Paper Topics
As you know, you have to write a 12-15 page research paper for this course. Your paper topic
should be about something related to musical minimalism, but you can develop your own topic
within that.
There are several different approaches that might yield a good paper. The first is more historical (this is a music history class, after all); you could do something about developments in music that lead to minimalism, the cultural forces surrounding it, etc. Another approach would be to pick a specific work or to explore a specific aspect of a composer’s work that relates to minimalism.
Doing this will require that you do some reading, looking at scores, and listening. Our textbook
is a good starting point, but it’s about 20 years old and there have been many developments. The
“Minimalism” article in Grove that I had you read is more up to date, and the composers
mentioned plus the article’s bibliography might help. Recordings and performances are easy to
access through Alexander Street Press, Youtube, and Spotify (in spite of the latter having
frequent commercials), and between the library and Alexander Street you have access to a large
number of scores.
If you want you want to change the topic, you also can change to this one: Steve Reich’s “video operas”
Finally, I want you to write a one page (250-300 word) description of your topic along with a preliminary bibliography