Mini-Post Mini-Series Part 3: Mini-Self-Revelations

Mini-Self-Revelations
(...or, what I've learned so far)

1.) I need music with a pulse. Fast, slow, irregular - any type is fine, but my ear and my body really crave some sort of coherent rhythmic structure.

2.) I don't mind harsh dissonances, when used with intention. More important than consonant sonorities is a continuity and logic in the level of dissonance from points A to B to C, etc...

3.) Early minimalism tends to rely on the repetition and modification of very small music units (1-2 beats). As the repeated cell becomes longer and more complex, minimalism gives way to simpler large structures: the repeated phrase, passacaglia, ground bass, strophic song forms, etc. Some moments in Glass' fifth quartet seem to take a few steps away from this local-level repetition to create something grander.

At what point does a minimalist cell become a repeated strophic period? I will attempt to answer this question in my first movement.