PHILIP GLASS (B. 1937)

Einstein on the Beach (1976)

MUSIC IN SIMILAR MOTION

Glass

Alleluia Justus ut palma, in free organum, c.

1100

Music in Similar Motion String of 8th notes, unrelenting for 15 minutes

Line of music added then shortened, phrase by phrase

Then use a part to build a new structure

People got high from it

Important that it was mixed and amplified—provides emotional punch

Like standing in a very strong, cold wind and feeling the hail and the sleet and the snow pounding your flesh. A force of nature

Like adding a new table when the first was filled

Music in Contrary Motion

Music in Fifths

MUSIC IN 12 PARTS, 1967-1974

The music is placed outside the usual time scale, substituting a non- narrative and extended time sense in its place. It may happen that some listeners, missing the usual musical structures (or landmarks) by which they are used to orient themselves, may experience some initial difficulties in actually perceiving the music. However, when it becomes apparent that nothing "happens" in the usual sense, but that, instead, the gradual accretion of musical material can and does serve as the basis of the listener's attention, then he can perhaps discover another mode of listening-one in which neither memory nor anticipation (the usual psychological devices of programmatic music, whether Baroque, Classical, Romantic or Modernistic) have a place in sustaining the texture, quality or reality of the musical experience. It is hoped that one would then be able to perceive the music as a "presence," freed of dramatic structure, a pure medium of sound.6

Philip Glass and Michael Riesman: Two

Interviews

The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 86, No. 3

(Autumn, 2002), pp. 508-529

MUSIC IN TWELVE PARTS

Took 3 years to write

Premiered each part as it was finished

Originated as single page with 12 staves Four keyboard players, two lines each

Three winds

One singer

Premiere at Town Hall Short break after Part 3

Intermission after Part 6

Short break after Part 9

Part 1, slow stately adagio

Part 2, cyclic, short phrases repeat until a new note is added or subtracted

Series of cycles over steady six-note cycles, wheels within wheels

Part 3, pulsating rhythms

Middle, keyboard adds deep bass sound (effect also in Music in Similar Motion

Part 4, Psycho-acoustical phenomena,

(hear notes no one is playing)

Part 5, two-note melody constantly changing

melodic/rhythmic shape through addition

and subtraction of beats

Part 6, same process, but three-note melody

Part 7, process of Part 4, but reinforce whole

phrases of 3, 4, and 5 notes

Part 8, halfway through: superfast foxtrot-

tango-samba

Part 9, alternating ascending and

descending diatonic and chromatic scales

Part 10, ornamentation a la Baroque

With whole work find “exquisite intensity at

shift between sections

Part 11, harmonic (root) movement

Part 12, combines all techniques

Hidden 12-tone row

EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH (1976)

SATYAGRAHA, 1980

Act I (Tolstoy)

Scene I, the Kuru Field of Justice

Scene 2, Tolstoy Farm

Scene 3, The Vow

Act II (Tagore)

Scene I, Confrontation and Rescue

Scene 2 Indian Opinion

Scene 3, Protest

Act III, (* Martin Luther King, Jr.) New Castle March

VIOLIN CONCERTO, 1987 MUSIC

music

music

STRING QUARTETS

String Quartet No. 5 1991

Movement 1

Movement 2

Movement 3

Movement 4

Movement 5

LAURIE ANDERSON ON

ETUDE NO. 10, 1994 MUSIC

Philip Glass' Etude 10 is one of my favorite

works. And it's my favorite because I have had

to learn it well enough to play along with it,

improvising and riffing on violin. All Songs Considered

How Laurie Anderson And Philip Glass Were About To Change The World

http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/01/27/511839779/how-

laurie-anderson-and-philip-glass-were-about-to-change-the-world [2’]

music

I've played the piece with Phil several times now and I always find something new to focus on, a harmony I didn't know was there or a new, skipping rhythm I hadn't noticed.

Like much of Phil's music, there is a stillness to it that is really breathtaking, and I literally find new ways to breathe while listening to and playing his music.

The closest experience I have to this calm center is meditation. The melodies and motifs of his work become an intricate mantra full of interlocking series of patterns.

Each time I play the etude I find a new way to slide between and over phrases. But so far I haven't understood it well enough to play deep inside it. This elusiveness makes it even more beautiful.

SYMPHONY NO. 3, 1995

Movement 1

Movement 2

Movement 3

Movement 4

COCTEAU FILMS

Le belle et le bête, 1994

Les enfants terrible, 1996

SYMPHONY VIII

I music

II music

III music

SYMPHONY IX,

Second movement, closing music

SONGS AND POEM FOR SOLO CELLO, 2007

Movement 1

Movement 2