The first half of the 20th century saw the development of atonal music — music with no “main note” you could hang your ear on as the center. Needless to say, it’s hard to compose something atonal that still has something cohesive going on, which lead to the development of serialism, a type of atonal music where each of the 12 notes of the modern equal temperament scale are played before any are repeated. I will spare you the discussion of how that works.
This was the scene when Terry Riley did something radical: he wrote a piece of tonal music; he used a limited number of notes, repeated often; he structured it to be for any number of instruments and any period of time; and then he rubbed everyone’s face in the fact by simply calling it In C. It turned out to be one of the top classical music events of the year.
In Closing: clean water is important; a few items on the minimum wage and the living wage; branching out; Common Core; why exactly do we need a pink one?; the finest justice money can buy; police state; and grounded.