Philip Glass: Classic or Dud? Search and Destroy

Destroy: Powanaquatsi (the film as a whole... the soundtrack is, eh, decent).

Search: His quartets.

Destroy: Solo piano works.

you're combining it with reich's "music for eighteen musicians"

Hm, I didn't know Willis was at Juillard back in the day. But I know what you mean. I have a ton of stuff by Glass, back when I was way into him, but I don't find myself listening to it all that much, except for Low Symphony, Glassworks, Koyaanisqatsi, and Music for 12 Musicians. The first three probably being more of his accessible stuff.

I noticed the mistake in the earlier post, too, then made it myself. Long day featuring Bio Midterm can be the blame for that one.

Search: Glassworks, Dancepieces, North Star, Thin Blue Line, remix of Aphex Twin's "Icct Hedral", his appearance with Mark Moore and Paul Morley on The Late Show in 1989.

Destroy: 1000 Airplanes On The Roof (unlike North Star this remains unredeemed in the neglected parental-home vinyl collection), Powaqqatsi (strangely distressing to hear chunks of this in The Truman Show) and all the other film work, 1990 onwards.

also you are fun to read, which it has been proved enlarges the reader's brain even when they actually want it ensmallened like me

"...f______ paragraph breaks..."? Tossing naughty language hither thither isn't very nice. For shame. Besides, I read a phonebook the other day, and it didn't have very many paragraph breaks.

Yes, Mister Rogers is an actual composer, among other good things, but whether or not HE'S a classic or a dud isn't really the issue at hand (classic). This question answering and exploring forum is supposedly about Glass in particular, and it just seemed to me that the thickness of his praise was making the criticism lean towards the thin, so I thought I'd make a few critical observations on behalf of those of us who may believe that he's not overly remarkable. Now I realize that I may be going out on a limb with such an edgy thesis, but what's life without risk? Meaningless and not very fun to boot, that's what. Sure, I could be waxing poetic on the subject of erotic scrimshaw, and I often do, but that would be all too easy. As a music lover and fighter, what I really had a hankerin' for was a knock-down drag-out no-holds-barred Glass-tussle. So thank you very much and may the debate rage on (or, as the case may be, drone monotonously on and on and on not unlike Glass's music) ad infinitum. Woof!

It would be an improvement, but only in the relative sense.

"...stuck-up kids in highschool..."? The poeple who are the quickest to accuse others of being arrogant are truly a dull and predictable lot. And again, nothing to do with Glass. Although their are some people who have not unreasonably observed that Glass's work tends to be dull and predictable.

But anyway, the "you're stuck-up" finger pointing people's anti- intellectual attitude and antics, um, how shall I put it, "belie" their thin veneer of sophistication. Very thin. My guess is that they tend to be 'Glass = classic' people more often than not, and, on the whole are well educated in the well-certified and degreed sense yet possessing only nominal measurable native intelligence. Near-do- wells... Why else would such people immediately and aggressively take the mere mention of the concept of intelligence so personally. Their insecurity is painfully obvious.

Now there's an intriguing question. Is the music of Philip Glass anti-intellectual in some way? Could be. It does seem to be pretending to be intelligent, even though there are good reasons to suspect that it isn't particularly. But than again, the folks who make it painfully obvious that they are too emotional to engage in reasonable discourse yet really REALLY want to pretend to be oh so sophisticated would likely avoid that idea like bubonic plague. Huh? What was the question? I CAN'T HEAR YOU. And the next question is... It smells like religion. "Don't you be questionin' MY God, you evil heathen..." Highly predictable indeed, and maybe even a tad anti-intellectual.

And how could such a potentially interesting discussion be so lacking? Perhaps there are too many little ponds with big fish and too few big ponds with little fish. Oh well, maybe the situation will improve.

Why does glass need to be "intellectual" to be good? Can't he just make me happy, or calm, or produce things which are relaxing while I'm reading or working? What if he produced things that were good for screwing to? Wouldn't that be classic? Or what if he produced things that were great when you had something else to do/look at, ambient for operas? Because, in a way, he does. Cf. Einstein On The Beach & Au Revoir... (which I saw in the first run, and d-d-damn!)

I find some of his works to be quite pleasant. I would agree that much of his material from the mid-seventies through the early eighties has merit -- especially the works that ultimately let him reach folks beyond the inner circles. And writing movie soundtracks is a good choice for any composer who wouldn't mind expanding an audience. For a while, his sound was somewhat novel, though there were other folks doing similar things. But why did he appear to purposefully arrest his own artistic development? What the heck happened?

Here's a theory: Before his art was his living, he seemed to be trying harder and having it pay off artistically, but after his art became his living, I think he began to be less inventive. His approach became more and more self-limiting. I mean, he began writing music as if he were making clothing from only several or possibly only two bolts of cloth. Want a 'new' composition? Maybe an opera? Grab a bolt, pin the pattern down, and cut around the pattern. Frankly, he's not really as prolific as he seems. It's not that different from what many composers do, but he's drawing from such narrow sources, it just seems overly and un-artistically synthetic and contrived.

And this choice of artistic direction is suspiciously like that of the 'stripe' painters of approximately the same period and their ilk, or of various other one-trick pony types from many artistic disciplines. Like so many others, in an age of briefer than ever attention spans and soundbite mentalities (its a cliche, but its true), he found that if he stuck to those peculiarly narrow 'bolts of cloth', he could be accepted, and make a decent living.

It's not all that far-fetched. And, who knows, perhaps he'll create some new material someday that defies those observations. I'm only suggesting that success had a negative effect on his art. If it hadn't, maybe Glass WOULD be a classic. But success never spoils true classics.

A certain amount of frission has been lost since then, as the landscape shifted under his feet -- I'd characterize Glass' career since roughly Einstein as trying to rediscover an alternate spiritualism outside of the western cannon, with varying degrees of success depending on both his incorporative ability and the extent to which that which he seeks to incorporate is total crap.

In some ways, the most important thing to recognize about glass IS his range, because it isn't restricted to the canon, but trying to redefine it -- witness his Bowie symphonies, his collabs with bryne and vega, the euro-12-tone touches which he treated with the SAME attitude in Les Infants... &c.

But he's so astoundingly easy to imitate and even counterfit -- a strange but useful and fun musical game often played by the musically agile. All sneakiness and legal issues aside (he's a celeb, and this was 'satire'), I once witnessed a 'premier' of 'his' work that was entirely convincing, and the attending fans loved its pants off quite gushingly. It was kind of sad. But it was a fascinating social experiment if nothing else. Thus I can't help feeling that his style is terribly lacking in true and subtle idiosyncracies. And that, to varying degrees, his fans are strangely nondiscriminating. Is the emperor wearing no clothes? I see it as a distinct possibility.

And does that lack of subtle idiosyncracies (ones that are not as easy to parrot or extrapolate by people who have the ears to 'see' EXACTLY what Glass is doing) put his music into the 'dehumanizing' camp? Yes, quite. And that's a legitimate artistic motivation. Many of the 12-tone composers coming out and away from the pointlessness of world war I were exploring a similar creative impulse. And whether one enjoys listening to 12-tone music or not, it can be safely said that it was radical and not commercial. Glass is not a radical. And I don't believe that he ever was. Well, not lately anyway. Glass's music is extremely conservative.

Later.

'Einstein' sure is remarkable though, the main themes are totally beautiful (far more angular and weird than the dippy schubert mode he went for later) and the shifting rhythms keep knocking you off guard, it's not background music, it demands active listening... I wonder what his reputation would be like these days if he'd stopped at that exact point, but hey then he'd probably still be a starving cab driver, wouldn't be fair to him.

There's still some rhythmic variation in 'Satyagraha' but a lot of it goes for straight toe-tapping pulsation. By 'Glassworks' the stacks of rhythm have gone entirely missing, it's nothing but those doodley doodley arpeggios, and bingo: commercial breakthrough, and no looking back. Since the 80's, less pounding, increasingly smoothed out, simple bland loveliness. Almost too easy to criticize.

No one should write off Glass entirely before hearing 'Einstein on the Beach', it's still incredible. The original '79 Sony recording is still better, the 90's re-recording has better production values and tighter, faster performances but loses too much, nothing can touch the farfisa organ arrangements or the vocal performances on the original. I think 'North Star' is still lovely. Of the 80's stuff, I still love the soundtrack to 'Mishima', especially the sections for string quartet. It was 'Solo Piano' that convinced me to stop buying the stuff and the few things I've heard since then make me kind of angry.

Phelim McDermott's production of Akhnaten looked even more gorgeous at the Met in New York earlier this month than when I saw it at the ENO a few years back. Not that I saw it live but I saw the live broadcast in cinemas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSn_UAquOfw

There's an audio stream up on the BBC Radio 3 website for another three weeks or so.

Wonder how he's doing, it's always at the back of my mind now when I see these thread revives.

I think he's OK at the moment following his illness in Europe, he was out and about for the final performance of Akhnaten the other week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD7961Hp99A

A previously unrecorded piece from 1970, Music in Eight Parts, hit streaming services today. I reviewed it.

Oh nice, I think I found a midi file of this a while back and made a little version in ProTools, was it an unfinished manuscript or something that someone found on his publisher's archive? I can't quite recall.

Ah, the answers lie therein :)

Hey I went to college with Peter Hess! Oberlin Jazz major, really nice dude.

The oberlin -> Glass and related projects runs deep.

Just a heads up that the Met website is streaming the recent productions of Akhnaten and Satyagraha this week. Not 100% convinced by the staging of Satyagraha but the Akhnaten is a total masterpiece:

https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/week-14/opera-streams-weekly-guide/

The last concert I went to before quarantine and everything started was a performance of Music in Twelve Parts, on February 29 at the Annenberg Center in Philly. It was pretty amazing.

Yeah, I saw about Eight Parts in The New Yorker recently, want to hear that.
Posted about xpost Twelve Parts on Rolling Reissues (label has a bunch of others on bandcamp, incl full streams of their recent Morricone and Pharoah Sanders reissues):
https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0913454654_10.jpg
Music in Twelve Parts. Concert à Paris​,​1975
by Philip Glass
Lost PHILIP GLASS Recording from 1975 (1h10).

ORTF Recordings by the Philip Glass Sextet,
live at Studio 104, Maison de la Radio, Paris.

Also included a very rare Philip Glass interview from 1974 in his NYC loft during the rehearsals of this piece, produced for the french radio by Daniel Caux.
Remastered from the orginal master tapes (ORTF).
he newly discovered and unreleased concert from 1975 recorded by the Philip Glass Sextet at La Maison de Radio, Paris.
The sextet is composed of Philip Glass, Jon Gibson, Dickie Landry,
Michael Riesman, Joan La Barbara and Richard Peck.

Music in Twelve Parts is a set of twelve pieces written between 1971 and 1974. This performance in France includes part 1, 2, 3, 11 and 12 on a double LP.(+ download code)
© INA 1974-1975
℗ 2019 Transversales Disques
credits
released April 24, 2020
full album streamhttps://transversales.bandcamp.com/album/music-in-twelve-parts-concert-paris-1975

That label's unwillingness to sell their releases digitally unless you buy the vinyl is annoying to me.

Yeah, plus it was originally sold out at source so I bought it from a distributor, but those copies didn't even come with a download code. wtf.

They may have vinyl rights but not digital rights.

I'm sure that's right, but in that case how can they give digital copies away with sales of the vinyl?

Yeah, I'll just listen on bandcamp for now.

Thought revive was about two operas streaming over the weekend.

it was

i watched most of the Doctor Atomic performance last night. filmed plays are strange to watch, with actors/singers making facial expressions intended for the last row, seen close up

Must have missed that post(/zing) the same way I missed most of both those operas. Maybe I can listen and look at photos or videos. I like Doctor Atomic, saw it at the Met, but didn’t watch the stream.

Spotted on the official Glass Twitter account:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eja2E-mWkAARtcc.jpg

Escalators of Death!

Met website is streaming Akhnaten this evening.

https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/week-35/program-notes/akhnaten/

I came here to post just that. I love a good spectacle, watching it now.

Seems to be in the on demand library now as well

I think that's right, but at least for right now it is free, which is the big appeal.

I thought this was beautiful, ridiculous and amazing. I'm glad I put in the time.

I'm still so happy they filmed the last full production of Einstein and made it available, it's wonderful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Io2Jta1Nc

wow, thanks. this is great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DczFkofRtuA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQgj2kv8QxE

Music with Changing Parts at Carnegie Hall in 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsKPL35s89I

Excellent, thanks so much!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swYXuGYFmXE

Wow, so I guess the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed a Glass symphony last night *for the first time ever*? Not a premiere, apparently literally the first time a Glass symphony has ever been performed by the CSO. Wild. He was there, too:

https://preview.redd.it/l76gc1pqgti81.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=392d3b46d2b32c975298118212bcd898d930b454

There was a nice posting on his FB page.

"While a student at the University of Chicago in the 1950’s, Philip Glass would spend Friday afternoons at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This weekend, Philip has the great joy of attending Symphony No. 11 conducted by Maestro Riccardo Muti"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkIPQUraD7c

East Village with friends, July 2022 pic.twitter.com/pB2pGSUvzY

— Philip Glass (@philipglass) July 27, 2022

So that's what happened to Mitch Pileggi of The X-Files. Unless that actually is Mitch Pileggi, in which case this joke doesn't work. I don't really care about Mitch Pileggi.

I have a Philip Glass anecdote. Many years ago I took the train to Montpellier, and in the foyer of the station was a big poster for a production of Einstein on the Beach at the local opera house. It struck me that the date was that day's date! I remember thinking "that's today's date". And the production was happening in about twenty minutes. So I went to the opera house and stood outside it. But I've never been to an opera and I have no idea of the etiquette. Can you just buy tickets at the door? I have no idea.

That is my Philip Glass anecdote. According to Google it was 16 March 2012. I remember thinking "I will never have this chance again because he must be in his seventies". Instead I walked around Montpellier and found a free exhibition of photographs by W Eugene Smith. Little tiny prints with red crop marks on them.

I remember he did a remix of a song by S'Express. Philip Glass, not W Eugene Smith. Of an S'Express song. Which made sense because I remember reading that he was an early adopter of samplers - EMU EMUlators - that he used as a compositional aid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiCH2WJ_lvY

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg "in concert" version of Einstein on the Beach with Suzanne Vega doing the spoken bits.

I never noticed the similarities between "Building" and Pink Floyd's "On the Run" before.

Great, thanks for sharing, I immediately scrolled forward to see if SV says 'Kalamazooooooo', sadly not :)

My local Regal cinema is showing Akhnaten on July 26 as part of The Met's summer encore series. Maybe they all are, not certain.

https://www.metopera.org/season/summer-events/live-in-hd-summer-encores

I'm going to try to go!

nice, its showing at a theater near me thank u regal cinema

Saw the Ensemble at the Barbican doing a sort of early works greatest hits set - felt a bit unstructured and obviously had absolutely no staging but Part 8 was pretty amazing.

#2 from the Civil Wars
The Grid from Koyaanisqatsi
Facades from Glassworks
Part 8 from Music in 12 Parts
Rescue from Satyagraha
Funeral from Akhnaten
Act III of The Photographer
Encore of Spaceship from Einstein.

thats a rad playlist

I’ve always had a soft spot for the photographer. My local library had the Lp so I borrowed and taped it when such things were new to me. It’s poppy and kinda lightweight glass but catchy.

Philip Glass is the one artist I'd really like to ask directly -- how do you think about your early work in the context of your later work? When and where did your approach to composition change, in your view? For me there's everything before Glassworks, and everything after, when he moves past fairly pure phase music and gets into developing motifs. I know there are further developments down the line but the break with Glassworks is so, wait for it, jarring...I wonder what his thought process was there, or if it was just "I feel like writing in a more classical way."

I think that Glassworks was his first stand alone composition/non theater work he did after getting a grant and quitting his day jobs. I could see that affecting his overall writing process.

Satyagraha predates Glassworks and there's not much pure phase music in that. I get what you're saying though.

I'll dig out his memoir later and see if he has anything to say on the subject in that.