American composer Steve Reich has frequently acknowledged the influence of the twelfth-century French composer Perotin. In Reich's Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards (1980), the composer heavily relies on techniques used by medieval composers. For example, Perotin would take a melody, likely a segment of liturgical chant, and stretch the note durations until what had originally served as a melody now provides a harmonic underpinning. He would then place more florid melodies atop this foundation, following the overall harmonic trajectory created by the augmented chant line. In a similar fashion, Reich constructs his Variations from a single harmonic progression, which, when elongated, provides the work's key structural element. The underlying progression occurs three times; each successive repetition is increasingly adorned with elaborate melodic lines and intricate rhythms in what Michael Steinberg has called a "mega-chaconne." Reich also utilizes timbre to create variation, intriguingly blending familiar orchestral colors with electronic sounds. The resulting texture is not a homogenous contrapuntal web like those created in "like-instrument" works such as Drumming (1971) and Six Marimbas (1984); instead, constant timbral manipulations produce a multifaceted, ever-shifting landscape.

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