List of minimalist composers

The following is a list of minimalist composers:

By country

Australia

Belgium

Canada

Denmark

Hans Abrahamsen

Estonia

Arvo Pärt

Finland

France

Georgia

Giya Kancheli

Germany

Hungary

Italy

Japan

Latvia

Pēteris Vasks

Netherlands

Poland

Russia

Serbia

Vladimir Tošić

South Africa

Kevin Volans

South Korea

Jung Hee Choi

Sweden

Catherine Christer Hennix

Switzerland

Ralph Zurmühle
Walter Fähndrich
Nik Bärtsch

Ukraine

Lubomyr Melnyk

United Kingdom

United States

By movement

Mystic minimalists

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

Precedent composers

Other composers whose works have been described as precedents to minimalism include:

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 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 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 features the use of motoric, repetitive, pentatonic patterns drawn from the music of Bali.
Carl Orff, who, particularly in his later theater works Antigonae and Oedipus der Tyrann, utilized instrumentations and musical patterns similar to the later music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass
Yves Klein, whose Monotone Symphony 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, 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 to turn to a reduction of means.
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.