Realizing Multistability in Minimalist Music
Kristen Wallentinsen · 2025
This chapter explores deeper analytical implications of the frameworks presented in Chapters 2 and 3 through a series of analytical vignettes drawing on music from Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and Ann Southam. The chapter examines how the interaction of different musical parameters such as meter, melodic contour, timbre, texture, and harmony creates musical affordances that give rise to multistable experience. Here, current music-theoretical models for these musical parameters are incorporated to show how the framework of multistability complements existing analytical methodologies. The chapter opens with an analytical vignette exploring shifting accent structure and melodic shape in Glass’s 600 Lines . Next, the chapter explores metric grouping ambiguity in the asymmetrical meter of Monk’s Window in 7’s . Multistable effects of metric dissonance are then explored in Southam’s Noisy River , including harmonic ramifications of metric possibilities. The chapter also demonstrates possible experiential implications of the structural affordances involved and considers the role of performer choice on the experiential realities of these multistable structures.