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Founding work of minimalism, Music with Changing Parts is a piece with free instrumentation.The musicians choose which part to play among the 8 staves of the score. At each indicated cue, the musicians can change part, which produces an abrupt change of instrumentation. While the music is based on a melodic material limited to a few notes that are repeated in patterns that expand or contract, the changes in orchestration refresh the listening experience by producing sonic contrasts. These techniques at work
in Music with Changing Parts , written in 1970, will lead Philip Glass to renew his language and move from the monochromatic works that precede it to more dramatic works such as music in 12 parts and especially the opera Einstein on the Beach. When Philip Glass began rehearsing the piece, he was surprised to hear long notes when everything was written in eighth notes. After making sure that none of the musicians were playing held notes, he realized that the fact that the same notes were played by all the instruments in the ensemble produced, through a psycho-acoustic effect, a harmonic substrate of resonant frequencies. He then decided to add to
the score the possibility of playing long notes to reinforce this effect

With »Discreet Music« (1975), »Music for Airports« (1978) and »Thursday Afternoon« (1985), Brian Eno invented a new music genre, Ambient Music, which he defined as »able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting«. These versions performed and arranged by Dedalus Ensemble, according to the musicians and the critics who listened to it, goes beyond what we expect from it. A mental base that takes us far away. One of the only music without beginning or end in which we want to stay as long as possible.

The Dedalus Ensemble is a contemporary music ensemble based in Toulouse, founded in 1996 by Didier Aschour. Its repertoire includes works by classics of minimalism such as Christian Wolff, Phill Niblock, Frederic Rzewski, Tom Johnson, Moondog or Philip Glass.