Shaker Loops

Pulsing with the driving, cyclical patterns of classic American minimalism, John Adams’ early gem Shaker Loops (1978) offered new possibilities for that burgeoning aesthetic, pushing beyond its formal strictures to establish the practice as a vital new creative pathway. The original version features a string septet. Through its four concise movements, short repeating and permutating motifs project a kind of ecstasy—the title references the religious sect, whose members often achieved that state during its services—as thrumming rhythms unleash slowly morphing melodies. Adams embraced a richer harmonic language than predecessors like Reich and Glass, and when he revamped the piece for string orchestra in 1983, the composer’s Romantic streak further distinguished the music from minimalism’s rigid parameters. Never a modernist, Adams freely draws upon the entirety of music history. The loops in the title correspond to the way each movement ends on a note that weds it to the first pitch of the next, an effect that evokes the tape-loop experiments Adams conducted before settling into his mature style.