Philip Glass

Philip Glass, born in Baltimore in 1937, began his musical career in 1964 after years of study in New York (at the Juilliard School, where he met Steve Reich and earned a master's degree in composition) and in Paris (with Nadia Boulanger). His revelation came through Indian music, which he encountered via Ravi Shankar (sitar), with whom he composed the soundtrack for Chappaqua (1965), and Alla Rakha (tabla), who hosted him in India in 1966. After a period of hitchhiking across Africa and Asia, Glass returned to New York in 1967. There he rejected his classical training in favor of the "additive process," which consists of manipulating a basic melodic figure by adding (or subtracting) melodic units so that the music cycles according to simple mathematical algorithms.

While he was working as a handyman and a taxi driver, in the late 1960s Glass organized ensembles of keyboards and winds to perform his early experiments: Strung Out (1967) for violin, Music In The Form Of A Square (1968) for two flutes, Two Pages (1968), which ranks as his first masterpiece, Music In Contrary Motion (1969), Music In Similar Motion (1969), Music In Fifths (1970), Music For Voices (1972). They were rather cold laboratory creatures, that did not quite express an original artist but rather a curious mind.

Two Pages (1968), first recorded in march 1975 and released on Solo Music (Shandar, 1975), basically conceived of a melody as a sequence of discrete events, and proceeded to repeat that sequence and applying small changes to its repetition, thus expanding or shrinking the melody, in a fashion not too dissimilar to the way the offspring is generated by mutation from the parents' genes (except, of course, that in this case there is only one parent). Initially the two keyboards are countering each other, but eventually one becomes a mere percussive device providing a steady beat, while the other delves ever more hypnotically into swirling Bach-ian fugues. The beats spread to the point that one keyboard seems to have stopped, while the other gets more and more frenzied, more and more colorful. Its solitary dance approaches the transcendence of the ragas while the irregular beat keeps eliciting more variations. After 14 minutes, when the beat is again missing, comes the most breathtaking passage, that leads the piece to its conclusion, as if having exhausted its potential.

Music In Contrary Motion (1969) for solo organ, first recorded in march 1975 and released on Solo Music (Shandar, 1975), is a prime example of "additive process": the fast-paced, circular pattern (that, again, is never truly repeated identical) keeps getting more and more elaborate. There is, in fact, no ending to the piece: the performer plays ad libitum.

Music In Similar Motion (1969) for three keyboards, two saxophones and a flute, first recorded in june 1971 and released on Music In Similar Motion/ Music In Fifths (Chatam Square, 1973), creates a lot more dramatic tension by overlapping instruments that pronounce the melody in significantly different tones. Not only does this create a real form of minimalist polyphony but also bestows a sense of emotional purpose onto the music because here, for the first time, minimalist chamber music begins to sound like a group of instruments holding a heated debate, and not only reflecting each other for eternity.

Music In Fifths (1970), first recorded in june 1973 and released on Music In Similar Motion/ Music In Fifths (Chatam Square, 1973), was written entirely in parallel fifths to defy conventional harmony theory. The melody is repeated by organ and saxophones and gets fatter until the algorithm runs out of combinations.

Composed in 1970 and first recorded in december 1971 although released only two years later, Music With Changing Parts (Chatham Square, 1973 - Nonesuch, 1994) for at least four performers including keyboard and wind instruments as well as vocals (but originally written in open score, with no specific orchestration, and conceived as an evening-long performance) was the first major composition by Glass to surface in Manhattan's avantgarde clubs. The 1971 recording documents a performance by eight musicians: Philip Glass on electric organ and alto flute; Barbara Benary on electric violin and voice; Steve Chambers on electric organ; Jon Gibson on electric organ, soprano saxophone, flute and voice; Dickie Landry on soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, piccolo, flute and voice; Kurt Munkacsi on electronics; Arthur Murphy on electric piano. Robert Prado on trumpet, flute and voice. (Note that on the original LP side 1 and 4 make up the first disc, while side 2 and 3 make up the second disc). Here the architect of sound freed himself of his own compositional logic: analytic geometries wed improvised shifts, the lattice dilates and from the openings emotions pour out. The piece is born out of the interaction between an organ whose timbre and graceful whirlwind of notes is reminiscent of Bach's fugues and another organ that seems to simulate and stretch the process of breathing. The latter keeps growing, stretching its "lungs" to the limit, while the former slowly mutates and multiplies, emphasizing the pulsing quality of its pattern instead of the potentially melodic aspect. The pulsations, in turn, end up creating their own form of polyphony. The crystal tones compete for attention in a Darwinian soundscape that continuously reinvents itself out of the same genetic pool. Each instrument lives in a parallel universe, according to its own flow of time, although all the clocks are synchronized by the collective force they generate. The chaotic temporal reshuffling of the instrumental lines dramatically increases the entropy of the music. The music however maintains the inhuman aspect of Glass' early algorithms, relishing a formal perfection that has as its ultimate referent the nature of sound itself. The festival of tones is channeled into an ordered, low-entropy flow by the concomitant action of the two processes, one mathematical and one biological. The second part restarts from scratch, this time adding the human vocals (in the form of elongated drones) to the "choir" of instruments. Their role (and the role of the trumpet) is to balance the hopping notes of the keyboards with long, extenuating tones. A particularly long and shrill one ends the second part. The third part (that roughly begins after 31 minutes) is the most chromatically rich and propelled by a faster rhythm. The jungle of tones contrasts with the longer and louder tones of the trumpet. The fourth part (that begins after 46 minutes) again employs the voice for the dilated tones.

A gentler, warmer Philip Glass emerged from the monumental Music In Twelve Parts (1974), premiered in 1974 and first recorded in may 1975 (Parts 1-6) and in december 1987 (Parts 7-12) (by a six-piece ensemble with two keyboardists, three saxophones, and a female vocalist, no less than Joan La Barbara in the first six parts), but re-recorded in june 1993 (with the addition of a saxophone).
The score of Part 1 (1971) has twelve lines of counterpoint, which lend the piece its name (the other eleven parts came later). The lulling cyclical structures rely on individual parts that differ both in the melody, in the rhythm and in the algorithm. Longer tones, a new timbric emphasis and a stronger human presence in the vocals lend a different emotional quality to the music compared with the early austere pieces.
Part II shifts tempo towards a more festive atmosphere, with the instruments competing for rhythmic and melodic variety while the soprano engages in a pointillistic form of solfeggio. The repetition is actually more deterministic than in the first part, but somehow the process leads to the opposite extreme, sounding akin to a folk dance of medieval times and to a Chinese ballet.
In terms of hypnotic effect, nothing matches Part III, in which syllables and tentative chords compose a post-industrial mantra inspired by both spiritual Indian music and the frenetic and dissonant Western lifestyle.
Part IV performs one of the most mesmerizing metamorphoses. It opens slowly in the Bach-ian fashion of some of his early compositions. Then it quietly accelerates while weaving variation after variation on a static chord. Subtly this flow splits in two strands: the vocals are part of a childish pattern that seems to chant a nursery rhyme while one of the organs carries a dancing melody alone. This harmony is suddenly broken, with one of the keyboards playing a dissonant "remix" of the melody and the vocals emitting long drones and another keyboard spinning the melody at supersonic speed in a timbre worthy of an amusement park's ride. This triple partition survives until the orgasmic ending.
Part V is, instead, one of the most lively and uplifting pieces, a sort of Vivaldi of minimalism, with broad tonal strokes and carillon-like rhythms, and relatively little variation.
Celestial vocals provide a mellow undercurrent for the fibrillating theme of Part VI, but they eventually take over and prove to be harsher than the tremor that they were trying to placate.
The very long Part VII is the one movement that is very reminiscent of the austere and geometric compositions of the early years. Even the melismatic singing by the soprano, that (after the fourth minute's sudden soaring of the music) requires acrobatic skills, lacks the human touch that the previous parts had.
Another "Vivaldian" movement, Part VIII, restores the vibrant and joyful atmosphere of the first movements. The soprano emits Gregorian-like wails, while harpsichord-like keyboards keep a frantic polyrhythm and other instruments (with the flute slowly upstaging the others) repeating an ascending-descending pattern. After ten minutes all the currents meet and the soprano starts singing a folkish melody accompanied by the ever more chaotic fanfare.
Part IX (the shortest piece) presides over the most complete transformation of a pattern, while Part X is the exact opposite, containing very little of interest. Neither stands up to the standards of the previous eight movements.
Part XI too seems alien to the program of the first eight movements. It is ostensibly a different kind of study, in which "the harmony changes with every new figure".
The work closes with the "scherzo" of Part XII, that sounds like a traditional soprano gurgling an operatic aria with the accompaniment of an ensemble that adapts to the melody of the vocals and fills out the blanks.
The last movement heralds the Copernican revolution of Einstein on the Beach, and the previous three sound like fillers to achieve the magic number of twelve. The real deal is contained in the first eight movements, particularly parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8.

The mannerism that was still kept at bay in this work burst forth in the subsequent soundtracks: for the cinema (North Star, a collection of "ambient" miniatures that employed the human voice for the first time and were later turned into chart hits in disco versions), for the theater (the monumental four-and-a-half-hour Einstein On The Beach, created with Bob Wilson), and for ballet (Dance). These works gradually incorporated counterpoint and harmony, making them more immediately accessible and bringing Glass fame and success, although they were at times sterile and lacking in innovation. The additive process that had been at the core of Reich's music was now employed by Glass to achieve more readily appealing sonic effects. It is no coincidence that from this point on his output was devoted almost entirely to soundtracks, whether for film or for the theater.

Dressed Like an Egg (1977) is a piece of incidental music composed for the Mabou Mines theater company.

Mad Rush (1979) is a work for solo organ.

The five Dance compositions (1978�86), scored for voice, electronics, flutes, and saxophones, constitute the first masterpiece of this period for their purity and exuberance, overflowing with ideas drawn from waltzes, music boxes, and Anglican hymns (Nos. 1, 3, and especially 5), as well as Riley-like minimalist solos (Nos. 2 and especially 4, a majestic and deeply moving requiem of Brucknerian intensity).

Over four hours long, Einstein On The Beach (1996) is an opera scored on a libretto by Bob Wilson (but the nonsensical lyrics are merely numbers and syllables). This is his most rigorous work, imbued with a mechanistic spirit that strips the singing of emotional expression (the texts consist solely of numbers and vowels) and adopts an industrial pulse laden with technological references. The ensemble includes singer Iris Hiskey, violinist Paul Zukofsky, flutist Richard Landry, saxophonists Jon Gibson and Richard Peck, organist Michael Riesman (in addition to Glass himself). Throughout the opera's five acts, the process of layering instrumental and vocal parts reaches its culmination, at times elevated into the intense sacredness of a religious ritual (the chorus of adult and children's male voices intertwining in a glacial, martial manner in Knee Play 1, the chorus of basses and tenors accompanied only by violin in Knee Play 4), at other times transformed into the playful momentum of a harmonic puzzle (Hiskey's frantic solf�ge and sob-like vocalizations amid the feverish flute and saxophone rhythms of Train, the bustling operatic gathering of Night Train, the vertiginous frequencies of violin, organ, and voice in Dance 2, the reverberations of the a cappella chorus in Knee Play 3), and at still other times expressing the alienating worldview of a cosmic yearning (the female chorus reflected into infinity at the end of Train, the dialogues of the absurd between saxophones and clarinet in Building, Hiskey's desolate singing over the slow, hypnotic cadence of the organ in Bed, the apocalyptic whirlwinds of Spaceship). The most evocative passages are those for violin, which provide much of the opera's lyrical quality.

Einstein on the Beach (the logical evolution of the program inaugurated with Music In Twelve Parts) and Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians are the works that mark a new era for the movement that used to be called "minimalism". Glass, in particular, is an ambiguous composer, not always as revolutionary as his peers but always much more capable of taking advantage of the zeitgeist and of connecting with the masses.

The opera Satyagraha (premiered in september 1980) was Glass' first recording with the classical orchestra, although it remained faithful to key aspects of his aesthetic: phonetic obsession, wave-like counterpoint, cyclic melodies, baroque-like atmospheres. Like its predecessor, it was largely a moral and political work that dealt with not too distant events and with issues that were still current. Each act of the opera is dedicated to a historical figure: Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore, Martin Luther King (respectively the past, present and future of Gandhi's ideology of Satyagraha while he was still alive). Musically, it introduced minimalist repetition into the format of the classical opera. While classical opera emphasizes the arias and rewards acrobatic vocals, Glass' opera repeats a melodic motif until the repetitions come to constitute an emotional resonance that replaces the suspense of the action. As usual, the "repetition" is not literal but mutating via the usual "additive" process of addition and subtraction of notes while the pattern is being repeated. This time, however, Glass stuck religiously to tonal chords.
The "Tolstoy" act opens with On the Kuru Field of Justice, a pompous aria that draws from both Verdi and Russian folk music. The music grows slowly but steadily, with another voice joining the first one, and then another one, and the orchestra making itself felt more and more decisively with its celestial oscillatory movement. Eventually the choir assails the strings with all its power, only to decay and leave the tenor alone again.
The sublime, tragic melody in the strings of Tolstoy Farm (1910) is taken up by the soprano, and then by a female choir. Always underscored by the suave movement of the strings, the female voices engage in an intricate counterpoint with the leading male voice and the flute, eventually peaking with a collective lament that sounds like a requiem.
If the first movement emphasizes melodrama and the second one emphasizes melody, Glass' typical repetitive frenzy dominates the third one, The Vow (1906), a nice contrast to the massive vocal architecture.
"Tagore", the second act, opens with the phonetic game of Confrontation and Rescue (1896): the percussive vowels and syllables, pronounced in unison by all the singers, create the dramatic tension that is then lifted by a whirlwind of strings to a higher orbit. After a second cycle of the same idea, the soprano emerges to take the lead in a powerful tone. And the male choir responds by using the same "percussive" style in unison to continue the dialogue and bring it to its apotheosis. This is probably the zenith of pathos for the entire opera.
Rhythmic vocal techniques are employed again in Indian Opinion (1906) over the propulsive repetitive/additive dance of the strings.
Protest (1908) breaks the pace by retreating to a mournful and subdued theme, but the voices soon launch in a Beethoven-ian crescendo, although Glass does not seem capable to sustain their progress.
The third act, "King" contains only one piece, New Castle March (1913), structured in three movements. This act is vastly inferior to the previous two. And it is not the first time that Glass seems to exceed his welcome by protracting a work after having exhausted what he had to say. The act, however, closes with an insistent melodic theme that is second only to Tolstoy Farm.
While it is hard to condone the self-indulgence and the amateurish theatrical skills, this opera was even more influential than Einstein to legitimize minimalism within the crowds of the classical theater.

Glassworks (1982) for solo piano and string-less orchestras contains the cosmic melancholy of Facades.

The soundtrack Koyaanisqatsi (originally composed in november 1981, first recorded in 1982 and released in 1983, re-recorded restoring missing material in 1998) was the first part of a trilogy for director Godfrey Reggio, and became an international hit. After the bleak Gregorian passacaglia for bass voice and keyboards Koyaanisqatsi, the sprightly and intricate vocal counterpoint of Vessels introduce a less austere and more lightweight face of Glass' additive process. A peak of pathos is reached in the soaring second part of Pruit Igoe for strings, brasses and voices (mechanically repeating patterns of vowels in a fashion similar to the repetitive patterns of most of the instruments). A swirling keyboard pattern launches the variations of The Grid (of which only 14 minutes of the original 21 appeared on the first edition), under whose austere surface one can hear references to baroque and medieval music. The closing movement, Prophecies (of which only eight of the 13 minutes appeared on the first edition), returns to the somber monastery-inspired atmosphere of the first movement.

Photographer (1983) is a multimedia piece inspired by the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge.

The "Egyptian" opera Akhnaten (composed in july 1983 and premiered in march 1984), also written in an archaic language (ancient Egyptian), continues Glass' slow drift towards the romantic melodrama, and employs for the first time multiple simultaneous tonal centers. The first act opens with the stately strings-only melody and pace of the Prelude. When the entire orchestra joins in with a complementary algorithm, the atmosphere turns menacing and, after the wind instruments jump in, even barbaric. The trombones, in particular, introduce a sense of pomp and doom in Glass' music. Percussion, choir and brass instruments dominate Funeral of Amenhotep III, the epitome of the opera's magniloquence. but the effect is facile and too reminiscent of Hollywood's big historical productions. Strings and trumpets intone an elegiac melody at the beginning of The Coronation of Akhnaten. The orchestral and choral emphasis that soon follows does little to enhance that melody's charm. Glass' "additive" process risks becoming a curse when it's applied to a classical format. The third scene of the first act, The Window of Appearances boasts two intertwined arias that evoke, respectively, renaissance music (the castrato) and romantic music (the soprano), with an orchestral soundscape that is initially loose and abstract. Again, the magic is lost when the brass instruments take over. It appears that Glass is much more effective at managing voices than the loudest instruments of the orchestra.
The Temple, the first scene of the second act, begins with a mournful hymn and later employs the percussive phonetic effect. The spoken-word interludes (in plain English) certainly do not help maintain a high level of interest, nor does the Spanish-tinged Dance of the third scene. The fourth scene, Hymn, has a mid section full of pathos, when the horns duet with the singer over the rhythm of the strings, and a choral finale that rolls out quite nicely from the preceding orchestral setup. sounds positively aimless The third act opens with the aimless The Family, followed by the vehement and propulsive Attack and Fall, where the attacks of choir and brass finally come together in full force. Unfortunately, as usual, the last act is the weakest, with too much material that sounds trivial fluff (and more of the tedious spoken-word "subtitles").
The difference in timbre and atmosphere between this opera and the first ones is remarkable. Glass is becoming the Vangelis of minimalism. Since neither the melodies nor the techniques are particularly innovative, one is left with the impression that this opera is merely a "remixing" of ideas that were already explored in the previous ones.

These works of the early 1980s constitute the most successful attempt at popularizing the techniques of minimalism. However, the baroque artifices of their elaborate scores represent a symptom of the decline of the movement's ideological and aesthetic premises.

In the second half of the 1980s, Glass became one of the most sought-after composers by the film industry, for which he wrote Mishima (1985), scored for strings and percussion; by the ballet world, for which he composed In The Upper Room (1986), enveloped in majestic suspense and Baroque reverberations (especially Dance II and Dance VIII); and by popular music, in which he ventured with the song cycle Songs For Liquid Days (1986).

Above all, however, it was in opera (having meanwhile composed the scores for The Juniper Tree, 1986, and The Civil Wars, 1984) that Glass found the ideal medium for his grandiloquent psychological drama. The Fall Of The House Of Usher (1987), haunted by Gothic and Expressionist atmospheres, and above all the daring 1000 Airplanes On The Roof (1989), a psychodrama for speaking voice, soprano syllables, and a small synthesizer ensemble, are his most spectacular achievements. Together with the trilogy (Einstein, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten), these works make him the Wagner of minimalism�but a Wagner who, in reality, specialized in the passacaglia, the technique of continuous variations that flourished in the French Baroque and constitutes much of his technical vocabulary.

The opera The Witches of Venice (1995) is based on a children's book.

Persephone (1987) is a five-movement orchestral and choral work for Robert Wilson's installation.

Film scores include: Powaqqatsi (Nonesuch, 1988), the second Godfrey Reggio collaboration, The Thin Blue Line (Nonesuch, 1988), A Brief History of Time, Anima Mundi, Hamburger Hill, Candyman, Compassion In Exile, Kundun (Nonesuch, 1998), Dracula (Nonesuch, 1999), scored for string quartet, The Truman Show (1999), etc.

Operas include: The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1988), with libretto by writer Doris Lessing, the mediocre Hydrogen Jukebox (1990), with libretto by beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the extravagant The Voyage (1992), a trilogy based on the films of Jean Cocteau, (Orphee, 1993, La Belle et La Bete, 1995, which ranks as one of his most lyrical pieces, and Les Enfants Terribles), the "digital opera" Monsters of Grace (1998), one of the most hyped productions of all time (another collaboration with Robert Wilson, including 13 computer-animated 3D videos created by Jeffrey Kleiser and Diana Walczac, viewed with 3D glasses by audiences distributed around the world), The Mysteries and What's so Funny, In the Penal Colony (2000), Naqoyqatsi (2001), the final installment of Godfrey Reggio's trilogy (masterfully enhanced with moving cello and xylophone melodies), White Raven (2001), Galileo Galilei (2002), etc.

Dance pieces include: A Descent into the Maelstrom, which sounds like a variation on the Mishima soundtrack, Dancissimo (2001), etc.

Glass has also composed five string quartets (1966, 1983, 1985, 1988, 1991), of which the third, fourth (the very bleak fourth) and fifth rank among his most ambitious works, The Hours for piano and string quartet (also available in a solo piano arrangement by Michael Riesman), the orchestral works The Light (1987), Itaipu' (1988), The Canyon (1988), Symphony No 1 (1992), Symphony No 2 (1993), based on themes from Bowie & Eno's Low, Symphony No 3 for string orchestra (1993), Symphony No 4 (1996), based on themes from Bowie & Eno's Heroes, the indulgent and much more massive Symphony No 5 for chorus, voice, and orchestra (that pays homage to the ancient religions of the world), the equally imposing Symphony No 6 (2002), with texts by Allen Ginsberg, Symphony No 7 (2005) and Symphony No 8 (2005). But his symphonies were mostly trivial and disappointing. Concertos include: Violin Concerto (1987), possibly his best, the lighthearted Concerto for Saxophone Quartet (1995), Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra (2000), the bombastic Cello Concerto (2001), Cello Concerto 2 (2002), Harpsichord Concerto (2002), Piano Concerto 1 "Tirol Concerto" (2000), Piano Concerto 2 (2004), Four Movements for Two Pianos (2008), Double Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra (2010) Piano Concerto 3 (2017), etc.

Works for the piano are collected on Solo Piano (Venture, 1989), Circles (Materiali Sonori, 1998), Minimal Piano Works, Volume 1 (Piano Productions, 1999), Piano Music (Romeo, 2000), Glass Cage (Arabesque, 2000), Etudes for Piano (Orange Mountain, 2003), etc.

Organ works are performed on Glass Organ Works (Catalyst, 1993) and Music for Organ (Nimbus, 2001).

Glassmasters (Sony, 1997) is a three-disc anthology.

The Fog Of War (Orange Mountain, 2003) was yet another soundtrack. 600 Lines; How Now (Stradivarius, 2003) collects two 1968 performances. Orion (2004) consists of seven chamber concertos for different instruments (mostly exotic ones).

Analog (Orange Mountain, 2006) collects unreleased recordings of the late 1970s.

The Illusionist (2007) is the soundtrack for Dick Pope's film.

Dances And Sonata (2007) debuted the Trilogy Sonata, based on interludes from Einstein On The Beach, Satyagraha and Akhnaten.

Sonata for Violin and Piano (2008)

Kepler (premiered in 2009) is an opera sung in German and Latin.

Glass also kept composing symphonies: Symphony No 9 (composed in 2011), scored for large symphony orchestra with expanded brass and percussion, Symphony No 10 (2012), Symphony No 11 (2017), Symphony No 12 (2019) and Symphony No 13 (2022).

The Passion Of Ramakrishna (2006 premiere) is an oratorio for soloists, chorus and large orchestra, a tribute to Indian spiritual leader Sri Ramakrishna.