The Simplicity of Philip Glass

Repeating it makes it no less wrong.

Concept art isn't necessarily minimalist. Minimalist art is minimalist, obviously, and minimalist art is a subset of conceptual art, but it's not the same thing.

I'm not talking about minimalist art - I'm talking about minimalist music as the aural analog of visual concept art.

Minimalist music is the musical analog of concept art in that the process is an integral part of the end product.

The purpose of the repetition was not to enforce the idea on its own, but rather to point out to the original poster that the reason for Glass's apparent simplicity at any given point in time is that the piece must be considered as a whole, because only when considered as a whole does the process become apparent.

It's a little more complex, but the key idea is that through repetition of simplicity, you can begin to see underlying details that are hard to see. Think of a painting that is just a single dot on a large canvas, or maybe not even that much. After looking at something so simple, you'll start to notice things you didn't notice before, like paying attention to the hue of the canvas. If the canvas is actually painted white too, you can end up looking at the subtle differences in brush strokes in what would otherwise be an entirely plain white color.

Minimalism in music has many faces, but that "play something until you start hearing things differently" is an important one. You can play a single arpeggio for hours and your perception of it will change as you focus on different details and subtleties; repetition gives you the chance to probe and experience what would otherwise be nothing more than a passing second in other types of music. Who knows what you'll notice, or where that insight may lead you, and that's the important part.

Depth and detail is everywhere, even in something seemingly simple and Glass' music is a nice friendly reminder of that.