Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought
art musicArt music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
to the public (along with precursors such as
Richard StraussRichard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
,
Kurt WeillKurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
and
Leonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
).
His music is often (controversially) described as
minimalistMinimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School....
, along with the work of the other "major minimalists"
La Monte YoungLa Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
,
Terry RileyTerrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
and
Steve ReichStephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
. For his later work he distances himself from this label, describing himself instead as a composer of "music with repetitive structures." Though his early mature music shares much with what is normally called 'minimalist', he has since evolved stylistically. Currently, he describes himself as a "Classicist", pointing out that he is trained in
harmonyIn music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and
counterpointIn music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
and studied such composers as
Franz SchubertFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
,
Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
and
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
with
Nadia Boulanger Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
.
Glass is a prolific composer: he has written works for his own musical group which he founded, the
Philip Glass EnsembleThe Philip Glass Ensemble is a musical group founded by composer Philip Glass in 1968 to serve as a performance outlet for his experimental minimalist music. The Ensemble's instrumentation became a hallmark of Glass' early minimalist style...
(with which he still performs on keyboards), as well as operas, musical theatre works, ten
symphoniesA symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
, eleven concertos, solo works, chamber music including
string quartetA string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
s and instrumental sonatas, and
film scoreA film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
s. Three of his film scores have been nominated for Academy Awards.
Glass counts many artists among his friends and collaborators, including visual artists (
Richard SerraRichard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
,
Chuck CloseCharles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
), writers (
Doris LessingDoris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
,
David Henry HwangDavid Henry Hwang is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.He was born in Los Angeles, California and was educated at the Yale School of Drama and Stanford University...
,
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
), film and theatre directors (including
Errol MorrisErrol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
,
Robert WilsonRobert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
,
JoAnne AkalaitisJoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
,
Godfrey ReggioGodfrey Reggio is an American director of experimental documentary films.-Life:Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in...
,
Paul SchraderPaul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and former film critic. Apart from his credentials as a director, Schrader is most notably known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull....
,
Martin ScorseseMartin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
,
Christopher HamptonChristopher James Hampton CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of...
,
Bernard RoseBernard Rose is an English actor and film director most famous for his direction of the 1992 urban horror film Candyman and the 1994 historical romance film Immortal Beloved....
, and many others), choreographers (
Lucinda ChildsLucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece...
,
Jerome RobbinsJerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...
,
Twyla TharpTwyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
), and musicians and composers (
Ravi ShankarRavi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
,
David ByrneDavid Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
, the conductor
Dennis Russell DaviesDennis Russell Davies is an American conductor and pianist. He studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School where he received his doctorate...
,
Foday Musa SusoFoday Musa Suso is a musician and composer from the West African nation of Gambia. He is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group, and is a jali...
,
Laurie AndersonLaura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
,
Linda RonstadtLinda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...
,
Paul SimonPaul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
, Joan LaBarbara, Arthur Russell,
David BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
,
Brian EnoBrian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
,
Roberto CarnevaleRoberto Carnevale is an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.- Biography and career :Born in Catania, he started studying piano at the age of seven. He took a degree in Arts at the University of Catania and he attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena...
,
Patti SmithPatricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
,
Aphex TwinRichard David James , best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born electronic musician and composer described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music"...
,
Lisa BielawaLisa Bielawa is a composer and vocalist based in New York City. She is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition and spent a year composing as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.-Biography:...
,
Andrew ShapiroShapiro was born in New York City and raised in Larchmont, New York. He studied musical composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio....
, John Moran,
Bryce DessnerBryce Dessner is a Brooklyn based composer, guitarist, and curator primarily known as a member of The National. In addition to his work with The National, he is a founding member of Clogs, and the founder of the MusicNOW Festival. Bryce has a master's degree in classical guitar from Yale University...
and
Nico MuhlyNico Muhly is a contemporary classical music composer, who has worked and recorded with classical and pop/rock musicians. He currently lives in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan in New York City.-Early years:...
). Among recent collaborators are Glass's fellow New Yorker
Woody AllenWoody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
, Stephen T. Colbert, and poet and songwriter
Leonard CohenLeonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
.
Beginnings, early education and influences (1937–1964)
Glass was born on January 31, 1937, in
BaltimoreBaltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland, the son of Ida (née Gouline) and Benjamin Charles Glass, and the grandson of Jewish immigrants from
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
.
http://books.google.com/books?id=g1ga2hNiiAgC&pg=PA209&dq=philip+glass+jewish&hl=en&ei=D1pHTrqIJMP20gHM0MHiBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg His father owned a record store, and consequently Glass's record collection consisted to a large extent of unsold records, including modern music (such as
HindemithPaul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
,
BartókBéla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
,
SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
,
ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
) and Western classical music (including
Ludwig van BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's String Quartets and
Schubert'sFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
B
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2011}}
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art musicArt music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
to the public (along with precursors such as
Richard StraussRichard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
,
Kurt WeillKurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
and
Leonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
).
His music is often (controversially) described as
minimalistMinimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School....
, along with the work of the other "major minimalists"
La Monte YoungLa Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
,
Terry RileyTerrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
and
Steve ReichStephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
. For his later work he distances himself from this label, describing himself instead as a composer of "music with repetitive structures." Though his early mature music shares much with what is normally called 'minimalist', he has since evolved stylistically. Currently, he describes himself as a "Classicist", pointing out that he is trained in
harmonyIn music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and
counterpointIn music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
and studied such composers as
Franz SchubertFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
,
Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
and
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
with
Nadia Boulanger Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
.
Glass is a prolific composer: he has written works for his own musical group which he founded, the
Philip Glass EnsembleThe Philip Glass Ensemble is a musical group founded by composer Philip Glass in 1968 to serve as a performance outlet for his experimental minimalist music. The Ensemble's instrumentation became a hallmark of Glass' early minimalist style...
(with which he still performs on keyboards), as well as operas, musical theatre works, ten
symphoniesA symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
, eleven concertos, solo works, chamber music including
string quartetA string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
s and instrumental sonatas, and
film scoreA film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
s. Three of his film scores have been nominated for Academy Awards.
Glass counts many artists among his friends and collaborators, including visual artists (
Richard SerraRichard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
,
Chuck CloseCharles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
), writers (
Doris LessingDoris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
,
David Henry HwangDavid Henry Hwang is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.He was born in Los Angeles, California and was educated at the Yale School of Drama and Stanford University...
,
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
), film and theatre directors (including
Errol MorrisErrol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
,
Robert WilsonRobert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
,
JoAnne AkalaitisJoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
,
Godfrey ReggioGodfrey Reggio is an American director of experimental documentary films.-Life:Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in...
,
Paul SchraderPaul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and former film critic. Apart from his credentials as a director, Schrader is most notably known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull....
,
Martin ScorseseMartin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
,
Christopher HamptonChristopher James Hampton CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of...
,
Bernard RoseBernard Rose is an English actor and film director most famous for his direction of the 1992 urban horror film Candyman and the 1994 historical romance film Immortal Beloved....
, and many others), choreographers (
Lucinda ChildsLucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece...
,
Jerome RobbinsJerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...
,
Twyla TharpTwyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
), and musicians and composers (
Ravi ShankarRavi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
,
David ByrneDavid Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
, the conductor
Dennis Russell DaviesDennis Russell Davies is an American conductor and pianist. He studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School where he received his doctorate...
,
Foday Musa SusoFoday Musa Suso is a musician and composer from the West African nation of Gambia. He is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group, and is a jali...
,
Laurie AndersonLaura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
,
Linda RonstadtLinda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...
,
Paul SimonPaul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
, Joan LaBarbara, Arthur Russell,
David BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
,
Brian EnoBrian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
,
Roberto CarnevaleRoberto Carnevale is an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.- Biography and career :Born in Catania, he started studying piano at the age of seven. He took a degree in Arts at the University of Catania and he attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena...
,
Patti SmithPatricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
,
Aphex TwinRichard David James , best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born electronic musician and composer described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music"...
,
Lisa BielawaLisa Bielawa is a composer and vocalist based in New York City. She is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition and spent a year composing as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.-Biography:...
,
Andrew ShapiroShapiro was born in New York City and raised in Larchmont, New York. He studied musical composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio....
, John Moran,
Bryce DessnerBryce Dessner is a Brooklyn based composer, guitarist, and curator primarily known as a member of The National. In addition to his work with The National, he is a founding member of Clogs, and the founder of the MusicNOW Festival. Bryce has a master's degree in classical guitar from Yale University...
and
Nico MuhlyNico Muhly is a contemporary classical music composer, who has worked and recorded with classical and pop/rock musicians. He currently lives in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan in New York City.-Early years:...
). Among recent collaborators are Glass's fellow New Yorker
Woody AllenWoody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
, Stephen T. Colbert, and poet and songwriter
Leonard CohenLeonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
.
Beginnings, early education and influences (1937–1964)
Glass was born on January 31, 1937, in
BaltimoreBaltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland, the son of Ida (née Gouline) and Benjamin Charles Glass, and the grandson of Jewish immigrants from
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
.
http://books.google.com/books?id=g1ga2hNiiAgC&pg=PA209&dq=philip+glass+jewish&hl=en&ei=D1pHTrqIJMP20gHM0MHiBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg His father owned a record store, and consequently Glass's record collection consisted to a large extent of unsold records, including modern music (such as
HindemithPaul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
,
BartókBéla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
,
SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
,
ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
) and Western classical music (including
Ludwig van BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's String Quartets and
Schubert'sFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
B
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2011}}
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art musicArt music is an umbrella term used to refer to musical traditions implying advanced structural and theoretical considerations and a written musical tradition...
to the public (along with precursors such as
Richard StraussRichard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
,
Kurt WeillKurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
and
Leonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
).
His music is often (controversially) described as
minimalistMinimal music is a style of music associated with the work of American composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass. It originated in the New York Downtown scene of the 1960s and was initially viewed as a form of experimental music called the New York Hypnotic School....
, along with the work of the other "major minimalists"
La Monte YoungLa Monte Thornton Young is an American avant-garde composer, musician, and artist.Young is generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works have been included among the most important and radical post-World War II avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is...
,
Terry RileyTerrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
and
Steve ReichStephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
. For his later work he distances himself from this label, describing himself instead as a composer of "music with repetitive structures." Though his early mature music shares much with what is normally called 'minimalist', he has since evolved stylistically. Currently, he describes himself as a "Classicist", pointing out that he is trained in
harmonyIn music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
and
counterpointIn music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
and studied such composers as
Franz SchubertFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
,
Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
and
Wolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
with
Nadia Boulanger Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
.
Glass is a prolific composer: he has written works for his own musical group which he founded, the
Philip Glass EnsembleThe Philip Glass Ensemble is a musical group founded by composer Philip Glass in 1968 to serve as a performance outlet for his experimental minimalist music. The Ensemble's instrumentation became a hallmark of Glass' early minimalist style...
(with which he still performs on keyboards), as well as operas, musical theatre works, ten
symphoniesA symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
, eleven concertos, solo works, chamber music including
string quartetA string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
s and instrumental sonatas, and
film scoreA film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
s. Three of his film scores have been nominated for Academy Awards.
Glass counts many artists among his friends and collaborators, including visual artists (
Richard SerraRichard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
,
Chuck CloseCharles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
), writers (
Doris LessingDoris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
,
David Henry HwangDavid Henry Hwang is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.He was born in Los Angeles, California and was educated at the Yale School of Drama and Stanford University...
,
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
), film and theatre directors (including
Errol MorrisErrol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
,
Robert WilsonRobert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
,
JoAnne AkalaitisJoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
,
Godfrey ReggioGodfrey Reggio is an American director of experimental documentary films.-Life:Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in...
,
Paul SchraderPaul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and former film critic. Apart from his credentials as a director, Schrader is most notably known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull....
,
Martin ScorseseMartin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
,
Christopher HamptonChristopher James Hampton CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of...
,
Bernard RoseBernard Rose is an English actor and film director most famous for his direction of the 1992 urban horror film Candyman and the 1994 historical romance film Immortal Beloved....
, and many others), choreographers (
Lucinda ChildsLucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece...
,
Jerome RobbinsJerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...
,
Twyla TharpTwyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
), and musicians and composers (
Ravi ShankarRavi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
,
David ByrneDavid Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
, the conductor
Dennis Russell DaviesDennis Russell Davies is an American conductor and pianist. He studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School where he received his doctorate...
,
Foday Musa SusoFoday Musa Suso is a musician and composer from the West African nation of Gambia. He is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group, and is a jali...
,
Laurie AndersonLaura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
,
Linda RonstadtLinda Ronstadt is an American popular music recording artist. She has earned eleven Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music awards, an Emmy Award, an ALMA Award, numerous United States and internationally certified gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, in addition to Tony Award and Golden...
,
Paul SimonPaul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
, Joan LaBarbara, Arthur Russell,
David BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
,
Brian EnoBrian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
,
Roberto CarnevaleRoberto Carnevale is an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.- Biography and career :Born in Catania, he started studying piano at the age of seven. He took a degree in Arts at the University of Catania and he attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena...
,
Patti SmithPatricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....
,
Aphex TwinRichard David James , best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born electronic musician and composer described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music"...
,
Lisa BielawaLisa Bielawa is a composer and vocalist based in New York City. She is a 2009 Rome Prize winner in Musical Composition and spent a year composing as a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.-Biography:...
,
Andrew ShapiroShapiro was born in New York City and raised in Larchmont, New York. He studied musical composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio....
, John Moran,
Bryce DessnerBryce Dessner is a Brooklyn based composer, guitarist, and curator primarily known as a member of The National. In addition to his work with The National, he is a founding member of Clogs, and the founder of the MusicNOW Festival. Bryce has a master's degree in classical guitar from Yale University...
and
Nico MuhlyNico Muhly is a contemporary classical music composer, who has worked and recorded with classical and pop/rock musicians. He currently lives in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan in New York City.-Early years:...
). Among recent collaborators are Glass's fellow New Yorker
Woody AllenWoody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
, Stephen T. Colbert, and poet and songwriter
Leonard CohenLeonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
.
Beginnings, early education and influences (1937–1964)
Glass was born on January 31, 1937, in
BaltimoreBaltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland, the son of Ida (née Gouline) and Benjamin Charles Glass, and the grandson of Jewish immigrants from
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
.
http://books.google.com/books?id=g1ga2hNiiAgC&pg=PA209&dq=philip+glass+jewish&hl=en&ei=D1pHTrqIJMP20gHM0MHiBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg His father owned a record store, and consequently Glass's record collection consisted to a large extent of unsold records, including modern music (such as
HindemithPaul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
,
BartókBéla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
,
SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
,
ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
) and Western classical music (including
Ludwig van BeethovenLudwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's String Quartets and
Schubert'sFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
B{{musicThe Trio No. 1 in B-flat major for piano, violin, and cello, D. 898, was written by Franz Schubert in 1827. The composer finished the work in 1828, in the last year of his life. It was published in 1836 as Opus 99, eight years after the composer's death....
, which he cites as a "big influence"), at a very early age. He then studied the
fluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
as a child at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and entered an accelerated college program at the
University of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
at the age of 15, where he studied Mathematics and Philosophy. In Chicago he discovered the
serialismIn music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
of Webern and composed a
twelve-toneTwelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
string trio. In 1954 Glass went to Paris for the first time, encountering the films of
Jean CocteauJean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, which made a lasting impression on him. He visited artists' studios and saw their work; "the
bohemian lifeBohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
you see in [Cocteau's]
OrphéeOrpheus is a 1950 French film directed by Jean Cocteau and starring Jean Marais. This film is the central part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet , Orpheus and Testament of Orpheus...
was the life I ... was attracted to, and those were the people I hung out with."
Glass then went on to the Juilliard School of Music where the keyboard became his main instrument. His composition teachers included
Vincent PersichettiVincent Ludwig Persichetti was an American composer, teacher, and pianist. An important musical educator and writer, Persichetti was a native of Philadelphia...
and
William Bergsma-Biography:After studying piano with his mother, a former opera singer, and then the viola, Bergsma moved on to study composition; his most significant teachers were Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers. Bergsma attended Stanford University for two years before moving on to the Eastman School of...
, while fellow students included
Steve ReichStephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
. During this time, in 1959, he was a winner in the
BMI FoundationThe BMI Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit organization founded in 1985 by executives of Broadcast Music Incorporated for the purpose of "encouraging the creation, performance and study of music through awards, scholarships, internships, grants, and commissions." Additionally, the Foundation makes...
's BMI Student Composer Awards, one of the most prestigious international prizes for young composers. In the summer of 1960, he studied with
Darius MilhaudDarius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
at the summer school of the Aspen Music Festival and composed a
Violin ConcertoA violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin and instrumental ensemble, customarily orchestra. Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up through the present day...
for a fellow student, Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild. After leaving Juilliard in 1962, Glass moved to Pittsburgh and worked as a school-based composer-in-residence in the public school system, composing various choral, chamber and orchestral music.
Paris (1964–1966)
In 1964, Glass received a Fulbright Scholarship and went to Paris, where he studied with the eminent composition teacher
Nadia Boulanger Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
from autumn of 1964 to summer of 1966. Glass's years in Paris as a student made a lasting impression and influenced his work ever since, as the composer admitted in 1979: "The composers I studied with Boulanger are the people I still think about most—Bach and Mozart."
Glass later stated in his autobiography
Music by Philip Glass (1987) that the new music performed at
Pierre BoulezPierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
's
Domaine Musical concerts in Paris lacked any excitement for him (with the notable exceptions of music by
John CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
and
Morton FeldmanMorton Feldman was an American composer, born in New York City.A major figure in 20th century music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown...
), but he was deeply impressed by new films and theatre performances. He encountered revolutionary films of the
French New WaveThe New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
, such as those of
Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
and
François TruffautFrançois Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, which ignored the rules set by an older generation of artists., and Glass made friends with American visual artists (the sculptor
Richard SerraRichard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
and his wife
Nancy GravesNancy Graves was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime-filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the moon...
), actors and directors (
JoAnne AkalaitisJoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
,
Ruth MaleczechRuth Maleczech is an American avant-garde stage actress, whose most notable role may have been as King Lear, portrayed as an imperious Southern matriarch...
, David Warrilow, and
Lee BreuerLee Breuer is an American academic, educator, film maker, poet, lyricist, writer and stage director.-Work with Mabou Mines:Lee Breuer is a founding artistic director of Mabou Mines Theater Company in New York City, which he began in 1970 with colleagues Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne...
, with whom Glass later founded the experimental theatre group
Mabou MinesMabou Mines is an avant-garde theatre company founded in 1970 and based in New York City.-History:Mabou Mines is a collaborative, avant-garde theater company based in New York City...
). Together with Akalaitis (they married in 1965), Glass in turn attended performances by theatre groups including
Jean-Louis BarraultJean-Louis Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist, training that served him well when he portrayed the 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis .Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted...
's
OdéonThe Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe is one of France's six national theatres.It is located at 2 rue Corneille in the 6th arrondissement of Paris on the left bank of the Seine, next to the Luxembourg Garden...
theatre,
The Living TheatreThe Living Theatre is an American theatre company founded in 1947 and based in New York City. It is the oldest experimental theatre group still existing in the U.S...
and the
Berliner EnsembleThe Berliner Ensemble is a German theatre company established by playwright Bertolt Brecht and his wife, Helene Weigel in January 1949 in East Berlin...
in 1964 to 1965. These significant encounters resulted in a collaboration with Breuer for which Glass contributed music for a 1965 staging of
Samuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
's
Comédie (
PlayPlay is a one-act play by Samuel Beckett. It was written between 1962 and 1963 and first produced in German as Spiel on 14 June 1963 at the Ulmer Theatre in Ulm-Donau, Germany, directed by Deryk Mendel, with Nancy Illig , Sigfrid Pfeiffer and Gerhard Winter...
, 1963). The resulting piece (written for two soprano saxophones) was directly influenced by the play's open-ended, repetitive and almost musical structure and was the first one of a series of four early pieces in a minimalist, yet still dissonant, idiom. After
Play, Glass also acted in 1966 as music director of a Breuer production of
BrechtBrecht is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The municipality comprises the towns of Brecht proper, Sint-Job-in't-Goor and Sint-Lenaarts. On January 1, 2006 Brecht had a total population of 26,464...
's
Mother Courage and Her ChildrenMother Courage and Her Children is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin...
, featuring the theatre score by
Paul DessauPaul Dessau was a German composer and conductor.- Biography :Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family...
.
In parallel with his early excursions in experimental theatre, Glass worked in winter 1965 and spring 1966 as a music director and composer on a film score (
ChappaquaChappaqua is a 1966 cult film written, directed by and starring Conrad Rooks. The films is based on Rooks' experiences with drug addiction and includes cameo appearances by a host of famous figures of the 1960s: author William S. Burroughs, guru Swami Satchidananda, beat poets Allen Ginsberg and...
, Conrad Rooks, 1966) with
Ravi ShankarRavi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
and Alla Rakha, which added another important influence on Glass's musical thinking. His distinctive style arose from his work with Shankar and Rakha and their perception of rhythm in Indian music as being entirely additive. He renounced all his compositions in a moderately modern style resembling Milhaud's,
Aaron CoplandAaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
's, and
Samuel BarberSamuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...
's, and began writing pieces based on repetitive structures of Indian music and a sense of time influenced by Samuel Beckett: a piece for two actresses and chamber ensemble, a work for chamber ensemble and his first numbered string quartet (No.1, 1966).
Glass then left Paris for northern India in 1966, where he came in contact with
TibetTibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
an refugees and began to gravitate towards
BuddhismBuddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
. He met Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th
Dalai LamaThe Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
, in 1972, and has been a strong supporter of the Tibetan independence ever since.
Minimalism: From Strung Out to Music in 12 Parts (1967–1974)
{{See also|Minimalist music}}
Shortly after arriving in New York City in March 1967, Glass attended a performance of works by Steve Reich (including the ground-breaking minimalist piece
Piano PhasePiano Phase is a piece of music written in 1967 by the minimalist composer Steve Reich for two pianos. It is his first attempt at applying his "phasing" technique, which he had previously used in the tape pieces It's Gonna Rain and Come Out , to live performance.Reich's phasing works generally...
), which left a deep impression on him; he simplified his style and turned to a radical
"
consonantConsonance is a stylistic device, most commonly used in poetry and songs, characterized by the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession, as in "pitter patter" or in "all mammals named Sam are clammy".Consonance should not be confused with assonance, which is the...
vocabulary". Finding little sympathy from traditional performers and performance spaces, Glass eventually formed an ensemble with fellow ex-students
Steve ReichStephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
,
Jon GibsonJon Gibson is a flautist, saxophonist, and composer.-Education:Gibson studied at Sacramento State University and with Henry Onderdonk and Wayne Peterson at San Francisco State University, where he earned a BA in 1964...
, and others, and began performing mainly in art galleries and studio lofts of
SoHoSoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...
. The visual artist Richard Serra provided Glass with Gallery contacts, while both collaborated on various sculptures, films and installations; from 1971 to 1974 he became Serra's regular studio assistant.
Between summer of 1967 and the end of 1968, Glass composed nine works, including
Strung Out (for amplified solo violin, composed in summer of 1967), Gradus (for solo saxophone, 1968),
Music in the Shape of a Square (for two flutes, composed in May 1968, an homage to
Erik SatieÉric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
),
How Now (for solo piano, 1968) and
1+1 (for amplified tabletop, November 1968) which were "clearly designed to experiment more fully with his new-found minimalist approach". The first concert of Philip Glass's new music was at
Jonas MekasJonas Mekas is a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, writer, and curator who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema." His work has been exhibited in museums and festivals across Europe and America.-Biography:...
's Film-Makers Cinemathèque (
Anthology Film Archives__notoc__Anthology Film Archives is a film archive and theater located at 32 Second Avenue on the corner of East Second Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City devoted to the preservation and exhibition of experimental film. It is the only non-profit organization of its...
) in September 1968. This concert included the first work of this series with
Strung Out (performed by the violinist Pixley-Rothschild) and
Music in the Shape of a Square (performed by Glass and Gibson). The musical scores were tacked on the wall, and the performers had to move while playing. Glass's new works met with a very enthusiastic response by the audience which consisted mainly of visual and
performance artIn art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
ists who were highly sympathetic to Glass's reductive approach.
Apart from his music career, Glass had a moving company with his cousin, the sculptor Jene Highstein, and worked as a plumber and
cabA taxicab, also taxi or cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice...
driver (in 1973 to 1978). During this time he made friends with other New York based artists such as
Sol LeWittSolomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
,
Nancy GravesNancy Graves was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime-filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the moon...
,
Michael SnowMichael Snow, CC is a Canadian artist working in painting, sculpture, video, films, photography, holography, drawing, books and music.-Life:...
,
Bruce NaumanBruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....
,
Laurie AndersonLaura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
, and
Chuck CloseCharles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
, who created a now famous portrait of Glass. (Glass returned the favour in 2005 with
A Musical Portrait of Chuck Close for piano.)
With
1+1 and
Two Pages (composed in February 1969) Glass turned to a more "rigorous approach" to his "most basic minimalist technique, additive process", pieces which were followed in the same year by
Music in Contrary Motion and
Music in Fifths (a kind of homage to his composition teacher
Nadia Boulanger Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
, who pointed out "hidden fifths" in his works but regarded them as cardinal sins). Eventually Glass's music grew less austere, becoming more complex and dramatic, with pieces such as
Music in Similar Motion (1969), and
Music with Changing Parts (1970). These pieces were performed by The Philip Glass Ensemble in the
Whitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
in 1969 and in the
Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseumThe Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
in 1970, often encountering hostile reaction from critics,; but Glass's music was also met with enthusiasm from younger artists such as
Brian EnoBrian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
and
David BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
(at the Royal College of Art ca. 1970). Eno described this encounter with Glass's music as one of the "most extraordinary musical experiences of [his] life", as a "viscous bath of pure, thick energy", concluding "this was actually the most detailed music I'd ever heard. It was all intricacy, exotic harmonics". In 1970 Glass returned to the theatre, composing music for the theatre group Mabou Mines, resulting in his first minimalist pieces employing voices:
Red Horse Animation and
Music for Voices (both 1970, and premiered at the
Paula Cooper GalleryThe Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City founded in 1968.The gallery is primarily known for the Minimalist and Conceptual artists it has represented and whose careers it helped launch. Such artists include: Carl Andre, Jennifer Bartlett, Lynda Benglis, Mark di Suvero, Donald...
).
After differences of opinion with Steve Reich in 1971, Glass formed the Philip Glass Ensemble (while Reich formed
Steve Reich and MusiciansSteve Reich and Musicians, sometimes credited as the Steve Reich Ensemble, is a musical ensemble founded and led by the American composer Steve Reich to perform his compositions. This ensemble has premiered many of Reich's works and has performed his works more than any other...
), an amplified ensemble including keyboards, wind instruments (saxophones,
fluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
s), and
sopranoA soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
voices.
Glass's music for his ensemble culminated in the four-hour-long
Music in Twelve PartsMusic in Twelve Parts is a set of twelve pieces written between 1971 and 1974 by the 20th century composer Philip Glass.The eleven instruments in this work cycle are played by five musicians:...
(1971–1974), which began as a single piece with twelve instrumental parts but developed into a cycle that summed up Glass's musical achievement since 1967, and even transcended it – the last part features a
twelve-toneTwelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
theme, sung by the soprano voice of the ensemble. "I had broken the rules of
modernismModernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice.- Defining musical modernism :...
and so I thought it was time to break some of my own rules", according to Glass. Though he finds the term minimalist inaccurate to describe his later work, Glass does accept this term for pieces up to and including
Music in 12 Parts, excepting this last part which "was the end of minimalism" for Glass. As he pointed out: "I had worked for eight or nine years inventing a system, and now I'd written through it and come out the other end."
Another Look at Harmony: The Portrait Trilogy (1975–1979)
Glass continued his work with a series of instrumental works, called
Another Look at Harmony (1975–1977). For Glass this series demonstrated a new start, hence the title: "What I was looking for was a way of combining harmonic progression with the rhythmic structure I had been developing, to produce a new overall structure. (...) I'd taken everything out with my early works and it was now time to decide just what I wanted to put in—a process that would occupy me for several years to come." Parts 1 and 2 of "Another Look at Harmony" were included in a collaboration with
Robert WilsonRobert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
, a piece of musical theater that was later designated by Glass as the first opera of his portrait opera trilogy:
Einstein on the BeachEinstein on the Beach is an opera that premiered on July 25, 1976 at the Avignon Festival in France, scored and written by Philip Glass and designed and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson. It also contains writings by Christopher Knowles, Samuel M. Johnson and Lucinda Childs...
. Composed in Spring to Fall of 1975 in close collaboration with Wilson, Glass's first opera was first premiered in summer 1976 at the
Festival d'AvignonThe Festival d'Avignon, or Avignon Festival, is an annual arts festival held in the French city of Avignon. Founded in 1947 by Jean Vilar, it is the oldest extant festival in France and one of the world's greatest...
, and in November of the same year to a mixed and partly enthusiastic reaction from the audience at the
Metropolitan OperaThe Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
in New York City. Scored for the Philip Glass Ensemble, solo violin, chorus, and featuring actors (reciting texts by
Christopher KnowlesChristopher Knowles is an American poet. In 1976, his poetry was used by Robert Wilson for the avant-garde minimalist Philip Glass opera, Einstein on the Beach In 2004 Knowles stayed in Long Island for the summer working with Robert Wilson. For one week the Harty family stayed in the house he was...
,
Lucinda ChildsLucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece...
and Samuel M. Johnson), Glass's and Wilson's essentially plotless opera was conceived as a "metaphorical look at
Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
: scientist, humanist, amateur musician—and the man whose theories (...) led to the splitting of the atom", evoking
nuclear holocaustNuclear holocaust refers to the possibility of the near complete annihilation of human civilization by nuclear warfare. Under such a scenario, all or most of the Earth is made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons in future world wars....
in the climactic scene, as critic
Tim PageTim Page is a writer, editor, music critic, producer and professor. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for the Washington Post and also played an essential role in the revival of American author Dawn Powell.-Career:Page grew up in Storrs, Connecticut, where his father, Ellis B...
pointed out. As with
Another Look at Harmony, "
Einstein added a new functional harmony that set it apart from the early conceptual works". Composer
Tom JohnsonTom Johnson , is an American minimalist composer, a former student of Morton Feldman.-Career:His pieces are most often based simply on mathematical and logical processes, such as tiling, which he attempts to make as clear as possible...
came to the same conclusion, comparing the solo violin music to
Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, and the "organ figures (...) to those
Alberti bassAlberti bass is a particular kind of accompaniment in music, often used in the Classical era, and sometimes the Romantic era. It was named after Domenico Alberti , who used it extensively, although he was not the first to use it....
es Mozart loved so much". The piece was praised by the Washington Post as "one of the seminal artworks of the century."
Einstein on the Beach was followed by further music for projects by the theatre group Mabou Mines such as
Dressed like an Egg (1975), and again music for plays and adaptations from prose by
Samuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, such as
The Lost Ones (1975),
Cascando (1975),
Mercier and CamierMercier and Camier is a novel by Samuel Beckett.Written immediately before his celebrated 'trilogy' of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, Mercier et Camier was Beckett's first attempt at extended prose fiction in French...
(1979). Glass also turned to other media; two multi-movement instrumental works for the Philip Glass Ensemble originated as music for film and TV:
North Star (1977 for the Documentary "
Mark di SuveroMarco Polo "Mark" di Suvero is an American abstract expressionist sculptor born Marco Polo Levi in Shanghai, China in 1933 to Italian expatriates. He immigrated to San Francisco, California in 1942 with his family. From 1953 to 1957, he attended the University of California, Berkeley to study...
, sculptor" by Francois de Menil and
Barbara RoseBarbara Rose is an American art historian and art critic. She was educated at Smith College, Barnard College and Columbia University. She was married to artist Frank Stella between 1961 and 1969...
) and four short cues for
Jim HensonJames Maury "Jim" Henson was an American puppeteer best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for...
's TV-series for children,
Sesame StreetSesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
, named
Geometry of Circles (1977).
Another series,
Fourth Series (1977–79), included music for chorus and organ ("Part One", 1977), organ and piano ("Part Two" and "Part Four", 1979), and music for a radio adaption of Constance DeJong's novel
Modern Love ("Part Three", 1978). Part Two and Part Four were used (and hence renamed) in two dance productions by choreographer
Lucinda ChildsLucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece...
(who had already contributed to and performed in
Einstein on the Beach). "Part Two" was included in
Dance (a collaboration with visual artist
Sol LeWittSolomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
, 1979), and "Part Four" was renamed as
Mad Rush, and performed by Glass on several occasions such as the first public appearance of the 14th Dalai Lama in New York City in Fall 1981. The piece demonstrates Glass's turn to more traditional models: the composer added a conclusion to an open-structured piece which "can be interpreted as a sign that he [had] abandoned the radical non-narrative, undramatic approaches of his early period", as the pianist Steffen Schleiermacher points out.
In Spring 1978, Glass received a commission from the
Netherlands OperaDe Nederlandse Opera , in Amsterdam, is a Dutch opera company based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Its present home base is the Het Muziektheater, a modern building designed by Cees Dam which opened in 1986....
(as well as a
Rockefeller FoundationThe Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
grant) which "marked the end of his need to earn money from non-musical employment." With the commission Glass continued his work in music theater, composing his opera
SatyagrahaSatyagraha is a 1979 opera in three acts for orchestra, chorus and soloists, composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Glass and Constance DeJong.Loosely based on the life of Mohandas K...
(composed in 1978–1979, premiered in 1980 at Rotterdam), based on the early life of
Mahatma GandhiMohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...
in South Africa,
Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
, and Martin Luther King Jr.. For
Satyagraha , Glass worked in close collaboration with two "
SoHoSoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...
friends": the writer Constance deJong, who provided the libretto, and the set designer Robert Israel. This piece was in other ways a turning point for Glass, as it was his first work since 1963 scored for symphony orchestra, even if the most prominent parts were still reserved for solo voices and chorus. Shortly after completing the score in August 1979, Glass met the conductor
Dennis Russell DaviesDennis Russell Davies is an American conductor and pianist. He studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School where he received his doctorate...
, who he helped prepare for performances in Germany (using a piano-four-hands version of the score); together they started to plan another opera, to be premiered at the
Stuttgart State OperaThe Staatsoper Stuttgart is a German opera company based in Stuttgart, Germany.-History:The Stuttgart Staatsoper forms part of the Stuttgart State Theatre , which is a a three-branch-theatre complex and represents the largest theatre of its kind in Europe...
.
Completing the Portrait Trilogy: Akhnaten and beyond (1980–1986)
While planning a third part of his "Portrait Trilogy", Glass turned to smaller music theatre projects such as the non-narrative
Madrigal Opera (for six voices and violin and viola, 1980), and
The PhotographerThe Photographer is a chamber opera by composer Philip Glass that is based on the homicide trial of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The opera is based on words drawn from the trial as well as Muybridge's letters to his wife...
, a biographic study on the photographer
Eadweard MuybridgeEadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible...
(1982). Glass also continued to write for the orchestra with his most famous film score to date,
KoyaanisqatsiKoyaanisqatsi also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke....
(
Godfrey ReggioGodfrey Reggio is an American director of experimental documentary films.-Life:Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in...
, 1981–1982). Some pieces which were not used in the film (such as
Facades) eventually appeared on the album
GlassworksGlassworks is a chamber music work of six movements by Philip Glass. It is regarded as being a characteristically Glass-like work. Following his larger-scale concert and stage works, Glassworks was Philip Glass's successful attempt to create a more pop-oriented "Walkman-suitable" work, with...
(1982, CBS Records), which brought Glass's music to a wider public.
The "Portrait Trilogy" was completed with
AkhnatenAkhnaten is an opera in three acts based on the life and religious convictions of the pharaoh Akhenaten , written by the American minimalist composer Philip Glass in 1983. Akhnaten had its world premiere on March 24, 1984 at the Stuttgart State Opera, under the German title Echnaton...
(1982–1983, premiered in 1984), a vocal and orchestral composition sung in
AkkadianAkkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, Biblical Hebrew, and Ancient Egyptian. In addition, this opera featured an actor reciting ancient Egyptian texts in the language of the audience.
Akhnaten was commissioned by the Stuttgart Opera in a production designed by
Achim FreyerAchim Freyer is a German stage director, set designer and painter. A protege of Bertolt Brecht, Freyer has become one of the world's leading opera directors, working throughout Europe and, since 2002, in the United States, principally with the Los Angeles Opera...
. It premiered simultaneously at the Houston Opera in a production directed by David Freeman and designed by
Peter SellarsPeter Sellars is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays...
. At the time of the commission, the Stuttgart Opera House was undergoing renovation, necessitating the use of a nearby playhouse with a smaller orchestra pit. Upon learning this, Glass and conductor Dennis Russell Davies visited the playhouse, placing music stands around the pit to determine how many players the pit could accommodate. The two found that they could not fit a full orchestra in the pit. Glass decided to eliminate the violins, which had the effect of "giving the orchestra a low, dark sound that came to characterize the piece and suited the subject very well." As Glass remarked in 1992,
Akhnaten is significant in his work since it represents a "first extension out of a
triadic harmonicIn music and music theory, a triad is a three-note chord that can be stacked in thirds. Its members, when actually stacked in thirds, from lowest pitched tone to highest, are called:* the Root...
language", an experiment with the
polytonalityThe musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality . Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time...
of his teachers Persichetti and Milhaud, a musical technique which Glass compares to "an optical illusion, such as in the paintings of
Josef AlbersJosef Albers was a German-born American artist and educator whose work, both in Europe and in the United States, formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the 20th century....
".
Glass again collaborated with
Robert WilsonRobert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
on another opera,
the CIVIL warS (1983, premiered in 1984), which also functioned as the final part ("the Rome section) of Wilson's epic work by the same name, originally planned for an "international arts festival that would accompany the Olympic Games in Los Angeles". (Glass also composed a highly prestigious work for chorus and orchestra for the opening of the Games,
The Olympian: Lighting of the Torch and Closing ). The premiere of
The CIVIL warS in Los Angeles never materialized and the opera was in the end premiered at the Opera of Rome. Glass's and Wilson's opera includes musical settings of Latin texts by the 1st-century-Roman playwright
SenecaLucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
and allusions to the music of
Giuseppe VerdiGiuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
and from the
American Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, featuring the 19th century figures
Giuseppe GaribaldiGiuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian military and political figure. In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari Italian patriot revolutionaries, and fled Italy after a failed insurrection. Garibaldi took part in the War of the Farrapos and the Uruguayan Civil War leading the Italian Legion, and...
and
Robert E. LeeRobert Edward Lee was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War....
as characters.
In the mid-1980s, Glass produced "works in different media at an extraordinarily rapid pace". Projects from that period include music for dance (
Dance Pieces,
Jerome RobbinsJerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...
, 1983, and
In the Upper Room,
Twyla TharpTwyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
, 1986), and music for theatre productions
EndgameEndgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters, written in a style associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. It was originally written in French ; as was his custom, Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the...
(1984), and
Company (1983). Beckett vehemently disapproved of the production of
EndgameEndgame, by Samuel Beckett, is a one-act play with four characters, written in a style associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. It was originally written in French ; as was his custom, Beckett himself translated it into English. The play was first performed in a French-language production at the...
at the American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, Massachusetts), which featured
Joanne AkalaitisJoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
's direction and Glass's
Prelude for timpani and double bass, but in the end, he authorized the music for
Company, four short, intimate pieces for
string quartetA string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
that were played in the intervals of the dramatization. This composition was initially regarded by the composer as a piece of
GebrauchsmusikGebrauchsmusik is a German term, essentially meaning “utility music,” for music that exists not only for its own sake, but which was composed for some specific, identifiable purpose...
('music for use')—"like salt and pepper (...) just something for the table”, as he noted. Eventually
Company was published as Glass's String Quartet No.2 and in a version for string orchestra, being performed by ensembles ranging from student orchestras to renowned ones such as the
Kronos QuartetKronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
and the
Kremerata BalticaKremerata Baltica is a chamber orchestra consisting of young musicians from Baltic countries . It was founded by Gidon Kremer in 1997.The name is a pun on camerata, the general word applying to various chamber music groups....
.
This interest in writing for the
string quartetA string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
and the string orchestra led to a chamber and orchestral film score for
Mishima: A Life in Four ChaptersMishima: A Life in Four Chapters is an American/Japanese film co-written and directed by Paul Schrader in 1985. It was co-produced by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas....
(
Paul SchraderPaul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and former film critic. Apart from his credentials as a director, Schrader is most notably known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull....
, 1984–85), which Glass recently described as his "musical turning point" that developed his "technique of film scoring in a very special way".
Glass also dedicated himself to vocal works with two sets of songs,
Three Songs for chorus (1984, settings of poems by
Leonard CohenLeonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
,
Octavio PazOctavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
and Raymond Levesque), and a song cycle initiated by
CBS Masterworks RecordsCBS Masterworks Records was a subsidiary of CBS Records, producing classical and spoken-word releases as well as Broadway albums.It was started in 1927 as Columbia Masterworks Records, a subsidiary of the Columbia Records label...
:
Songs from Liquid DaysSongs from Liquid Days is a collection of songs composed by composer Philip Glass with lyrics by Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, David Byrne and Laurie Anderson...
(1985), with texts by songwriters such as
David ByrneDavid Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
,
Paul SimonPaul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
, in which the
Kronos QuartetKronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
is featured (as it is in
Mishima) in a prominent role. Glass also continued his series of operas with adaptations from literary texts such as
The Juniper Tree (an opera collaboration with composer
Robert MoranRobert Moran is an American composer of operas and ballets as well as numerous orchestral, vocal, chamber and dance works.-Life:...
, 1984),
Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
's
The Fall of the House of Usher"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. It was slightly revised in 1840 for the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque...
(1987), and also worked with novelist
Doris LessingDoris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
on the opera
The Making Of The Representative For Planet 8The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 is a full-scale opera by Philip Glass with a libretto by Doris Lessing.The opera was co-commissioned by English National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam and Theater Kiel, and co-produced with Artpark, Lewiston, New York...
(1985–86, and performed by the
Houston Grand OperaHouston Grand Opera Houston Grand Opera was founded in 1955 through the joint efforts of Maestro Walter Herbert and cultural leaders Mrs. Louis G. Lobit, Edward Bing and Charles Cockrell...
and
English National OperaEnglish National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
in 1988).
Operas and the turn to symphonic music (1987–1991)
Compositions such as
Company,
Facades and String Quartet No.3 (the last two extracted from the scores to
Koyaanisqatsi and
Mishima) gave way to a series of works more accessible to ensembles such as the
string quartetA string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
and symphony orchestra, in this returning to the structural roots of his student days. In taking this direction his
chamberChamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
and orchestral works were also written in a more and more traditional and lyrical style. In these works, Glass often employs old musical forms such as the
chaconneA chaconne ; is a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era when it was much used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line which offered a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and...
and the
passacagliaThe passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....
– for instance in
SatyagrahaSatyagraha is a 1979 opera in three acts for orchestra, chorus and soloists, composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Glass and Constance DeJong.Loosely based on the life of Mohandas K...
, the
Violin Concerto No. 1Philip Glass's Violin Concerto No. 1 was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra for soloist Paul Zukofsky and premiered in New York City on 5 April 1987. The work was composed with Glass's late father in mind. The piece quickly became one of Glass's most popular works...
(1987),
Symphony No. 3Philip Glass's Symphony No. 3 is a work for string orchestra, commissioned for the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. The premiere, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, took place in Künzelsau, Germany, on February 5, 1995.- Form :...
(1995),
Echorus (1995) and also recent works such as Symphony No. 8 (2005), and
Songs and Poems for Solo Cello (2006).
A series of orchestral works that were originally composed for the concert hall commenced with the 3-movement
Violin Concerto No. 1Philip Glass's Violin Concerto No. 1 was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra for soloist Paul Zukofsky and premiered in New York City on 5 April 1987. The work was composed with Glass's late father in mind. The piece quickly became one of Glass's most popular works...
(1987). This work was commissioned by the
American Composers OrchestraThe American Composers Orchestra is an American orchestra based in New York City. It is the only orchestra in the world dedicated solely to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers...
and written for and in close collaboration with the violinist
Paul ZukofskyPaul Zukofsky is an American violinist and conductor known for his work in the field of contemporary classical music.-Career:...
and the conductor Dennis Russel Davies, who since then has encouraged the composer to write numerous orchestral pieces. The Concerto is dedicated to the memory of Glass's father: "His favorite form was the violin concerto, and so I grew up listening to the
MendelssohnFelix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 is his last large orchestral work. It forms an important part of the violin repertoire and is one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time...
, the Paganini, the
BrahmsViolin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 is a violin concerto in three movements composed by Johannes Brahms in 1878 and dedicated to his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim...
concertos. (...) So when I decided to write a violin concerto, I wanted to write one that my father would have liked." Among its multiple recordings, in 1992, the Concerto was performed and recorded by
Gidon KremerGidon Kremer is a Latvian violinist and conductor. In 1980 he left the USSR and settled in Germany.-Biography:Kremer was born in Riga to parents of German-Jewish and Latvian-Swedish origins. He began playing the violin at the age of four, receiving instruction from his father and his grandfather,...
and the
Vienna Philharmonic OrchestraThe Vienna Philharmonic is an orchestra in Austria, regularly considered one of the finest in the world....
. This turn to orchestral music was continued with a symphonic trilogy of "portraits of nature", commissioned by the
Cleveland OrchestraThe Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...
, the
Rotterdam Philharmonic OrchestraThe Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra is a Dutch symphony orchestra based in Rotterdam. Its primary venue is the concert hall De Doelen. The RPhO is considered one of the Netherlands' two principal orchestras of international standing, second to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam...
, and the
Atlanta Symphony OrchestraThe Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Robert Spano has been its music director since 2001...
:
The LightThe Light is a 1987 composition by Philip Glass, his first score for a full symphony orchestra. The work was commissioned for the Michelson-Morley Centennial Celebration held at Case Western Reserve University...
(1987),
The Canyon (1988), and
ItaipuItaipu is a four movement symphonic cantata by Philip Glass. The composition was written in 1989, and pays homage to the world's largest hydroelectric dam, built on the Paraná River between Paraguay and Brazil. The text is written in Guaraní, with a translation by Daniela Thomas...
(1989).
While composing for symphonic ensembles, Glass also composed music for piano, with the cycle of five movements titled
Metamorphosis (adapted from music for a theatrical adaptation of
Franz KafkaFranz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
's
The MetamorphosisThe Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of short fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world...
, and for the
Errol MorrisErrol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
film
The Thin Blue LineThe Thin Blue Line is a 1988 documentary film by Errol Morris, depicting the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man convicted and sentenced to die for a murder he did not commit. Adams' case was reviewed and he was released from prison approximately a year after the film's release.-Synopsis:The film...
, 1988]). In the same year Glass met the poet
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
by chance in a book store in the
East VillageThe East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
of New York City, and they immediately "decided on the spot to do something together, reached for one of Allen's books and chose
Wichita Vortex Sutra"Wichita Vortex Sutra" is an anti-war poem by Allen Ginsberg, written in 1966. It appears in his collections Planet News and The Fall of America: Poems of These States...
", a piece for reciter and piano which in turn developed into a music theatre piece for singers and ensemble,
Hydrogen JukeboxHydrogen Jukebox is a phrase coined by beat poet Allen Ginsberg, from his poem Howl.It is also the name of a chamber opera featuring the music of Philip Glass and the poetry of Ginsberg.-History:Of the project, Glass said:...
(1990).
Glass also turned to chamber music; he composed two String Quartets (No.4 and No.5, for the
Kronos QuartetKronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
, 1989 and 1991), and chamber works which originated as incidental music for plays, such as
Music from "The Screens" (1989/1990). This work originated in one of many theater music collaborations with the director
Joanne AkalaitisJoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
, who originally asked the
GambianThe Gambia is a West African country closely linked musically with its neighbor, Senegal. Griots, , a kind of hereditary praise-singer, are common throughout the region, a legacy of the ancient Mande Empire...
musician
Foday Musa SusoFoday Musa Suso is a musician and composer from the West African nation of Gambia. He is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group, and is a jali...
"to do the score [for
Jean GenetJean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
's "The Screens"] in collaboration with a western composer". Glass had already collaborated with Suso in the film score to
PowaqqatsiPowaqqatsi , or Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation, is the 1988 sequel to the experimental 1982 documentary film Koyaanisqatsi, by Godfrey Reggio. It is the second film in the Qatsi trilogy....
(
Godfrey ReggioGodfrey Reggio is an American director of experimental documentary films.-Life:Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in...
, 1986).
Music from "The Screens" is on occasion a touring piece for Glass and Suso, and individual pieces found its way to the repertoire of Glass and the cellist Wendy Sutter. Another collaboration was a collaborative recording project with
Ravi ShankarRavi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...
, initiated by
Peter BaumannPeter Baumann formed the core line-up of the German electronic group Tangerine Dream with Edgar Froese and Christopher Franke in 1971. While touring with the band, Baumann composed his first solo album in 1976...
(a member of the band
Tangerine DreamTangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
), which resulted in the album
Passages (1990).
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Glass's projects also included two highly prestigious opera commissions, based on the life of two explorers,
Christopher ColumbusChristopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
(
The VoyageThe Voyage is an opera in three acts by the American composer Philip Glass . The libretto was written by David Henry Hwang....
[1990], commissioned by the
Metropolitan OperaThe Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
, with a libretto by
David Henry HwangDavid Henry Hwang is an American playwright who has risen to prominence as the preeminent Asian American dramatist in the U.S.He was born in Los Angeles, California and was educated at the Yale School of Drama and Stanford University...
), and
Vasco da GamaVasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India...
(
White Raven) [1991], a collaboration with Robert Wilson and composed for the opening of the
Expo '98Expo '98 was an official specialised World's Fair held in Lisbon, Portugal from Friday, May 22 to Wednesday, September 30, 1998. The theme of the fair was "The Oceans, a Heritage for the Future," chosen in part to commemorate 500 years of Portuguese discoveries...
). Especially in
The Voyage, the composer "explore[d] new territory", with its "newly arching lyricism", "Sibelian starkness and sweep", and "dark, brooding tone (...) a reflection of its increasingly chromatic (and dissonant) palette", as one commentator put it.
The Cocteau Trilogy and Symphonies (1991–1996)
After these operas, Glass began working on a symphonic cycle, commissioned by the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, who told Glass at the time: "I'm not going to let you (...) be one of those opera composers who never write a
symphonyA symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
". Glass responded with two 3-movement symphonies (
"Low" [1992]), and Symphony No.2 [1994]); his first in an ongoing series of symphonies is a combination of the composer's own musical material with themes featured in prominent tracks of the David Bowie/ Brian Eno album
Low (1977), whereas Symphony No.2 is described by Glass as a study in
polytonalityThe musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality . Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time...
. He referred to the music of
HoneggerArthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...
,
MilhaudDarius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
, and
Villa-LobosHeitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...
as possible models for his symphony. With the Concerto Grosso (1992),
Symphony No. 3Philip Glass's Symphony No. 3 is a work for string orchestra, commissioned for the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. The premiere, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, took place in Künzelsau, Germany, on February 5, 1995.- Form :...
(1995), a Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra (1995) (all commissioned by conductor Dennis Russel Davies), and
Echorus (1994/95), a more transparent, refined, and intimate chamber-orchestral style paralleled the excursions of his large-scale symphonic pieces. In the four movements of his Third Symphony, Glass treats a 19-piece string orchestra as an extended chamber ensemble. In the third movement, Glass re-uses the chaconne as a formal device; one commentator characterized Glass's symphony as one of the composer's "most tautly unified works" The third Symphony was closely followed by a fourth, subtitled
Heroes (1996), commissioned the
American Composers OrchestraThe American Composers Orchestra is an American orchestra based in New York City. It is the only orchestra in the world dedicated solely to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers...
. Its six movements are symphonic reworkings of themes by Glass, David Bowie, and Brian Eno (from their album
"Heroes", 1977); as in other works by the composer, it is also a hybrid work and exists in two versions: one for the concert hall, and another, shorter one for dance , choreographed by
Twyla TharpTwyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
.
Another commission by Dennis Russell Davies was a second series for piano, the
Etudes for Piano (dedicated to Davies as well as the production designer
Achim FreyerAchim Freyer is a German stage director, set designer and painter. A protege of Bertolt Brecht, Freyer has become one of the world's leading opera directors, working throughout Europe and, since 2002, in the United States, principally with the Los Angeles Opera...
); the complete first set of ten Etudes has been recorded and performed by Glass himself. Bruce Brubaker and Dennis Russell Davies have each recorded the original set of six. Most of the Etudes are composed in the post-minimalist and increasingly lyrical style of the times: "Within the framework of a concise form, Glass explores possible sonorities ranging from typically Baroque passagework to Romantically tinged moods". Some of the pieces also appeared in different versions such as in the theatre music to Robert Wilson's
Persephone (1994, commissioned by the Relache Ensemble) or
Echorus (a version of Etude No.2 for two violins and string orchestra, written for Edna Mitchell and
Yehudi MenuhinYehudi Menuhin, Baron Menuhin, OM, KBE was a Russian Jewish American violinist and conductor who spent most of his performing career in the United Kingdom. He was born to Russian Jewish parents in the United States, but became a citizen of Switzerland in 1970, and of the United Kingdom in 1985...
1995).
Glass's prolific output in the 1990s continued to include operas with an opera
triptychA triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...
(1991–1996), which the composer described as an "homage" to writer and film director
Jean CocteauJean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, based on his prose and cinematic work:
OrphéeOrpheus is a 1950 French film directed by Jean Cocteau and starring Jean Marais. This film is the central part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet , Orpheus and Testament of Orpheus...
(1949),
La Belle et la BêteBeauty and the Beast is a 1946 French romantic fantasy film adaptation of the traditional fairy tale of the same name, written by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont and published in 1757 as part of a fairy tale anthology . Directed by French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, the film stars Josette...
(1946), and the novel
Les Enfants TerriblesLes Enfants Terribles is a 1929 novel by Jean Cocteau, published by Editions Bernard Grasset. It concerns two siblings, Elisabeth and Paul, who isolate themselves from the world as they grow up; this isolation is shattered by the stresses of their adolescence. It was first translated into English...
(1929, later made into a film by Cocteau and
Jean-Pierre Melville, 1950). In the same way the triptych is also a musical homage to the work of the group of French composers associated with Cocteau,
Les SixLes six is a name, inspired by The Five, given in 1920 by critic Henri Collet in an article titled "" to a group of six composers working in Montparnasse whose music is often seen as a reaction against the musical style of Richard Wagner and impressionist music.-Members:Formally, the Groupe des...
(and especially to Glass's teacher Darius Milhaud), as well as to various 18th century composers such as Gluck and
BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
whose music featured as an essential part of the films by Cocteau.
The inspiration of the first part of the trilogy,
Orphée (composed in 1991, and premiered in 1993 at the
American Repertory TheatreThe American Repertory Theater is a professional not-for-profit theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1980 by Robert Brustein, the A.R.T. is known for its commitment to new American plays and music–theater explorations; to neglected works of the past; and to established classical texts...
) can be conceptually and musically traced to Gluck's opera
Orfeo ed EuridiceOrfeo ed Euridice is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing...
(
Orphée et Euridyce, 1762/1774), which had a prominent part in Cocteau's 1949 film
Orphee. One theme of the opera, the death of
EurydiceEurydice in Greek mythology, was an oak nymph or one of the daughters of Apollo . She was the wife of Orpheus, who loved her dearly; on their wedding day, he played joyful songs as his bride danced through the meadow. One day, a satyr saw and pursued Eurydice, who stepped on a venomous snake,...
, has some similarity to the composer's personal life: the opera was composed after the unexpected death in 1991 of Glass's wife, artist Candy Jernigan: "(...) One can only suspect that Orpheus' grief must have resembled the composer's own", K. Robert Schwartz suggests. The opera's "transparency of texture, a subtlety of instrumental color, (...) a newly expressive and unfettered vocal writing" was praised, and
The GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
's critic remarked "Glass has a real affinity for the French text and sets the words eloquently, underpinning them with delicately patterned instrumental textures".
For the second opera,
La Belle et la Bête (1994, scored for either the Philip Glass Ensemble or a more conventional chamber orchestra), Glass replaced the soundtrack (including
Georges AuricGeorges Auric was a French composer, born in Lodève, Hérault. He was a child prodigy and at age 15 he had his first compositions published. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Georges Caussade, and under the composer Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum...
's film music) of Cocteau's film, wrote "a new fully operatic score and synchronize[d] it with the film". The final part of the triptych returned again to a more traditional setting with the "Dance Opera"
Les Enfants Terribles (1996), scored for voices, three pianos and dancers, with choreography by Susan Marshall. The scoring of the opera evokes Bach's
Concerto for Four HarpsichordsThe harpsichord concertos, BWV 1052-1065, are concertos for harpsichord, strings and continuo by Johann Sebastian Bach. There are seven complete concertos for a single harpsichord, , three concertos for 2 harpsichords , two concertos for 3 harpsichords , and one concerto for 4 harpsichords,...
, but in another way also "the snow, which falls relentlessly throughout the opera (...) bearing witness to the unfolding events. Here time stands still. There is only music, and the movement of children through space" (Glass).
Symphonies, opera, and concertos (1997–2004)
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Glass's lyrical and romantic styles peaked with numerous projects: operas, theatre and film scores (
Martin ScorseseMartin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
's
KundunKundun is a 1997 epic biographical film written by Melissa Mathison and directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the life and writings of the 14th Dalai Lama, the exiled political and spiritual leader of Tibet...
, 1997,
Godfrey ReggioGodfrey Reggio is an American director of experimental documentary films.-Life:Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reggio co-founded La Clinica de la Gente, a facility that provided medical care to 12,000 community members in Santa Fe, and La Gente, a community-organizing project in...
's
NaqoyqatsiNaqoyqatsi , also known as Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, is a 2002 documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio and edited by Jon Kane, with music composed by Philip Glass. It is the third and final film in the Qatsi trilogy....
, 2002, and
Stephen DaldryStephen David Daldry, CBE is an English theatre and film director and producer, as well as a three-time Academy Award nominated and Tony Award winning director.-Early years:...
's
The HoursThe Hours is a 2002 drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, and starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Ed Harris. The screenplay by David Hare is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham....
, 2002), a series of five concerti, and three symphonies centered on orchestra-singer and orchestra-chorus interplay. Two symphonies,
Symphony No.5Symphony No. 5 is a symphony composed by Philip Glass. It is scored for chorus and orchestra.It was commissioned by the Salzburg Festival, Austria and premiered August 28, 1999 and was conducted by Dennis Russell Davies....
"Choral" (1999) and
Symphony No.7A Toltec Symphony is a 2005 symphony by Philip Glass. The National Symphony Orchestra commissioned Glass to write it to commemorate the 60th birthday of conductor Leonard Slatkin...
"
ToltecThe Toltec culture is an archaeological Mesoamerican culture that dominated a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo in the early post-classic period of Mesoamerican chronology...
" (2004), and the song cycle
Songs of MilarepaJetsun Milarepa , is generally considered one of Tibet's most famous yogis and poets. He was a student of Marpa Lotsawa, and a major figure in the history of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.- Life :...
(1997) are thematically meditative. The operatic Symphony No.6
Plutonian OdePlutonian Ode is a poem written by American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1978 against the arms race and nuclear armament of the superpowers. It is heavily inspired by Gnosticism which Ginsberg came to know after reading Hans Jonas's book on the subject. Philip Glass' Symphony No. 6 is based on and...
(2002) for soprano and orchestra was commissioned by the Brucknerhaus, Linz, and
Carnegie HallCarnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in celebration of Glass's sixty-fifth birthday, and originated as Glass's collaboration with
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
(poet, piano – Ginsberg, Glass), based on his eponymous poem.
Besides writing for the concert hall, Glass continued his ongoing operatic series with adaptions from literary texts:
The Marriages of Zones 3, 4 and 5 ([1997] story-libretto by Doris Lessing),
In the Penal Colony"In the Penal Colony" is a short story by Franz Kafka written in German in October 1914, revised in November 1918, and first published in October 1919....
(2000, after the novella by
Franz KafkaFranz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
), and the chamber opera
The Sound of a VoiceThe Sound of a Voice is a 2003 operatic adaptation of the play The Sound of a Voice by American playwright David Henry Hwang. The music is written by composer Philip Glass and the libretto is written by Hwang. The opera is actually made up of two short operas-- The Sound of a Voice and Hotel of...
(2003, with David Henry Hwang), which features the
PipaThe pipa is a four-stringed Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments . Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body with a varying number of frets ranging from 12–26...
, performed by
Wu ManWu Man is a Chinese pipa virtuoso and composer. Described as "the artist most responsible for bring the pipa to the Western World" by the Los Angeles Times, US-based, Chinese-born musician Wu Man has carved out a career creating and fostering projects that give this ancient Chinese instrument a...
at its premiere. Glass also collaborated again with the co-author of
Einstein on the Beach,
Robert WilsonRobert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
, on
Monsters of GraceMonsters of Grace is a multimedia chamber opera in 13 short acts directed by Robert Wilson, with music by Philip Glass and libretto from the works of 13th-century Sufi mystic Jalaluddin Rumi. The title is said to be a reference to Wilson's corruption of a line from Hamlet: "Angels and ministers of...
(1998), and created a biographic
opera on the life of astronomer Galileo GalileiGalileo Galilei is an opera based on excerpts from the life of Galileo Galilei which premiered in 2002 at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. Music by Philip Glass, libretto by Mary Zimmerman and Arnold Weinstein. The piece is presented in one act consisting of ten scenes without break.-Production Notes:All...
(2001).
In the early 2000s, Glass started a series of five concerti with the
Tirol Concerto for Piano and OrchestraThe Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is a piano concerto by Philip Glass. The composer wrote the work in 2000. On commission by the Festival Klangspuren in Stuttgart, it was written for the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra...
(2000, premiered by Dennis Russell Davies as conductor and soloist), and the
Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and OrchestraThe Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra is a double timpani concerto written by Philip Glass in 2000. It is paired with the Cello Concerto on Vol. I of Glass' Concerto Project, a set of six concerti written by the composer...
(2000, for the timpanist Jonathan Haas). The
Concerto for Cello and OrchestraThe Cello Concerto No. 1 was written by Philip Glass in 2001. It was one of the first concerti of the twenty-first century. The piece was commissioned by William and Rebecca Krueger, friends of the composer, for the 50th birthday of cellist Julian Lloyd Webber. A typical performance takes 20-25...
(2001) had its premiere performance in Beijing, featuring cellist
Julian Lloyd WebberJulian Lloyd Webber is a British solo cellist who has been described as the "doyen of British cellists".-Early life:Julian Lloyd Webber is the second son of the composer William Lloyd Webber and his wife Jean Johnstone . He is the younger brother of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber...
; it was composed in celebration of his fiftieth birthday. These concertos were followed by the concise and rigorously neo-baroque
Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra (2002), demonstrating in its transparent, chamber orchestral textures Glass's classical technique, evocative in the "improvisatory chords" of its beginning a
toccataToccata is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers...
of Froberger or
FrescobaldiGirolamo Frescobaldi was a musician from Ferrara, one of the most important composers of keyboard music in the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. A child prodigy, Frescobaldi studied under Luzzasco Luzzaschi in Ferrara, but was influenced by a large number of composers, including Ascanio...
, and 18th century music. Two years later, the concerti series continued with
Piano Concerto No. 2: After Lewis and ClarkThe Piano Concerto No. 2 was written by Philip Glass in 2004. It is also called the Piano Concerto No. 2: After Lewis and Clark, due to its musical representation of the American pioneers...
(2004), composed for the pianist Paul Barnes. The concerto celebrates the pioneers' trek across North America, and the second movement features a duet for piano and
Native American fluteThe Native American flute has achieved some measure of fame for its distinctive sound, used in a variety of New Age and world music recordings. The instrument was originally very personal; its music was played without accompaniment in courtship, healing, meditation, and spiritual rituals. Now it...
. With the chamber opera
The Sound of a Voice, Glass's Piano Concerto No. 2 might be regarded as bridging his traditional compositions and his more popular excursions to
World MusicWorld music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
, also found in
Orion (also composed in 2004).
Songs and Poems (2005–2007)
Waiting for the BarbariansWaiting for the Barbarians is an opera in two acts composed by Philip Glass, with libretto by Christopher Hampton based on the 1980 novel of the same name by South African-born author John M. Coetzee...
, an opera from J.M. Coetzee's
novelWaiting for the Barbarians is a novel by the South African-born author J. M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. The novel was published in 1980. It was chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th Century and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and...
(with the libretto by
Christopher HamptonChristopher James Hampton CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of...
), had its premiere performance in September 2005. Glass defined the work as a "social/political opera", as a critique on the Bush administration's
war in Iraq, a "dialogue about political
crisisA crisis is any event that is, or expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community or whole society...
", and an illustration of the "power of art to turn our attention toward the human dimension of history". While the opera's themes are
ImperialismImperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, apartheid, and
tortureTorture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, the composer chose an understated approach by using "very simple means, and the
orchestrationOrchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
is very clear and very traditional; it's almost
classicalThe dates of the Classical Period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about 1750 and 1830. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or...
in sound", as the conductor D. Russell Davies notes.
Two months after the premiere of this opera, in November 2005, Glass's Symphony No.8, commissioned by the Bruckner Orchester Linz, was premiered at the
Brooklyn Academy of MusicBrooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
in New York City. After three symphonies for voices and orchestra, this piece was a return to purely orchestral and abstract composition; like previous works written for the conductor
Dennis Russell DaviesDennis Russell Davies is an American conductor and pianist. He studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School where he received his doctorate...
(the 1992
Concerto GrossoThe concerto grosso is a form of baroque music in which the musical material is passed between a small group of soloists and full orchestra...
and the 1995 Symphony No.3), it features extended solo writing. Critic
Allan Kozinn-Biography:He received bachelor's degrees in music and journalism from Syracuse University in 1976. He began freelancing as a critic and music feature writer for the New York Times in 1977, and joined the paper's staff in 1991...
described the symphony's
chromaticismChromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. Chromaticism is in contrast or addition to tonality or diatonicism...
as more extreme, more fluid, and its themes and textures as continually changing, morphing without repetition, and praised the symphony's "unpredictable
orchestrationOrchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
", pointing out the "beautiful
fluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
and
harpThe harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
variation in the melancholy second movement". Alex Ross, remarked that "against all odds, this work succeeds in adding something certifiably new to the overstuffed annals of the classical symphony. (...) The musical material is cut from familiar fabric, but it’s striking that the composer forgoes the expected bustling conclusion and instead delves into a mood of deepening twilight and unending night."
The Passion of RamakrishnaRamakrishna , born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay , was a famous mystic of 19th-century India. His religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda – both were influential figures in the Bengali Renaissance as well as the Hindu...
(2006), was composed for the
Pacific SymphonyThe Pacific Symphony is a symphony orchestra located in Orange County, California. The orchestra performs at the Renée and Henry Segerstom Concert Hall, part of the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, California...
Orchestra, the Pacific Chorale and the conductor Carl St. Clair. The 45 minutes choral work is based on the writings of Indian Spiritual leader Sri
RamakrishnaRamakrishna , born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay , was a famous mystic of 19th-century India. His religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda – both were influential figures in the Bengali Renaissance as well as the Hindu...
, which seem "to have genuinely inspired and revived the composer out of his old formulas to write something fresh", as one critic remarked, whereas another noted that "The musical style breaks little new ground for Glass, except for the glorious
HandelianGeorge Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
ending (...) the "composer’s style ideally fits the devotional text".
A Cello Suite, composed for the cellist Wendy Sutter, "Songs and Poems for Solo Cello" (2005–2007), was equally lauded by critics. It was described by Lisa Hirsch as "a major work, (...) a major addition to the cello repertory" and "deeply
RomanticRomantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
in spirit, and at the same time deeply
BaroqueBaroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
". Another critic, Anne Midgette of the Washington Post, noted that the suite "maintains an unusual degree of directness and warmth"; she also noted a kinship to a major work by
Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
: "Digging into the lower registers of the instrument, it takes flight in handfuls of notes, now gentle, now impassioned, variously evoking the minor-mode keening of
klezmerKlezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
music and the interior meditations of Bach's
cello suitesThe Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by Johann Sebastian Bach are some of the most performed and recognizable solo compositions ever written for cello...
". Glass himself pointed out that "in many ways it owes more to Schubert than to Bach".
In 2007, Glass also worked alongside
Leonard CohenLeonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
on an adaptation of Cohen's poetry collection
Book of LongingBook of Longing is the first new poetry book by Leonard Cohen since 1984's Book of Mercy. First published in 2006 by McClelland and Stewart, Book of Longing contains 167 previously unpublished poems and drawings, mostly written at a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy in California, where Cohen lived from...
. The work, which premiered in June 2007 in Toronto, is a piece for seven instruments and a vocal quartet, and contains recorded spoken word performances by Cohen and imagery from his collection.
AppomattoxAppomattox is an opera in English based on the American Civil War, composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by the playwright Christopher Hampton. The work had its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera on October 5, 2007, with a cast that included Dwayne Croft as Robert E. Lee, Andrew Shore as...
, an opera surrounding the events at the end of the American Civil War, was commissioned by the
San Francisco OperaSan Francisco Opera is an American opera company, based in San Francisco, California.It was founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola and is the second largest opera company in North America...
and premiered on October 5, 2007. As in
Waiting for the Barbarians, Glass collaborated with the writer Christopher Hampton, and as with the preceding opera and Symphony No.8, the piece was conducted by Glass's long-time collaborator Dennis Russell Davies, who noted that "in his recent operas the bass line has taken on an increasing prominence,(...) (an) increasing use of melodic elements in the deep register, in the
contrabassContrabass refers to a musical instrument of very low pitch; generally those pitched one octave below instruments of the bass register...
, the
contrabassoonThe contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...
—he's increasingly using these sounds and these textures can be derived from using these instruments in different combinations. (...) He's definitely developed more skill as an orchestrator, in his ability to conceive melodies and harmonic structures for specific instrumental groups. (...) what he gives them to play is very organic and idiomatic."
Apart from this large-scale opera, Glass added a work to his catalogue of theater music in 2007, and continuing—after a gap of twenty years—to write music for the dramatic work of Samuel Beckett. He provided a "hypnotic" original score for a compilation of Beckett's short plays
Act Without Words IAct Without Words I is a short play by Samuel Beckett. It is a mime, Beckett's first . Like many of Beckett's works, the play was originally written in French , being translated into English by Beckett himself...
,
Act Without Words IIAct Without Words II is a short mime play by Samuel Beckett, his second . Like many of Beckett's works, the piece was originally composed in French , then translated into English by Beckett himself. Written in the late fifties it opened at the Calderon Press Institute in Oxford and was directed by...
,
Rough for Theatre IRough for Theatre I is a one-act theatrical sketch by Samuel Beckett. Also known simply as Theatre I it began life originally in French in the late fifties as Fragment de théâtre and was later translated into English by Beckett himself. The first production was at the Schiller Theatre, Hamburg in...
and
Eh JoeEh Joe is a piece for television, written in English by Samuel Beckett, his first work for the medium. It was begun on the author’s fifty-ninth birthday, 13 April 1965, and completed by 1 May...
, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis and premiered in December 2007. Glass's work for this production was described by
The New York Times as "icy, repetitive music that comes closest to piercing the heart".
Chamber music, concertos and symphonies (2008–present)
2008 to 2010 Glass continued to work on a series of chamber music pieces which started with "Songs and Poems": the
Four Movements for Two Pianos (2008, premiered by Dennis Davies and Maki Namekawa in July 2008), a
Sonata for Violin and Piano composed in "the Brahms tradition" (completed in 2008, premiered by violinist Maria Bachman and pianist Jon Klibonoff in February 2009); a
String sextetIn classical music, a string sextet is a composition written for six string instruments, or a group of six musicians who perform such a composition. Most string sextets have been written for an ensemble consisting of two violins, two violas, and two cellos....
(an adaption of the Symphony No.3 of 1995 made by Glass' musical director Michael Riesman) followed in 2009.
Pendulum (2010, a one-movement piece for violin and piano), a second Suite of cello pieces for Wendy Sutter (2011), and
Partita for solo violin for violinist Tim Fain (2010, first performance of the complete work 2011), are recent entries in the series.
Other works for the theater were a score for
EuripidesEuripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
'
The BacchaeThe Bacchae is an ancient Greek tragedy by the Athenian playwright Euripides, during his final years in Macedon, at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which...
(2009, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis), and
KeplerKepler is an opera by Philip Glass set to a libretto in German and Latin by Martina Winkel. It premiered on 20 September 2009 at the Landestheater in the Austrian city of Linz with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Bruckner Orchestra. Its libretto is based on the life and work of Johannes...
(2009), yet another operatic biography of a scientist or explorer. The opera is based on the life of 17th century astronomer
Johannes KeplerJohannes Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican...
, against the background of the
Thirty Years' WarThe Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
, with a libretto compiled from Kepler's texts and poems by his contemporary
Andreas GryphiusAndreas Gryphius was a German lyric poet and dramatist.Asteroid 496 Gryphia is named in his honour.-Life and career:...
. It is Glass's first opera in German, and was premiered by the Bruckner Orchester Linz and Dennis Russell Davies in September 2009. LA Times critic Mark Swed and others described the work as "
oratorioAn oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
-like"; Swed pointed out that the work is Glass' "most chromatic, complex, psychological score" and that the "The orchestra dominates (...) I was struck by the muted, glowing colors, the character of many orchestral solos and the poignant emphasis on bass instruments".
In 2009 and 2010, Glass returned to the concerto genre.
Violin Concerto No. 2Philip Glass' Violin Concerto No. 2, titled The American Four Seasons, received its world premiere in Toronto on December 9, 2009, with violinist Robert McDuffie, for whom the work was composed, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under conductor Peter Oundjian...
in four movements was commissioned by violinist
Robert McDuffieRobert McDuffie is an internationally renowned violinist. He has played as a soloist with many of the major orchestras around the world including those of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Minnesota, Houston, St...
, and subtitled "The American Four Seasons" (2009), as an homage to Vivaldi's set of concertos
"Le quattro stagioni"The Four Seasons is a set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Composed in 1723, The Four Seasons is Vivaldi's best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of Baroque music. The texture of each concerto is varied, each resembling its respective season...
. It premiered in December 2009 by the
Toronto Symphony OrchestraThe Toronto Symphony Orchestra is a Canadian orchestra based in Toronto, Ontario.-History:The TSO was founded in 1922 as the New Symphony Orchestra, and gave its first concert at Massey Hall in April 1923. The orchestra changed its name to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1927. The TSO...
, and was subsequently performed by the
London Philharmonic OrchestraThe London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
in April 2010. The Double Concerto for Violin and Cello and Orchestra (2010) was composed for soloists Maria Bachmann and Wendy Sutter and also as a ballet score for the Nederlands Dans Theater. Other orchestral projects of 2010 are short orchestral scores for films; to a multimedia presentation based on the novel
Icarus at the Edge of TimeIcarus at the Edge of Time is a 2008 novel by physicist Brian Greene, illustrated by Chip Kidd with images from the Hubble Space Telescope. It was adapted into a 40-minute orchestral piece by Philip Glass with a film by AL and AL in 2010....
by theoretical physicist
Brian GreeneBrian Greene is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi-Yau manifolds...
, which premiered on June 6, 2010, and the score for the Brazilian film
Nosso LarNosso Lar is a 2010 Brazilian drama film directed by Wagner de Assis, based on the book of the same name by Francisco Cândido Xavier. It is distributed by 20th Century Fox and features a soundtrack composed by Philip Glass....
(released in
BrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
on September 3, 2010). Glass also donated a short work,
Brazil, to the video game
ChimeChime is a 2010 music/puzzle video game developed by Zoë Mode, released initially on the Xbox Live Arcade service, and later for Windows. An extended version of the game, called Chime Super Deluxe, was released on the PlayStation Network in March 29, 2011...
, which was released on February 3, 2010.
In January 2011, Glass performed at the
MONA FOMAMONA FOMA is an annual festival based in Hobart, Tasmania, curated by Brian Ritchie bass player from the rock band Violent Femmes. It is billed as Tasmania's largest contemporary music festival and showcases the work of artists in a broad range of art forms, including sound, noise, dance, theatre,...
festival in
HobartHobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...
, Tasmania. The festival promotes a broad range of art forms, including experimental sound, noise, dance, theatre, visual art, performance and new media.
In August 2011, Glass presented a series of music, dance, and theater performances as part of the Days and Nights Festival. Along with the Philip Glass Ensemble, scheduled performers include
Molissa FenleyMolissa Fenley is a choreographer, modern dancer, and part-time associate professor of dance at Mills College. She has accepted commissions from Deutsche Oper Ballet of Berlin, Australian Dance Theatre, The Ohio Ballet, and The Pacific Northwest Ballet, and has won two New York Dance and...
and Dancers, John Moran with Saori Tsukada, as well as a screening of
DraculaDracula is a 1931 vampire-horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the stage play of the same name by Hamilton Deane and John L...
with Glass' score. Glass hopes to present this festival annually, with a focus on art, science, and conservation.
Glass' recently completed and projected works include Symphony No.9 (2010–2011), Symphony No.10 (2011), Cello Concerto No.2 (2012, based on the film score to
NaqoyqatsiNaqoyqatsi , also known as Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, is a 2002 documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio and edited by Jon Kane, with music composed by Philip Glass. It is the third and final film in the Qatsi trilogy....
), Symphony No.11, String Quartet No.6, and the opera
The Lost (2011). Glass' Ninth Symphony was co-commissioned by the
American Composers OrchestraThe American Composers Orchestra is an American orchestra based in New York City. It is the only orchestra in the world dedicated solely to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers...
, the Bruckner Orchester Linz and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. The symphony's first performance is scheduled for January 1, 2012 (in Linz, Austria); the American premiere will be on January 31, 2012 (Glass' 75th birthday), at
Carnegie HallCarnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, and the West Coast premiere under the baton of John Adams on April 5.
The Lost is based on a play by
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n playwright and novelist
Peter HandkePeter Handke is an avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright.-Early life:Handke and his mother lived in the Soviet-occupied Pankow district of Berlin from 1944 to 1948 before resettling in Griffen...
,
Die Spuren der Verirrten (2006). It will be premiered in 2013 in
LinzLinz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...
(Austria), conducted by Dennis Russell Davies and directed by David Pountney, who pointed out that the English translation of the original German title means "traces of those who lost their way": "[So] not knowing where you are going, let alone where you came from, seems to be a pre-condition. It is also, perhaps, the way we are? Philip’s music is perfect for this kind of abstraction".
Influences and connections
Aside from composing in the Western classical tradition, his music has ties to rock,
ambient musicAmbient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
,
electronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, and
world musicWorld music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
. Early admirers of his minimalism include musicians
Brian EnoBrian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
and David Bowie. In the 1990s, Glass composed the aforementioned symphonies
Low (1992) and
Heroes (1996), thematically derived from the Bowie-Eno collaboration albums
Low and
"Heroes" (composed in late 1970s Berlin).
Philip Glass has collaborated with recording artists such as
Paul SimonPaul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
,
Suzanne VegaSuzanne Nadine Vega is an American songwriter and singer known for her eclectic folk-inspired music.Two of Vega's songs reached the top 10 of various international chart listings: "Luka" and "Tom's Diner"...
,
Mick JaggerSir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
,
Leonard CohenLeonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
,
David ByrneDavid Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
,
UaktiUakti is a Brazilian instrumental musical group that is composed of Marco Antônio Guimarães, Artur Andrés Ribeiro, Paulo Sérgio Santos, and Décio Ramos. Uakti is known for using custom-made instruments, built by the group itself.-The name:...
,
Natalie MerchantNatalie Anne Merchant is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She joined the alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs in 1981 and left it to begin her solo career in 1993.-Early life:...
, and
Aphex TwinRichard David James , best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born electronic musician and composer described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music"...
(yielding an orchestration of
Icct Hedral in 1995 on the
Donkey RhubarbDonkey Rhubarb is an EP by electronic-music artist Aphex Twin, released in 1995 by Warp Records. This song was also used as the theme song for MTV UK's Pure Morning programming block....
EP). Glass's compositional influence extends to musicians such as
Mike OldfieldMichael Gordon Oldfield is an English multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, working a style that blends progressive rock, folk, ethnic or world music, classical music, electronic music, New Age, and more recently, dance. His music is often elaborate and complex in nature...
(who included parts from Glass's
North Star in
Platinum), and bands such as
Tangerine DreamTangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...
and
Talking HeadsTalking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
. Philip Glass and his sound designer Kurt Munkacsi produced the American
post-punkPost-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
/
new waveNew Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
band
PolyrockPolyrock was an American post-punk/new wave band formed in New York City in 1978 and active until the mid-1980s. Strongly influenced by minimalism, the group was produced by the composer Philip Glass and Kurt Munkacsi...
(1978 to the mid-1980s), as well as the recording of John Moran's
The Manson Family (An Opera) in 1991, which featured punk legend
Iggy PopIggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Though considered an innovator of punk rock, Pop's music has encompassed a number of styles over the years, including pop, metal, jazz and blues...
, and a second (unreleased) recording of Moran's work featuring poet
Allen GinsbergIrwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
.
In 1970, Glass and Klaus Kertess (owner of the
Bykert GalleryBykert Gallery was an influential contemporary art gallery in New York City between 1966 and 1975, run by Klaus Kertess and Jeff Byers, who had been classmates at Yale College, class of 1958...
) formed a record label named
Chatham Square Productions (named after the
locationChatham Square is a major intersection in Manhattan's Chinatown. The square lies at the confluence of seven streets: Bowery, East Broadway, St. James Place, Mott Street, Oliver Street, Worth Street and Park Row. The postal ZIP Code is 10038.-History:...
of the studio of a Philip Glass Ensemble member Dick Landry). In 1993 Glass formed another record label, Point Music; in 1997, Point Music released
Music for AirportsAmbient 1: Music for Airports is an ambient album by Brian Eno released in 1978.-Overview:Music for Airports was the first of four albums released in Eno's "Ambient" series, a term which he coined to differentiate his minimalistic approach to the album's material and "the products of the various...
, a live, instrumental version of Eno's composition of the same name, by
Bang on a CanBang on a Can is a multi-faceted classical music organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1987 by three American composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon...
All-Stars. In 2002, Glass and his producer Kurt Munkacsi and artist Don Christensen founded the Orange Mountain Music company, dedicated to "establishing the recording legacy of Philip Glass" and, to date, have released sixty albums of Philip Glass's music.
Music for film
Glass has composed many film scores, starting with the orchestral score for
KoyaanisqatsiKoyaanisqatsi also known as Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke....
(1982), and continuing with two biopics,
Mishima: A Life in Four ChaptersMishima: A Life in Four Chapters is an American/Japanese film co-written and directed by Paul Schrader in 1985. It was co-produced by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas....
(1985, resulting in the String Quartet No.3) and
KundunKundun is a 1997 epic biographical film written by Melissa Mathison and directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the life and writings of the 14th Dalai Lama, the exiled political and spiritual leader of Tibet...
(1997) about the
Dalai LamaThe Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination.
The year after scoring
Hamburger HillHamburger Hill is a 1987 American war film about the actual assault of the U.S. Army's 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division 'Screaming Eagles', on a well-fortified position, including trenchworks and bunkers, of the North Vietnamese Army on Ap Bia...
(1987), Glass began a collaboration with the filmmaker
Errol MorrisErrol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
with his music for Morris's celebrated documentary
The Thin Blue LineThe Thin Blue Line is a 1988 documentary film by Errol Morris, depicting the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man convicted and sentenced to die for a murder he did not commit. Adams' case was reviewed and he was released from prison approximately a year after the film's release.-Synopsis:The film...
. He continued composing for the
Qatsi trilogyThe Qatsi trilogy is the informal name given to a series of three films produced by Godfrey Reggio and scored by Philip Glass:* Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance * Powaqqatsi: Life in transformation * Naqoyqatsi: Life as war...
with the scores for
PowaqqatsiPowaqqatsi , or Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation, is the 1988 sequel to the experimental 1982 documentary film Koyaanisqatsi, by Godfrey Reggio. It is the second film in the Qatsi trilogy....
(1988) and
NaqoyqatsiNaqoyqatsi , also known as Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, is a 2002 documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio and edited by Jon Kane, with music composed by Philip Glass. It is the third and final film in the Qatsi trilogy....
(2002). In 1995 he composed the theme for Reggio's short independent film
EvidenceEvidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...
. He even made a cameo appearance in
Peter WeirPeter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...
's
The Truman ShowThe Truman Show is a 1998 American satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol. The cast includes Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, as well as Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Ed Harris and Natascha McElhone...
(1998), which uses music from
Powaqqatsi,
Anima Mundi and
Mishima, as well as three original tracks by Glass (who is actually briefly visible performing at the piano in the film itself). In the 1990s, he also composed scores for the thriller
CandymanCandyman is a 1992 horror film starring Virginia Madsen, Tony Todd and Xander Berkeley. It was directed by Bernard Rose and is based on the short story "The Forbidden" by Clive Barker, though the film's scenario is switched from England to Chicago. The film was scored by Philip Glass. The film was...
(1992) and its sequel,
Candyman: Farewell to the FleshCandyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh is the 1995 sequel to the horror film Candyman, an adaptation of the Clive Barker short story "The Forbidden". It stars Tony Todd, Kelly Rowan, William O'Leary, Bill Nunn, Matt Clark and Veronica Cartwright.-Plot:...
(1995), plus a film adaptation of
Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
's
The Secret Agent (1996).
In 1999, he finished a new soundtrack for the 1931 film
DraculaDracula is a 1931 vampire-horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the stage play of the same name by Hamilton Deane and John L...
.
The HoursThe Hours is a 2002 drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, and starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Ed Harris. The screenplay by David Hare is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham....
(2002) earned him a second Academy Award nomination, and was followed by another Morris documentary,
The Fog of WarThe Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 American documentary film about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara as well as illustrating his observations of the nature of modern warfare...
(2003). In the mid-2000s Glass provided the scores to films such as
Secret WindowSecret Window is a 2004 psychological horror film starring Johnny Depp and John Turturro. It was written and directed by David Koepp, based on the novella Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King, featuring a musical score by Philip Glass and Geoff Zanelli. The story appeared in King's...
(2004),
NeverwasNeverwas is a 2005 English film written and directed by Joshua Michael Stern, starring Ian McKellen, Aaron Eckhart, Brittany Murphy and Nick Nolte.It was first shown at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival...
(2005),
The Illusionist and
Notes on a ScandalNotes on a Scandal is a 2006 British psychological thriller film, adapted from the 2003 novel of the same name by Zoë Heller. The screenplay was written by Patrick Marber and the film was directed by Richard Eyre. Many parts of the film were shot in Islington Arts and Media School...
, garnering his third Academy Award nomination for the latter. Glass's most recent film scores include
No ReservationsNo Reservations is a 2007 American romantic drama film directed by Scott Hicks. The screenplay by Carol Fuchs is an adaptation of an original script by Sandra Nettelbeck, which served as the basis for the 2001 German film Mostly Martha.-Plot:...
(Glass makes a brief cameo in the film sitting at an outdoor cafe),
Cassandra's Dream,
No Regrets and
Mr Nice (2009). In 2009 Glass composed original theme music for Transcendent Man about the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil by filmmaker
Barry PtolemyRobert Barry Ptolemy is an American film director, producer and writer. Ptolemy directed Transcendent Man a documentary film about futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil.-Life:...
.
In the 2000s Glass's work from the 1980s again became known to wider public through various media. In 2005 his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1987) was featured in the surreal French thriller,
La MoustacheLa Moustache is a French film from 2005, directed by Emmanuel Carrère and starring Vincent Lindon, and adapted from Carrère's own novel. The film features music from Phillip Glass...
, providing a tone intentionally incongruous to the banality of the movie's plot.
Metamorphosis for Piano (1988) was featured in the
reimagined Battlestar GalacticaBattlestar Galactica is an American military science fiction television series, and part of the Battlestar Galactica franchise. The show was developed by Ronald D. Moore as a re-imagining of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series created by Glen A. Larson...
in the episode "Valley of Darkness", and in 2008,
Rockstar GamesRockstar Games is a major video game developer and publisher based in New York City, owned by Take-Two Interactive following its purchase of UK video game publisher BMG Interactive. The brand is mostly known for Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, L.A...
released
Grand Theft Auto IVGrand Theft Auto IV is a 2008 open world action video game published by Rockstar Games, and developed by British games developer Rockstar North. It has been released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game consoles, and for the Windows operating system...
featuring Glass's "Pruit Igoe" (from
Koyaanisqatsi). "Pruit Igoe" and "Prophecies" (also from
Koyaanisqatsi) were used both in a trailer for
WatchmenWatchmen is a 2009 superhero film directed by Zack Snyder and starring Malin Åkerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Patrick Wilson. It is an adaptation of the comic book of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons...
and in the film itself.
Watchmen also included two other Glass pieces in the score: "Something She Has To Do" (from
The Hours) and "Protest (Act II Scene 3)" (from
Satyagraha).
Personal life
Glass describes himself as "a Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist", and he is a supporter of
Tibetan independenceThe Tibetan independence movement is a movement for the independence of the lands where Tibetan people live and the political separation of those lands from the People's Republic of China. It is principally led by the Tibetan diaspora in countries like India and the United States, and by...
. In 1987 he co-founded the
Tibet HouseTibet House US was founded in 1987 by Columbia University professor Robert Thurman, actor Richard Gere and modern composer Philip Glass at the behest of the 14th H.H. Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. It was initially organized in New York City, USA, and the Tibet House US is still based there...
with Columbia University professor
Robert ThurmanRobert Alexander Farrar Thurman is an influential and prolific American Buddhist writer and academic who has authored, edited or translated several books on Tibetan Buddhism. He is the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, holding the first endowed chair...
and the actor
Richard GereRichard Tiffany Gere is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol...
. Glass is a vegetarian.
Glass has four children and one granddaughter.
JulietJuliet Glass is a writer and food critic, who formerly lived in Minneapolis. She is currently markets and program manager of FreshFarm Markets, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. that promotes the growth of local food in the Chesapeake Bay region . She is the daughter of JoAnne...
(b. 1968) and Zachary (b. 1971) are his children from his first marriage, to theater director
JoAnne AkalaitisJoAnne Akalaitis is an American theatre director and a writer and the winner of five Obie Awards for direction and founder of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York, from which she resigned after twenty years in June 1990.Akalaitis was pre-med and studied philosophy in college...
(married 1965, divorced 1980). Granddaughter Zuri (b.1989) is Zachary's daughter. His second marriage to Luba Burtyk was dissolved. His third wife, the artist Candy Jernigan, died of liver cancer in 1991, aged 39. Marlowe and Cameron are Glass's sons with his fourth wife, Holly Critchlow (from whom Glass is divorced). Glass lives in New York and in
Cape BretonCape Breton Island is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America. It likely corresponds to the word Breton, the French demonym for Brittany....
, Nova Scotia. He has been romantically involved with cellist Wendy Sutter since 2005.
Glass is the first cousin once removed of
Ira GlassIra Glass is an American public radio personality, and host and producer of the radio and television show This American Life.- Early life :...
, host of the nationally syndicated radio show
This American LifeThis American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEZ and hosted by Ira Glass. It is distributed by Public Radio International on PRI affiliate stations and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays,...
. Philip once appeared as a guest on
This American Life and his piece
Metamorphosis One is often used on the show.{{Citation needed|date=September 2010}} Philip Glass's cousin is Ira Glass's father.
According to an interview,
Franz SchubertFranz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
is Glass' favorite composer.
Films about Philip Glass
- 1976–Music With Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 2: Philip Glass. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley , is a contemporary American composer, best known for his operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. Along with Gordon Mumma, Ashley was also a major pioneer of audio synthesis.Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan...
.
- 1983–Philip Glass. From Four American Composers. Directed by Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
.
- 1985–A Composer's Notes: Philip Glass and the Making of an Opera. Directed by Michael Blackwood.
- 1986–Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera. Directed by Mark Obenhaus.
- 2005–Looking Glass. Directed by Éric Darmon.
- 2007–glass: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts. Directed by Scott Hicks
Robert Scott Hicks is a film director from Australia. He is best known as the screenwriter and director of Shine, the Oscar-winning biopic of pianist David Helfgott. Hicks's work has been nominated for an Academy Award as well as winning an Emmy Award.-Personal life:Hicks was born in Uganda, the...
.
Golden Globe Awards
Best Original ScoreThe Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score is one of several categories presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association , an organization of journalists who cover the United States film industry, but are affiliated with publications outside North America, since its institution in 1947...
- Nominated: Kundun
Kundun is a 1997 epic biographical film written by Melissa Mathison and directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the life and writings of the 14th Dalai Lama, the exiled political and spiritual leader of Tibet...
(1998)
- Won: The Truman Show
The Truman Show is a 1998 American satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol. The cast includes Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, as well as Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Ed Harris and Natascha McElhone...
(1999)
- Nominated: The Hours
The Hours is a 2002 drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, and starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Ed Harris. The screenplay by David Hare is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham....
(2002)
BAFTA Awards
Anthony Asquith Award for Film MusicThe Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music is an annual award given by British Academy of Film and Television Arts.-1960s:*1968 - The Lion in Winter - John Barry...
- Won: The Hours
The Hours is a 2002 drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, and starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Ed Harris. The screenplay by David Hare is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham....
(2002)
{{multicol-break}}
Academy Awards
Best Original ScoreThe Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
- Nominated: Kundun
Kundun is a 1997 epic biographical film written by Melissa Mathison and directed by Martin Scorsese. It is based on the life and writings of the 14th Dalai Lama, the exiled political and spiritual leader of Tibet...
(1997)
- Nominated: The Hours
The Hours is a 2002 drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, and starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Ed Harris. The screenplay by David Hare is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham....
(2002)
- Nominated: Notes on a Scandal
Notes on a Scandal is a 2006 British psychological thriller film, adapted from the 2003 novel of the same name by Zoë Heller. The screenplay was written by Patrick Marber and the film was directed by Richard Eyre. Many parts of the film were shot in Islington Arts and Media School...
(2006)
Other
- 2010 NEA Opera Honors Award
- 18th International Palm Springs Film Festival Award
{{multicol-end}}
Further reading
- William Duckworth (1995, 1999). Talking Music: Conversations With John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers. New York, New York: Da Capo Press.
- Philip Glass, Robert T. Jones (ed.) (1987, 1995). Music by Philip Glass. New York, New York: DaCapo Press.
- Richard Kostelanetz (ed.) (1997). Writings on Glass. Essays, Interviews, Criticism. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.
- Robert Maycock (2002). Glass: A Biography of Philip Glass. Sanctuary Publishing.
- Potter, Keith (2000). Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass. Music in the Twentieth Century series. Cambridge, UK; New York, New York: Cambridge University Press.
- John Richardson (1999). Singing Archaeology: Philip Glass's "Akhnaten". Wesleyan University Press.
- K. Robert Schwarz (1996). Minimalists. 20th-Century Composers Series. London: Phaidon Press.
- Bartman, William and Kesten, Joanne (editors). The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his subjects, New York: A.R.T. Press, 1997
- Knowlson, James (2004). Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, New York: Grove Press.
External links
{{commons}}
{{BAFTA Award for Best Film Music 2000–2019}}
{{Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score 1990–2009}}
{{Persondata
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| DATE OF BIRTH = 1937-01-31
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Glass, Philip}}