“I know that the “mystical minimalist” Pärt is very in these days. I’m sorry, but I grew up on Riley and Reich too, and I’ve been through the pandiatonic improv wash (think: white keys on the piano) that his music so often is about. There is a kind of Brownian motion that hovers in his music. I have to say that I prefer the momentum driven music of Stravinsky to Pärt’s purple haze.”

Maybe Pärt is still in vogue, but I thought he stopped being hip about five or ten years ago! He is a real composer, and is part of the repertory of orchestras around the world. I am not sure you are correctly describing his work – or Reich or Riley’s as pandiatonic – and I would not want the concept behind the music to be misunderstood by others here. What Reich, Pärt, and Riley have in common is a structural rigor that bears notice – not the pitches they choose. In the case of Pärt, his technique of composing traidic harmonies, arpeggiations, etc. is not necessarily pandiatoninc, only tonal. Personally, I have accepted these three composers as mainstream. I do not think of any of them as being in vogue, but it’s just an opinion.