Opera Quarterly 1998 May 87 90 Preview

8/10/2019 Opera Quarterly 1998 May 87 90 Preview

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poser's ultimate discovery of his own voice was based on outrig ht rejection of

a rigid academic mainstream is well know n. Yet Glass early on acquired hab its

of extreme self-discipline that he never abandoned , thanks in part t o his gruel-

ing period of study with NadiaBoulanger.From her he learned that you don 't

write carelessly, and you don't write notes that don't belong (p.36).Boulanger

in fact recurs as a hauntin g, am biguous presence in several of the interviews,

and G lass contributes some delightful vignettes of her im posing personality.

O n one occasion, having failed to spot

a

hidden parallel

fifth

n

a

harmo ny exer-

cise,

the composer recalls being asked whether the attentions of a psychiatrist

migh t be necessary for one so distracted, so ou t of touch with reality (p. 323).

The years in Paris in the mid-1960s emerge as a pivotal phase, for they

included no t only the work with Boulanger b ut two artistic epiphanies, namely,

Glass's discoveries of Ind ian music (in a film project w ith Ravi Shankar) an d

the theater of Samuel

Beckett.

For the hitter's

Play,

Glass wro te incidental music

that first enunciated his new style and th at he n ow lists at the beginning of his

catalog of complete works. The steps by which Glass renounced the regnant

serialism of the era to arrive at a style based on repetitive structures often read

like a Cartesian process of scaling down : I reduced all the music that I knew

to something that was based on the simplest materials of music that I could

think o P (p. 206).

Yet, as m any of the selections in

W ritings

on Glassdocum ent, tha t style arose

not simplyas areaction to prevailing cultural trends b ut fromaferment of var-

ied influences. These include, to men tionafew, Darius M ilhaud, Virgil Thom -

son, and John Cage. (Everybody who listens to Glass's music, incidentally,

seems to have a personal favorite of proleptic m inimalism from the W estern

canon, whether the prelude toDas

Rheingold,

Ravel'sBolero,or the opening

measures to Handel'sZadokthe Priest Parallel investigations in the theater and

visual arts proved to be of equal importance. Ind eed, much of the earliest writ-

ing on Glass appeared in art magazines, such as a stunningly brilliant essay by

Richard Foreman (reprinted here) comparing Glass with filmmaker Michael

Snow. Although it

is

applied to the com poser's early instrumental wo rks, Fore-

man 's phenom enological inquiry into a style in which naked presence is the

mo de and m atter of the artistic experience

(p.

86) becomes uncannily prescient

of responses that w ould be evoked by th e com poser's first operas.

Selections by La Barbara, formerVillage Voicecritic Tom Johnson (credited

by some with coining the term

minimalism

as a musical style), and E dw ard

Strickland trace th e evolving sense ofanew movement in NewYork'sdown-

tow n scene in the early 1970s that em braced a dazzling (and sometimes com -

peting) polyphony of voices. An intriguing notion floated by Johnson is that

Glass's initial appeal lay in countering decades of dodecaphonic angst with

music that conveys

a

moo d which

is

overwhelmingly joyou s

(p.

52).

W ith the

sparelywte Musicin TwelveParts(1971-74), to w hich Page contributesalucid

introdu ction in this volume, Glass's career reached a turning p oint. Its epic

length (which, it should be noted , underscores the misleading nature of the tag


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ing into banality. Glass himself acknowledges h ow crucial has been the inpu t

from oth er sources: The emphasis in my work has been on collaboration

th ro ug h o u t. .. . Fm convinced that this is one of the major reasons that I fol-

lowed a path diflferent from o ther com posers (p. 8). Far from being a sign of

weakness, diis tendency seems, in Glass's mo st significant work s, to prove the

power of his music to measure up and give new dimensions to the visionary

dem ands of such diverse artists as Rober t Wilson,filmmakerGodfrey Reggio,

and G insberg. The famous put-dow n by formerNew York Timescritic Donal

He nah an that Glass writes going-now here music similarly misses the poin t.

It is above all in amalgams of music theater created with h is collaborators that

Glass has explored the p otentialities of a way of storytelling unb ou nd by con-

ventional narrative events. A pithy statement o f the com poser's aesthetic, widi

im portan t ramifications for his theatrical sensibility, is the following: On e of

the main things abou t my m usic is that it doesn't exist in colloquial time. And

one of the

first

hings th at people perceive in my m usic

is

extended time, o r loss

of time, or no sense of time whatsoever (p. 172).

In general,

Writings on Glass

serves as a useful introd uction to the recurring

interests and w ide sphere of aesthetic concerns that co ntinue to inform Glass's

career. (A good deal of these are summarized in a far-reaching interview with

Richard Serra.) Patience, however, will be required to endure an alarming

degree o f editorial sloppiness. A

simple

spell-check shou ld

have

located the egre-

gious Ahknaten throu gho ut an entire interview (pp. 316-17), though it might

have left composer Conrad Susa

(p.

22) sharing

a

coat of arms with Joh n Philip

and the composer's ex-wife JoAnne Akalaitis shorn of ane.Far worseisthe mat-

ter of dates of compositions, w hich create great confusion for the reader when

they don 't tally with those given in the appended com plete list of works by Glass

(seepp. 39-45,for example). Anyone attempting to ord er recordings based on

the catalog numbers given in the discography should

exercise

caution (the cor-

rect one for the No nesuch sound track of

AnimaMundi

is

79329-2). A nd aside

from the all-too-frequent signs of a book hastily throw n together, ho w could

phrases such as this slip by unmen ded: It provides for myselfasimilar experi-

ence to hearingamusic of this texturallydensesystems variety for thefirst ime

ever (p.155)?Still, in the absence of an adequate alternative,Writings on Glass

will provide mu ch useful material both to inveterate enthusiasts and to the

merely curious. Perhaps it is a measure of the book's success that one ends by

feeling that Glass deserves better.

ThomasMay

N O T E S

1.The groundwork for such a study might K. Rober Schwartz,

Minimalists

(London:

include some of the useful, thoug h . Phaidon, 1996) for the broader context of

admittedly limited, tangents introduced in mutually shaping influences that would like-

Wim M ertens,American Minimal Music wise have to be addressed in a full-scale criti-

(Lon don: Kahn and Averill,

198?).

See also calanalysis of the com poser.


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9 I

2.

This volume contains no discussion of

the trilogy of hybrid form that G lass created

in response to die

films

of Jean C octeau

Orphic(1993),

La

belle

et la

btte

(1994), and

Les enfantsterrible*(1996)since the

composer's own book o n these projects is

forthcoming. N evertheless, they represent

a fascinating new stage in Glass's perennial

experiments w ith operatic narrative. The

interested readerisstrongly urged to seek

ou t the excellent recording ofLa

belle et la

bite

available on Elektra/Nonesuch 79347-2

as an example of the com poser's growin g

mastery of transparent vocal writing and

orchestral scene painting.

3.For an engaging, anecdote-rich in tro-

duction to the portrait trilogy, the reader is

advised to turn to Glass's own m emoir of the

composition of each opera. See Philip Glass,

Music by Philip

Glass,ed. Robert

T.

Jones , 2d

ed. (NewYork:D a Capo Press,

1995).

While

some listeners prefer the original LP release

of

Einstein on theBeach,

anew recording that

includes m ore musical material andahigher

level of vocal ensemble was issued in 1993on

Elektra/Nonesuch79323-3-

Opera on S creen:

A Guide

to

One Hundred

Tears

ofFilms and

Videos

Featuring Operas, Opera Singers, andOperettas

Ken W laschin

Los Angeles: Beachwood

Press,

1997

636 pages, $75.00 (availableasa CD -RO M, $55.00)

For all of its faults, this boo k is a seminal wo rk, fast becomingthereference

work for all future endeavors in the field. Indeed, so vast in scope is it that,

rather than try to reinvent the wheel by coming u p with m y own description

of what

Opera on Screen

covers, I will merely quote fro m th e author's admirably

concise yet comprehensive introduction:

This guide . . . has been organized alphabetically as an encyclopedia

with entries on operas, ope rettas, zarzuelas, singers, comp osers,

writers, cond uctors and subjects of interest. Th e net is wide and inclu-

sive and includes, for exam ple, singers who se opera career was only o n

the m ovie screen and operas that have no t been filmed b ut have cinema

content. There are entries on operas composed as

films

and imaginary

operas as well as television directors w ho have created TV operas an d

film directors who have worked on the opera stage.

Special subject entries include Anim ated Opera , Best Opera on Film,

Best Operetta o n F ilm, Castratos, Divas, Directors of Op era on Film,

Directors of O pera on TV, Filmmakers on Stage, First Operas on

Film, First Operas on TV, Imag inary O peras in Films, Operas an d

Operettas About the M ovies, Operas as Movies, Operas Based on

Movies, Operetta, Pup pet Operas, Silent Films About Opera, Silent

Films of Operas, Television Op eras, Vitapho ne O pera Film s, Voice of

Firestone, Worst Opera on Film, Worst Operetta o n Film, Zarzuelas.

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Opera Quarterly 1998 May 87 90 Preview