Philip Glass

Composer and musician

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

Today’s avant-garde music, if it is successful and accessible, can become the popular music of tomorrow. Philip Glass, whose performance spaces in the late 1960s were limited to lofts and galleries in New York’s SoHo district, and whose audiences consisted only of the hip followers of avant-garde, twenty years later had became an accepted and popular musician whose music is heard on radio, television, film scores, and major performance spaces throughout the United States and Europe. His music is often classified with the minimalist movement. And, although he rejects the nomenclature and the placement, his work does have the characteristics of repetition and modular form which are the hallmarks of classical minimalism. However, his use of amplified instruments and tendency toward a loud driving beat give his music its unique appeal to a young audience brought up on rock music.

“Glass’s music has its roots in a moment of exhaustion—the period, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when music seemed to have nowhere to go,” explains Annalyn Swan in New Republic.”Romanticism appeared irrevocably dead. Serialism, which had begun in the 1920s as a brave new musical language, a welcome antidote to the excess of the late romantics, had in turn composed itself into a corner. Not only were notes subject to rigid mathematical formulas; so too, in the total serialism that followed Schoenberg and Webern, were rhythm and dynamics. Music had become dense, cerebral, and forbidding.” Enter minimalism.

Minimalism is often thought to have it’s roots in the 1950s with La Mont Young because of his fascination with sustained and repeated tones. Terry Riley’s 1964 piece, In C, with its steady eight-note pulse, became the model for later minimalist compositions. But while In C is a set of rules providing a framework for improvisation by the musicians, Glass’s music is strictly composed in standard notation. Another early influence on minimalism was Steve Reich. His experiments with tape loops repeating musical themes that moved in and out of phase, foreshadowed minimalism’s use of modular forms interacting to reveal harmonic and rhythmic variety.

Tim Page, in High Fidelity, provides an overview of minimalism and, incidentally, an excellent description of Glass’s style: “Most immediately striking is the music’s incessantly static nature. Minimalism implies fascination with repetition—through either the continual reiteration of brief, elegant melodic modules or the use of extended, drone-like held tones or chords. Compositional material is usually limited to a few elements, which are subjected to transformational processes. One shouldn’t expect standard Western musical events (sforzandos, diminuendos, etc.) in these scores, rather, the listener is immersed in a sonic weather, in an aural

For the Record…

Born January 31, 1937, in Baltimore, Md.; son of Benjamin (owner of a record store) and Ida (Gouline) Glass; married JoAnne Akalaitas (an actress and theater director; divorced); married Luba Burtyk (a physician), October, 1980; children: (first marriage) Juliet, Zachary. Education: University of Chicago, B.A., 1956; Juilliard School of Music, M.S. in composition, 1962; studied privately with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

Began playing piano as a young child, and studied flute beginning at age eight; while attending Juilliard School of Music, composed more than 70 pieces in the traditional classical style; became interested in non-Western styles of music; worked for a time notating the works of Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar; composer and musician with experimental theater group Mabou Mines in the 1960s; composer of operas, including Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten; composer and musician with Philip Glass Ensemble, 1968—.

Addresses: Home —New York City. Agent —Performing Artservices, 325 Spring St., New York, NY 10013.

kaleidoscope that slowly turns, revolves, develops and changes.”

Glass’s joyful and exuberant music can be seen as a reaction against the overintellectualized music of serialism in which the mathematical correctness and inner-consistency of the composition became more important than the effect the music had on the listener—the listener was, in fact, unimportant. Glass saw that the listener is an active participant in the music; the listener completes the piece. Without the listener there is no music. But his music places new demands on those accustomed to conventional music.

As he expressed it in the liner notes to Music in 12 Parts: “It may happen that some listeners, missing the usual musical structures (or landmarks) by which they are used to orient themselves may experience some initial difficulties in actually perceiving the music. However, when it becomes apparent that nothing ‘happens’ in the usual sense, but that, instead, the gradual accretion of musical material can and does serve as the basis of the listener’s attention, then he can perhaps discover another mode of listening—one in which neither memory nor anticipation has a part in sustaining the texture, quality, or reality of the musical experience.” For Glass, music is not narrative, not intended to conjure up mental pictures. The meaning of the music is the music itself.

Glass’s first professional compositions fit the minimalist format. He worked with a few notes, repeating them consistently, with the only variation being intensity and duration. His later work contains much more variety. He began to turn toward traditional melody and harmony although the driving, rock-influenced rhythm continued to be an important trademark of his music.

Glass was raised in Baltimore, where his father owned a record store, His exposure to piano began as he listened to his older brother and sister practice their lessons. At age eight he studied flute at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. An intellectually precocious youth, he entered the University of Chicago at age 15 and studied philosophy and mathematics before beginning his formal music education. He graduated from the prestigious Juilliard School of Music in 1964 with a degree in composition. At Juilliard he was very productive, writing over 70 compositions, although he considers this early work, in the traditional classical style, unremarkable. Then, on a Fulbright grant, he went to Paris to study with the renowned Nadia Boulanger. As he told Time, “Boulanger believed that the training we got in America was simply not thorough enough. She was convinced that at age 27 I had to redo completely my musical education.”

Although his musical education was extensive, it was not until he took a job notating the music of Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar for director Conrad Rooks’s movie “Chappaqua,” that he found his own voice. “Ravi and his tabla player, Alla Rahka, kept telling me I was getting it all wrong”, he told Time.”No matter how I tried to notate the music, they kept shaking their heads. Out of sheer desperation, I just eliminated the bar lines altogether—which, of course, revealed the fact that Indians don’t divide music, the way Western theory says it must be done. Instead, they add to it. That was the closest I’ll ever get to a moment when the creative light suddenly kicks on.” Later, he traveled extensively in India absorbing more about this music, which his Juilliard training had dismissed as primitive.

While in Paris in the early 1960s Glass became associated with an experimental theater collective for which he was resident musician. Soon the group found that there was not a large enough audience in Paris to support American experimental theater. Most of the group left Paris in 1967 to settle in New York where it has become well established as the Mabou Mines. Glass has written over a dozen scores for the group.

His involvement with theater eventually led him to opera. “I have often said that I became an opera composer by accident,” Glass explains in his book, although Robert Wilson, with whom he collaborated on his first opera, told Time: “Phil has a keen visual sense and a profound understanding of drama and theater, especially its visual content. Because of him, all kinds of people who thought that opera was something that belonged to the 19th century have come to appreciate it.”

Glass’s first, and most well received, opera is Einstein on the Beach, an almost five-hour work created in collaboration with designer/director Robert Wilson. It was performed throughout Europe before coming to the Metropolitan Opera in November 1976. High Fidelity reported that John Rockwell of the New York Times declared himself “profoundly—religiously—moved” by the performance. The work redefined the popular notion of opera. The libretto consists of number-counting and solfege syllables (do, re, me). And, instead of an orchestra, the score is performed by amplified ensemble. Although Einstein sold out the Metropolitan Opera for two performances and became the most talked-about event of the season, it closed in debt.

His second opera, Satyagraha, was commissioned by the city of Rotterdam, Holland, and premiered there in September 1980. It was based on the period of Gandhi’s life (1893-1914) that he spent in South Africa evolving his philosophy of nonviolence. The Sanskrit libretto is drawn from the Bhagavad Gita. The third opera, Akhnaten, about the Egyptian pharaoh completes a trilogy representing, through the lives of three remarkable individuals, the themes of science (Einstein), politics (Gandhi) and religion (Akhnaten). Rothstein, in New Republic, explains Glass’s approach to opera: “His is not the narrative style of nineteenth-century music, in which a musical idea is subjected to evolutionary analysis and development. Nor is it the style of Romantic operas in which there are rigorous links between personality and music. This music is suited to stagecraft. It evokes without exploring.”

Between operas, Glass composes music and plays with the Philip Glass Ensemble. He formed this group in 1968 as an outlet for his unorthodox music. It is an equally unorthodox ensemble consisting of keyboards, saxophones, flute, and a female singer. Their sound engineer is considered an integral member of the group. They embarked on their first American tour in 1972.

Like many contemporary composers and musicians, Glass has used the recording studio almost as another instrument. His approach to making a recording is unorthodox. As he told down beat: “Many people recording classical music still try to create the illusion that the listener is in a concert hall. We would never do that. We’re trying to create the impression that you’re listening to a record.” About the recording of Satyagraha, for instance, Gregory Sandow remarks in Saturday Review, “The orchestral instruments were recorded one by one and then electronically mixed; the result is magically transparent—and, by symphonic standards, utterly unreal.”

Since record companies were not eager to back Glass’s early works, he released several titles on his own Chatham Square label. However, his most popular work, Glassworks, was released by CBS in 1982 and sold over 100, 000 copies. His album most oriented toward the popular audience is Songs from Liquid Days with lyrics composed by popular musicians Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Paul Simon and Suzanne Vega. The music is performed by musicians from his ensemble and the Kronos Quartet; Linda Ronstadt, the Roches, and others contribute vocals.

In 1978, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians called Glass an “American composer of the extreme avant-garde.” A decade later he had become one of the most successful classical musicians of the post-Romantic era.

Selected discography

Music with Changing Parts, Chatham Square.

Music in Similar Motion/Music in Fifths, Chatham Square.

Solo Music, Shandar.

Music in Twelve Parts—Parts 1 and 2, Caroline.

Strung out for Amplified Violin, Music Observations.

North Star, Virgin.

Mad Rush/Dressed Like an Egg, Soho News.

Einstein on the Beach, CBS Masterworks.

Einstein on the Beach (excerpts), Tomato.

Dance Nos. 1 & 2, Tomato.

Glassworks, CBS.

The Photographer, CBS.

Koyaanisqatsi, Antilles/Island.

Satyagraha, CBS Masterworks.

Mishima, Nonesuch.

Songs from Liquid Days, CBS.

Company, (Kronos Quartet), Elektra/Nonesuch.

The Official Music of the XXIIIrd Olympiad, Los Angeles 1984: The Olympian, CBS.

Dancepieces, CBS.

Akhnaten, CBS.

Powaqqatsi, Elektra/Nonesuch, 1988.

Sources

Books

Glass, Philip, Music by Philip Glass, Harper, 1987.

Periodicals

down beat, December, 1983; February, 1984; April, 1986.

High Fidelity, November, 1981.

Life, August, 1981.

New Republic, December 12, 1983; January 28, 1985.

People, 1980.

Time, June 3, 1985; August 1, 1988.

—Tim LaBorie

Philip Glass

The American composer Philip Glass (born 1937) had a tremendous impact on all contemporary music. His brand of music, called minimalism, merged Eastern concepts of time with Western musical elements, altering the perception of music. He has been one of the most provocative, visible, and controversial composers of his generation.

Philip Glass was the leading composer/performer of the musical movement called minimalism, which emphasized musical process rather than complex musical structures. He simplified the traditional organizing factors of Western music—such as harmony, melody, modulation, and rhythm—and concentrated on creating complex layers of sound through a minimum of musical manipulation. His pieces utilized repetitive cycles of rhythm, similar to Hindu ragas, which change slowly over long periods of time and are said to produce a trance-like state in some listeners. In fact, Glass's works can be described as the grafting of Eastern concepts of space, time, and change on Western musical elements such as diatonic harmony. Divisive rhythm (that is, rhythm organized according to one unit of duration and its divisions) is replaced by the addition of rhythmic cycles that, when joined, move like wheels within wheels—everything precisely organized but constantly changing.

Philip Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on January 31, 1937. His youth was characterized by a number of remarkable successes. A precocious child, he advanced quickly as a scholar and student of the flute and entered the University of Chicago at the age of 14. After receiving a bachelor of arts in 1956, he entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1958 and pursued composition studies with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. By 1965 Glass had composed over 100 works, 40 of which had been published. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including a Broadcast Music Industry Award (1960), the Lado Prize (1961), two Benjamin Awards (1961, 1962), a Ford Foundation grant (1962), and a Young Composers' Award (1964).

Despite these achievements, Glass increasingly felt that his compositional style, based on the 12-tone and advanced rhythmic and harmonic forms popular at Juilliard, was no longer a meaningful outlet for his creativity. In hopes of revitalizing his music, the composer left for Paris in 1964 to study composition with Nadia Boulanger on a Fulbright Fellowship.

Reliance on Cyclic Rhythm

Lessons with this famous teacher had less of an impact on Glass than did his later exposure to non-Western music. He travelled extensively to India, Tibet, and Tunisia, and in 1965 he became a working assistant to the virtuoso sitar player, Ravi Shankar. Through notating Eastern music for a film and studying tabla music with the well known Indian percussionist, Alla Rakha, Glass gained an understanding of the modular-form style of Indian music. Shortly thereafter he completely rejected his earlier compositional style and began to rely solely on the Eastern principle of cyclic rhythm to organize his pieces. Harmony and modulation were added later, but these usually consisted only of a few static chords.

After returning from Europe in 1967 the composer organized the Philip Glass Ensemble, a seven-member group consisting of three electric keyboarders and three wind players with one sound engineer. They made their debut in New York on April 13, 1968, and embarked on the first of several European tours the following year. Notable works from this period include Pieces in the Shape of a Square (1968), Music in Fifths (1969), Music for Voices (1972), Music in Twelve Parts (1971-1974), and Music with Changing Parts (1970), which was the first album released by Glass' recording company, Chatham Records.

Glass' reputation as a serious composer suffered during this experimental period. Support from the academic community dropped off almost completely. However, a small cult following continued to grow. The appearance of the ensemble at the Royal College of Art in London in 1970 drew support from the visual arts. And in 1974 the first parts of Music in Twelve Parts were released on Virgin Records, a progressive rock label, thereby increasing his exposure to the popular music audience. Before long Glass counted such popular performers as David Bowie and Brian Eno among his fans, and the effects of his works could be seen in the rock music of Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd. His ability to appeal to numerous musical factions caused him to be described as a "crossover" phenomenon—an artist with a small following who suddenly connects with a mass audience. Indeed, according to David Ewen, he is the only composer ever to have received standing ovations at three such varied musical venues as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, and the Bottom Line (a New York City rock club).

Einstein on the Beach

Glass' alliance with the visual arts prompted a collaboration with Robert Wilson, the painter, architect, and leader in the world of avant-garde theater. Einstein on the Beach, Glass' best known work, was enthusiastically received at its premier in Avignon, France, on July 25, 1976. More a series of "events" than an opera, this full-length stage work explores through dance and movement the same concepts of time and change that Glass investigated through music. Several characters appear as Einstein, one playing repetitive motives on a violin; a chorus intones repetitive series of numbers and clichés; dancers and actors perform repetitive actions such as moving back and forth across the stage in slow motion. Einstein on the Beach has less to do with meaning than concept. "Go to Einstein and enjoy the sights and sounds," advises Robert Wilson in one interview, "feel the feelings they evoke. Listen to the Pictures." The opera was successfully produced throughout Europe and in 1984 it played to sold-out houses in New York. Its artistic success, however controversial, rests with its ability to consistently engage audience attention, to alter mood and provoke thought, and to force the theater-goer to actively supply the organization, structure, and meaning of the opera.

Glass followed this work with other theater successes. Satyagraha, commissioned by the city of Rotterdam in 1980, is the ritual embodiment of pacifist spirituality. Based on the life of Gandhi, the opera unfolds as a series of tableaux tracing his early life. The libretto is derived solely from the Bhagavad Gita and is sung in Sanskrit. It is said to be one of Glass' most lyric works.

Glass' later compositions included The Photographer, a chamber opera based on the life of the early 20th-century inventor Eadweard Muybridge (Amsterdam, 1982). Akhnaton, Glass' third opera, was produced at the Stuttgart Opera in 1984. In addition, Glass scored for films: the music for Mark di Suvero, Sculptor, directed by François de Ménil, was issued by Virgin Records as North Star in 1977. And Koyaanisqatsi was successfully received at the New York Film Festival in 1982. Glass composed numerous works for the Mabou Mines theater productions and choreographers Lucinda Childs, Alvin Ailey, and Jerome Robbins have incorporated his pieces into their repertoires.

Glass also collaborated with Robert Wilson on another opera, The Civil Wars: (a tree is best measured when it is down) and worked on a piece based on the writings of Doris Lessing called The Making of the Representative of Planet 8. In 1985 Glass teamed with composer Robert Moran and director Andrei Serban to produce the opera The Juniper Tree based on a Brothers Grimm fairytale.

Glass continued his collaborative efforts into the 1990's. He composed three operas based on films by the deceased Jean Cocteau, French author and movie director. Orphee, composed by Glass in 1993, followed the sound-track of the film closely. In La Belle et la Bete (1994), Glass went one step further, stripping the film of its soundtrack and creating a live and carefully synchronized operatic accompaniment that took its place among his finest and most exciting works. In Les Enfants Terribles (1996) Glass teamed with choreographer Susan Marshall to tell the story through instrumental music and dance rather than singing.

In 1997 Glass composed and recorded a symphony based on the David Bowie album Heroes. One reviewer remarked in New Statesman (February 14, 1997) that Glass needed to be given credit for helping take a giant hammer to the wall that traditionally separated classical and rock music. In the same article Glass commented that, "Just as composers of the past have turned to music of their time to fashion new works, the work of Bowie became an inspiration for symphonies of my own."

Further Reading

Most of the information on Philip Glass is available in periodicals such as TIME (June 19, 1978), High Fidelity/Musical America (April 1979), and People (October 6, 1980). Two particularly good articles appear in Contact, no. 11 (1975) and no. 13 (1976). An excellent, detailed essay on Glass can be found in David Ewen's American Composers (1982). Robert Palmer's discussion of the composer's background and development in the record insert for Einstein on the Beach (Tomato Records, 1978) is noteworthy. Most of Glass' works can be obtained on Chatham, Virgin, Tomato, or CBS records.

For periodical articles about Philip Glass see: American Record Guide, September-October 1996; Time, December 9, 1996; and New Statesman, February 14, 1997.

For on-line resources about Philip Glass see: http://www.biography.com. □

Philip Glass 1937–, American composer, b. Baltimore. Considered one of the most innovative of contemporary composers, he was a significant figure in the development of minimalism in music. Glass attended the Juilliard School of Music (M.A., 1962) and studied (1964–66) with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. There he also met Indian musicians Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha, whose music was to influence his own compositions strongly. In 1968 he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble, a small group that employs electronically amplified instruments. During the 1970s he became known for music that blended standard notation and tonality with electronics. These lengthy and highly rhythmic compositions employ a number of phrases that are repeated and slowly modified during the music's course. The purest form of this style is represented in the four-hour-long Music in 12 Parts (1971–74).

More traditional harmonies entered his music with the opera Einstein on the Beach (1976), a work written with Robert Wilson that introduced the minimalist style to a mass audience and paved the way for a wider acceptance of contemporary opera. The meditative Einstein is without narrative plot and blends light, image, and sound as well as dance, words, and music into a hypnotic whole. Glass's work since has become more complex and varied. His operas have become his best-known compositions; Satyagraha (1980), Akhnaten (1984), The Fall of the House of Usher (1988), Hydrogen Jukebox (1990, a collaboration with Allen Ginsberg ), The Voyage (1992), and La Belle et la Bête (1994, composed for Cocteau 's film) followed Einstein. Three more had their American debuts in 2001— The Marriages between Zones 3, 4 and 5 (1997); the epic White Raven (1998), another collaboration with Wilson; and the smaller-scale In the Penal Colony (2001), based on Kafka 's short story. Later operas are Galileo Galilei (2002); Waiting for the Barbarians (2005), based on a Coetzee novel; and Appomattox (2007). Glass's other compositions include symphonies, concertos, string quartets, songs, and film scores, e.g., the harmonically lush music for Koyaanisqatsi (1982). Glass's work has been extremely influential in the development of a new generation of composers.

Bibliography: See his Music by Philip Glass (1987); R. Kostelanetz, ed., Writings on Glass (1997); Philip Glass: Looking Glass (documentary, 2005).

Glass, Philip (1937– ) US composer. Glass studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, where he met Ravi Shankar and became interested in non-Western music. Glass was a pioneer of minimalism, his style characterized by hypnotic repetition of short motifs within a simple harmonic idiom. He has written operas, notably Einstein on the Beach (1976) and Akhnaten (1984), and instrumental works including the first symphony (1992) and the second symphony (1994).