The body of music problematically called "minimalism" exhibits a broad range of style and sonority, particularly when comparing the austere works from the 1960s with the more lyrical works of the 1980s. This same trend can be seen in the works of Steve Reich, who, beginning with Variations from 1980 and Tehillim from 1981, presented a more orchestrationally lush, dramatic kind of minimalism that eschewed the procedural orientation of earlier works; The Desert Music, composed in 1984, represents the height of this trend. An orchestral setting of poetry by William Carlos Williams, the work combined a large ensemble with voices to convey a haunting and provocative commentary on man's ambiguous and sometimes apocalyptic relationship to technology.

After recording The Desert Music in its original form, the composer prepared an alternate version of the work for chamber ensemble. The instrumental redundancy of the full orchestra—a holdover from the height of the Romantic period—seemed at odds with the efficiency and mechanical precision suggested by modern technology and evoked so convincingly by the rapid rhythmic figurations and complex canons of Reich's minimalist style. (In fact, after The Four Sections from 1987, Reich decided to avoid writing for orchestra altogether.) Reich eliminated all doublings in the strings and voices and provided instructions for amplifying the single performers executing each part. This created a much more nimble and incisive sound, better equipped to lucidly project the individual layers of Reich's complex polyphonies. The reduction in forces takes little from the ensemble's variety: the chamber score still requires nearly 50 performers. Still, a substantial difference is heard in Reich's replacement of the brass and most of the woodwinds with keyboards. For this reason, a third scoring of The Desert Music was prepared by Alan Pierson, in consultation with the composer, for a 2002 recording by Alarm Will Sound. In this version, Pierson augments Reich's chamber version by adding seven brass players. Upon hearing the results of this re-scoring, Reich endorsed it as the definitive version of the work.

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