Steve Moshier's “Shadows from the Underworld”: A piano work that reflects a post-minimalist sensibility

Abstract

Minimalism emerged as a historical musical phenomenon in the 1960s in America. Its pioneers, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, exerted a tremendous influence on compositional technique for the subsequent generation of composers. Begun in the 1980s and continuing through the 1990s to the present, the music by these subsequent generations is known as post-minimalism. This document begins with a brief history of minimalism and post-minimalism and then examines how Steve Moshier's Shadows from the Underworld , written in 1997, contains characteristics of post-minimalism. Through an analysis of the work and detailed descriptions of its sections, this paper explains the various post-minimal techniques and how Moshier used them to create his sixteen-minute work.