Ten Holt, Simeon -- Canto Ostinato - Sheetmusic - Minimal music - Only piano - scan.pdf

Simeon ten Holt (born in 1923) is a Dutch composer with a highly personal style of minimal composition. His works seem simular to other minimalist composers such as

Steve Reich (Piano phase),
Philip Glass (Truman show),
John Adams (Nixon in China),
Michael Nyman (The Piano) and
John Cage.


Ten Holt’s musical philosophy focuses on how music relates to visual art and mathematics.

Canto Ostinato is Ten Holt’s most famous work. The elegant music is both musically brilliant AND accessible for a broad audience. The ongoing repeat of small fragments brings the listener into a sort of trance.

Performances can last from 10 minutes up to an entire day. In 2007 5 piano players played the piece for 5 hours long in Utrecht Central Station.

It is build of fragments which are repeated for a number of bars, to shift on to the next fragment to be repeated.

fragment of Canto Ostinato

The figures are 5ths: so you can count 1-2-3-4-5 1-2-3-4-5 etc. This kind of music is very, very rare in popular and classical music. Still Canto Ostinato makes this strange deviant figure pleasant to the listener. The music is often performed by 2 or 4 piano players, but also versions for marimba, saxophone etcetera exist.

If you can afford it, it might be nice to support the composer by buying the sheetmusic from his website: http://www.simeontenholt.com/webshop/page72/page76/page76.html