition Iron Foundry (1923) is made up of mechanical and repetitive patterns.
George Antheil, whose 1924 Ballet Mecanique is characterized by much use of motoric and repetitive patterns, as well as an instrumentation made up of multiple player pianos and mallet percussion.
Erik Satie, seen as a precursor of minimalism as in much of his music. For example, his score for Francis Picabia's 1924 film Entr'acte consists of phrases, many borrowed from bawdy popular songs, ordered seemingly arbitrarily and repetitiously, providing a rhythmic counterpoint to the film.
Alan Hovhaness
John Cage
Colin McPhee, whose Tabuh-Tabuhan for two pianos and orchestra (1936) features the use of motoric, repetitive, pentatonic patterns drawn from the music of Bali (and featuring a large section of tuned percussion).
Carl Orff, who, particularly in his later theater works Antigonae (1940–1949) and Oedipus der Tyrann (1957–58), utilized instrumentations (six pianos and multiple xylophones, in imitation of gamelan music) and musical patterns (motoric, repetitive, triadic) reminiscent of the later music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass
Yves Klein, whose Monotone Symphony (formally The Monotone-Silence Symphony , premiered in 1960, synonym conceived in 1947–1948) is an orchestral 40-minute piece whose first movement is an unvarying 20-minute drone and the second and last movement a 20-minute silence,^[1]^[2] predating by several years both the drone music works of La Monte Young and the "silent" 4'33" of John Cage.
Morton Feldman, whose works prominently feature some sort of repetition as well as a sparseness.
Anton Webern, whose economy of materials and sparse textures led many of the minimalists who were educated in serialism^{[ vague ]} to turn to a reduction of means.^{[ citation needed ]}
Alphonse Allais is the author of the earliest known example of a completely silent musical composition. His Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Great Deaf Man of 1897 consists of twenty-four blank measures. The fact that this is his one and only composition makes him all the more a precursor of minimalism in music.

References

↑ Perlein and Corà 2000, 226: "This symphony, 40 minutes in length (in fact 20 minutes followed by 20 minutes of silence) is constituted of a single 'sound' stretched out, deprived of its attack and end which creates a sensation of vertigo, whirling the sensibility outside time."
↑ See also at YvesKleinArchives.org a 1998 sound excerpt of The Monotone Symphony Archived 2008-12-08 at the Wayback Machine (Flash plugin required), its short description Archived 2008-10-28 at the Wayback Machine , and Klein's "Chelsea Hotel Manifesto" Archived 2010-06-13 at the Wayback Machine (including a summary of the 2-part Symphony).

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[1] Perlein and Corà 2000, 226: "This symphony, 40 minutes in length (in fact 20 minutes followed by 20 minutes of silence) is constituted of a single 'sound' stretched out, deprived of its attack and end which creates a sensation of vertigo, whirling the sensibility outside time."

[2] See also at YvesKleinArchives.org a 1998 sound excerpt of The Monotone Symphony Archived 2008-12-08 at the Wayback Machine (Flash plugin required), its short description Archived 2008-10-28 at the Wayback Machine , and Klein's "Chelsea Hotel Manifesto" Archived 2010-06-13 at the Wayback Machine (including a summary of the 2-part Symphony).

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