The term was brought into widespread circulation by New Amsterdam Records’ publicity apparatus, intended to represent composers whose "music slips through the cracks between genres.
"[1] The term "indie classical" became controversial and by 2013, it had been strongly resisted by participants in the very community that the record label initially sought to describe.
[2] According to composer and co-founder of New Amsterdam Records, Judd Greenstein, the intention behind the term “indie classical” was a shorthand description of the kind of music they were making under a “do-it-yourself” institutional spirit.
[4] The term's usefulness is still debatable, and because it was promoted by publicists and accepted by journalists, “indie classical” could also be dismissed as outsider public relations jargon.
The online music magazine Pitchfork expanded the genre to include indie rock artists like Sufjan Stevens and Jonny Greenwood, and situated the movement as a successor to the minimalist scene of downtown NY and the group Bang on a Can.
[4] Greenstein and his colleagues became uncomfortable with the utilization of indie classical to represent a single aesthetic, and by 2013 the label had ceased using the term.
[13] Bryce Dessner explains how The Kronos Quartet delineated the perfect ethos for this movement: “non-profit, artist-driven, and with their own record labels.
Linked by an ethos more than a musical approach, the indie classical movement encompasses a wide range of styles while evading an overarching aesthetic idiosyncrasy.
Some artists, particularly within the New Amsterdam label, display certain compositional and aesthetic aspects of postminimalism: a steady pulse, additive and subtractive procedures, and tonality that is diatonic but non-functional.
[16] Some important traits of these musicians are the inherited practices from their classical training: prominent use of notation for learning and performing the music, a reserved audience behaviour, and mastery of the technical possibilities in their instrument.
and replacing it with a type of community music-making more commonly found in rock bands.”[17] Initially, the movement originated from composers in the United States, more specifically from downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn.