The Listening Service

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

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Music: Classical

An odyssey through the musical universe, presented by Tom Service

Rethink music with The Listening Service. Tom Service presents a journey of imagination and insight, exploring how music works

The Listening Service: Maxing out on Minimalism

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Maxing out on Minimalism

BBC Radio 3 - The Listening Service, Maxing out on Minimalism

Minimalism in music - is less really more?

Fascinating and intricate patterns or the emperor's new clothes? What is minimalism in music and how do you listen to it?

Less really is more on today’s The Listening Service: we’re maxing out on minimalism, that most popular but also most divisive and most misunderstood of all 20th-century musical movements. Music that either makes you bliss out or brings you out in hives - it's the sound of that rhythmic repetitive music by a quartet of American composers  - Steve Reich, Philip Glass, LaMonte Young, and Terry Riley,  who have defined the movement, the style, even the genre of minimalism. Take a chord, a pattern, a handful of notes - and repeat them - and repeat again…and again...

What is minimalism in music and why should you listen to it?

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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