This thesis examines the relationship between minimalist music and other media as employed in original and revised contexts, taking into account the works of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley and John Adams (together with lesser-known composers who have been influenced by this particular genre). Part l will initially set out to apply Nicholas Cook's ' three basic models of multimedia' , together with Rebecca Leydon's typology of minimalist tropes, which forms the basis for subsequent theoretic developments in the thesis. The application of Cook's method will lead to the formation of a more refined framework based on the philosophical premises of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, allowing for a greater understanding of how the notion of' difference' is mediated when music is pitted against an image or a piece of text. Other additional types of meanings deriving from repetition will further supplement Leydon' s typology of extra-musical narratives - narratives that operate in different forms to more traditional examples.
Part II will study Philip Glass's music for film in depth, positing the relationship between his music and the cinematic narrative within intertextual spheres. External influences on his compositional method will be scrutinised with reference to Harold Bloom's theory on the ' anxiety of influence ' and Joseph Straus's 'creative misreading' . The employment of common harmonic progressions and intervallic configurations will also be explored, highlighted by the application of set-theoretic and Schenkerian techniques. The latter methodology will uncover Glass's cyclical approach to harmony, illuminating his methods in reaching the dominant chord and the recurrence of certain prime forms. Also, the manifestation of internal references evident in the soundtrack to The Hours, and especially Dracula, will form a considerable portion of the work, and the viability of re-applying extracts of music in other cinematic contexts will be unpacked.
In light of the anti-dialectical nature of repetitive music, theories relating to existentialism will be highly relevant to this thesis. The viability of applying Eero Tarasti 's existential semiology will be examined during a reading of a television
commercial employing a soundtrack by Michael Andrews, while the pre-Sartrean philosophies of Karl Jaspers will be discussed in a chapter on Glass's Naqoyqatsi, Book of Longing and the soundtrack to a recent film, Watchmen, which quotes two extracts out of Koyaanisqatsi. The final part of the thesis involves the formation of a new model that develops and extrapolates specific elements of the methodologies employed up to this point.