October 2000 BAMcinematek 2000 Next Wave Festival Brooklyn philharmonic Robert Frank, Laura, 1998 BAM Next Wave Festival sponsor: PHILIP MORRIS ~lA~fBlll COMPANIES INC. Brooklyn Academy of Music and Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra Bruce C. Ratner 47th Season 2000-2001 Chairman of the Board Liebestod-Program 1 Alan H. Fishman Robert Spano, Music Director Chairman of the Campaign for BAM Lukas Foss, Conductor Laureate Karen Brooks Hopkins President Craig G. Matthews, President Joseph V. Melillo Executive Prod ucer present Philip Glass Symphony NO.5 Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya* Running time: BAM Howard Gilman Opera House approximately 1 hour October 4, 6, and 7, 2000, at 7:30pm and 45 minutes, with no intermission Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor Dennis Russell Davies Soprano Kimberly E. Jones Mezzo-soprano Milagro Vargas Baritone Andre Solomon-Glover Bass-baritone Stephan Macleod Tenor John McVeigh The Dessoff Choirs Kent Tritle, Music Director Brooklyn Youth Chorus Dianne Berkun, Artistic Director Visual Consultant and Designer Anne C. Patterson Lighting Designer Matthew Frey *North American premiere Major corporate sponsor: Dime Savings Bank of New York, FSB. Baldwin is the official piano of BAM and the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra. The Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra gratefully acknowledges Mr. and Mrs. Stanley H. Kaplan, whose generous support made possible the Stanley H. Kaplan Education Center Acoustical Shell. Commissioned by Salzburg Festival with the support of ASCII Corporation. Additional support provided by Brooklyn Academy of Music. As a courtesy to others, please turn off watches, phones, and other electronic devices. 29 Philip Glass Symphony NO.5 Requiem, Bardo, Nirmanakaya 1. Before the Creation 7. Suffering 2. Creation of the Cosmos 8. Compassion 3. Creation of Sentient 9. Death Beings 10. Judgment and 4. Creation of Human Beings Apocalypse 5. Joy and Love 11. Paradise 6. Evil and Ignorance 12. Dedication Statement by The symphony was commissioned and Philip Glass conceived as a millennium celebration work for the Salzburg Festival. My plan has been for the symphony to repre­ sent a broad spectrum of many of the world's great "wisdom" traditions. Working together with the Very Reverend James Parks Morton of the Interfaith Center of New York and '" ,"-. Professor Kusumita P Pedersen of St. ~ Francis College, we synthesized a vocal text that begins before the world's cre­ ation, passes through earthly life and paradise, and closes with a future dedication. We are looking at the moment of the millennium as a bridge between the past (represented by the Requiem and embodying the first nine movements up to the moment of Death), the present (the Bardo representing the "in between"), and culminat­ ing in Nirmanakaya (rebirth as manifestation of enlightened activity). We have elected to present the original texts (Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and indigenous languages) in one language, English, to show the commonalities with which all these traditions resonate. For a work of this scale it seemed fitting to add chorus, children's choir, and soloists to the usual symphonic ensemble, thereby giving it ample breadth and dramatic capability. Besides being a compendium of reflection on the process of global transformation and evolution, it is hoped that the work will serve as a strong and positive celebration of the millennium year. Portrait of Philip Glass by Chuck Close. 30 by Juerg Stenzl This essay originally appeared in the program of the world-premiere performances at the 1999 Salzburg Festival. Translation by Steve Wilder. Ph iii P Glass' 1975 opera entitled Einstein on the Beach, com posed inclose cooperation with Robert Wilson, ushered in "a new age of opera." The combination of various theatrical elements (images, dance, music, language, singing, and choir) were united in an almost five-hour, four-act montage, a type of ritual vision focusing on the physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein on the Beach was a great suc­ cess in Europe and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and later at BAM. But this work, according to the composer, is "not something that's trying to illustrate Einstein the way the history books do, it's trying to present a political interpretation of this man" with audible images. Furthermore, a narrative libretto was dispensed with. For Glass, it signaled not only a new age of music theater, but also the "end of minimalism." A quarter of a century has passed since then, but Glass still bears the "minimalist" label and is considered-next to fellow Americans La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich-one of the leading composers of that style. But what is minimal music? In contrast to other main genre designations applied to 20th-century music such as 12-note composition, Neoclassicism, serialism, and taped music, the term minimal originally referred not to a style or a compositional technique as much as to a group of characteristics and a number of methods that could be quite antithetical at times. This type of music first emerged in North America; after its great breakthrough, minimal music began to appear virtually around the world. (While some of it demonstrated originality, a majority proved to be obvious imitations of the style's originators,) It may be that the first genre belonging to "classical" music originating in the United States is repetitive minimal music. This style first appeared in the early 70s in reaction to the European avant-garde, which budding composers in the United States had adopted. The difference between the two styles was the repetition of short elements ("patterns") in rigid sequences with little or no change, thereby producing a type of music intended to be "audible art" with no "extra­ musical" messages. The models for this style are found in jazz and traditional music from India and Africa. There was also a close resemblance to popular Western musical forms, especially rock. (The fact that minimal music tended to be crossover from the very beginning, serving as a link between widely varying musical styles, is not coincidental.) Minimal music tended to adhere to tonality in con­ trast to avant-garde music. In the course of the last decade, this term has also come to refer to a wide spectrum of styles currently popular in musical youth culture which are superficially similar to the works composed by the fathers of minimal music such as Glass or Reich. Examples of these similarities are the sustained repetition of identical or extremely similar melodic and rhythmic patterns. Glass, like the above-mentioned composers, grew away from nascent forms of minimal music in the early 80s. This has often resulted in hefty criticism, though his international success did not suffer as a result. The end of minimalism, he declared, should not obscure the fact that essential characteristics of early minimal music can still be found in his works. Even his Symphony No.5, which was conceived as a "Peace Symphony," demonstrates the central role played by repetitions of patterns after only a few bars. Glass was born on January 31, 1937, in Maryland. His father repaired radios and sold record albums, providing the young Philip with exposure to a variety of music. He learned to play the flute and began studying music at the University of Chicago. While there, and later in New York, he concentrated on the musical style in fashion at the time, 12-note music or Neoclassicism, depending on his teacher's preferred style. On scholarship, he went to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger from 1963 until 1965. However, it was not Boulanger who caused a major change in the direction of his interests; in 1965, 31 Glass met the Indian musicians Alia Rakha and Ravi Shankar, the latter for whom he worked. He began to develop a new style of music in the form of "additive processes" with reduced harmonies and repetitions. When he returned to New York in 1966 after visits to India and North Africa, he met Reich and Arthur M.urphy, two former fellow students who were following similar paths. (In 1965-66, Reich composed his first repetitive taped pieces with phase shifts, It's Gonna Rain and Come Out). In 1968 Glass formed his own Philip Glass Ensemble in the same way as Reich and La Monte Young, for the purpose of performing his compositions in New York art galleries and museums. In 1971 he founded his own record label with gallery owner Klaus Kertess. Glass' breakthrough came not in America but after performances in Holland and Germany, particularly with musical theater productions: Einstein on the Beach in Avignon in 1976; Satyagraha, an opera about the early life of Mahatma Gandhi, in Rotterdam in 1980; and Achim Freyer's production of the same piece in Stuttgart in 1981 (conducted by Dennis Russell Davies). Satyagraha attained cult status for followers of the various peace movements, opponents of nuclear power, and religiously motivated drop-outs. In 1984 Achim and Ilona Freyer produced the Stuttgart premiere of the pharaonic opera Akhnaten. Glass worked his way toward these extensive scenic works with a cycle lasting more than four hours, Music in 12 Parts (1971-74), a compendium of his previous techniques (repeated pat­ terns, additive processes, uniform movement in fourths and eighths, static harmony with unexpected modulations, gradual exchange of melodic patterns) with a new method of linking the parts according to a "strictly regulated scheme of keys" (Michael Struck). Glass made use of this cycle again for Einstein. As early as 1980 Glass was described in the leading English music encyclopedia as "perhaps the most popular serious composer"-and he has remained so. With his opera trilogy, Philip Glass has reached a wide audience around the world and, according to the composer himself, skillfully shaped his career in a "more businesslike" way.