Contemporary classical music has never made much of a dent in the public’s consciousness outside of art schools and conservatories because its power lies less in melody than in ideas and textures. Whereas Beethoven or Mozart would build their pieces to crescendos of shameless virtuosic majesty, the 20th century has seen composers such as Glass, Satie and Steve Reich stretch the most basic musical elements, such as a three-note piano fill or the swishing of a maraca, until they feel as natural as a heartbeat. Like an impressionist painting, Reich’s music can evoke anything with subtlety. During Friday’s performance of “Music for 18 Musicians,” one had the sensation of running or flying before the airplane footage even appeared on the widescreen.
In “Music for 18 Musicians,” everything, from the marimbas and vibes to the catatonic murmurings of the four vocalists, is performed live. The piece is so minimalist, however, that it’s easy to close your eyes and conceive it as a mechanized precursor to the synth-trance of Kraftwerk and Moby.
You can hear the influence of this stuff just about anywhere rockers brandish their Eurocentric credentials: John Cale’s chilly strings on The Velvet Underground & Nico, the washes of feedback on Sonic Youth’s epic “The Diamond Sea,” The Fall’s Mark E. Smith shouting to his bandmates, “Don’t improvise, for God’s sake,” as if the song would fall apart if anyone were to break it open.

Clad in black and gray, staring fixedly at each other as if communicating tacit messages that the music alone couldn’t carry, the 18 conservatory students seemed less to be playing notes on a page than giving our respiratory and sexual bodily rhythms a new language. According to the show’s program, each performer is meant to play his part for only the duration of a breath. The key changes were sudden in their interruption of the drone, and when the single maraca came in it felt like tectonic plates had just shifted under the auditorium. It was disarming to hear silence after the last note had drifted away, as if I’d expected the music to have no beginning or end.
There is a reason not many people put ideological triumphs like this on their stereos for pleasure. In a concert hall, the “virtual melodies” (as the program described the ghostly notes that seemed to exist without being played) surround one’s head and reverberate off the walls. On small speakers, the instruments would probably melt together and that essential effect would be lost.

Most importantly, contemporary classical music is often more fun to think about than to hear. The concepts Reich devised about breathing techniques, drones and bodily rhythms are disappointingly static when spread out over an hour-and-a half. Compare it with the “minimalist” approach of early James Brown and you’ll be convinced that real musical genius has little to do with eggheads reworking 12th century scales in their armchairs.