pHILIP GL ASS 319 A p T E R 11 PH ILI PGLASS Born Baltimore, 1937 1 5 si W H I L E J o H N e A G E may be the first name in new music that most people know, the music of Philip Glass is more likely to be the first sound of it they actually hear. Glass's music can be found not only at the opera, where he reigns supreme as America's most success­ ful living composer, but at the ballet, on television, in symphony halls, films , jazz clubs, and even the occasional sports stadium. There are times in New York when it seems his music is everywhere; one Village Philip Glass, New York, 1972. Photo Credit: Richard I.andry Voice headline called 1992-1993 the "Season of Glass." When he was named "Musician of the Year" in 1985 by Musical America, joining Igor Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten (the only other composers so honored Glass an in-depth look at the rhythmic subtleties of Indian music, and in the magazine's then twenty-five-year history), the citation 1 1 began, he carne to see how rhythm could be used to shape his own musical "Few composers in this century have achieved the sweeping popularity ideas, developing, in the process, his particular brand of minimalism or influenced the musical sound of their times as much as Philip Glass." based on rhythms with overlapping cycles, something he once And that was a decade ago. Today, in the post-Cage world of experi· described as "like wheels turning inside of wheels." His earliest music menta! ~usic, no one has their music heard by more people. in this style was composed for an experimental theater company in Ph1hp Glass grew up in Baltimore, taking flute lessons as a child at Paris, soon to become Mabou Mines. t~e Peabody ~onservatory. He says he knew he was going to be a musi· l , ln 1966, after six months s pent in India and North Africa, Glass 1 CJa~ by_ the time he was eight. At the age of fifteen 1 , he went to the returned to New York. Forming his own ensemble in 1968, he began Univers,ty of Chicago in a special program for bright kids (Carl Sagan giving concerts; both formal ones in downtown art galleries, as well as was ª. ye~r a~ead; Susan Sontag was there the year before). Interested informal Sunday afternoon ones in his Bleeker Street loft. ~Y the ~ ly b'. th is time m modem music, Glass was first attracted to the Second seventies his ensemble was touring V1ennese School-Schoe b B . both Europe and Amenca, playmg th . h f n erg, erg, and Webern ' · that n o o ne else was I - but rejected 1t by only the music Glass wrote for them, musIC . d . A!f . e time e e t Chicago. After five years studying at Juilliard and tw0 . d k f om chis peno 1s ustc more as a Ford Foundat' . :__--- ' allowed to play. His most fully realize wor r . ion composer-m-residence in Pittsburgh Glass . d 4 1·t reqU1res three concerts wem to Fr ance to s tud · h N . ' zn 12 Parts. Written between 1971 an 197 ' . C Gl needed h . Y wtt adia Boulanger; he says he knew he . 990 ·val at Lincoln enter, ass more tec nique. to perform in its entirety. For tts 1 revi. h en ory or anticipa• ·ct !d b h ard w1t out m 1 ln 1965, while still in p · GI sai he hoped the work cou e e ' pui·e meclium in him prepare his mus· t10. f d t1·c strucru re, a 6 ~ s, ass worked with Ravi Shankar, helping n, as a presence, "freed o rama Chap,naqua At th ic or . estern studio musicians to play for his film sound " • · l' · e sarne time h . • . b ert Wilson to write Emstem on ate, tabla player Allah R kh ' ~ 1so stud1ed w th ª ith Shankar's assoet· ln 1976, Glass collaborat~d wi ~o rtrai t" operas, the others being ª ª· This combination of e xperiences gave the 318 Beach, the first of his tnlogy of po DUCKWORTH, William. Talking Music... New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. l PHILIP GLAss pHILIP GLASS 320 321 Satyagraha, from 1980, and Akhnaten, from 1984. Einstein, which was GLASS: Yes, I knew. For people for whom that h . anct life becomes very easy because you ai k appens, m one way a joint commission from the governments of France and Holland, ways now what you're · playing the Metropolitan Opera Ho use in New to do. In another way it becomes very . gomg toured Europe before h h 'd . comp1 icated. But you never as a minimalist, a style he s ays he felt hact go t h roug t at , entny or vocational crisis h. h York, made Glass famous h w 1c seems very com- around 1975 I 10...">.."' [ ended two years before. Whether true or not, the period mon t~ ot er peop e. Musicians always seem to know what the Y r- ~• ,,.,,, does mark a mai·or shift in Glass's musical output. From this point his are gomg to do, and who they are. ~ ~,\ . , to theater, film, and ~ance, resultmg over the :, ..·y{''à ~~ attention turns primarily DUCKW0 RTH: What influenced you toward music? in addition to more operas, m such film scores as ,. ,.i- C1' next decade, , "?i Mishima for Paul Schrader, Koyaanisqatsi for Godfrey Reggio, and The GLASS: _ _ It's ha~d to ~now. Mu_sicians have something Jike a calling, a Thin Blue Line for Erro! Morris. rehg1ous callmg. It s a vocation. I think it happens before we know Glass's ninth opera, The Voyage, written with playwright David it's going to happen. At a certain point you realize that's the only Henry Hwang and based on Christopher Columbus, was commissioned thing you can take seriously. It occasionally happens when some­ by the Metropolitan Opera, where it was premiered in 1992. That sarne one begins Iate, but it's rare. That isn't to say that we're ali season in New York also saw the premiere of Glass's Low Symphony, Mendelssohns and Schuberts; damn few of us ever get to chat to be based on the music of his friends David Bowie and Brian Eno, a reviva! point. They seem to be the oddest creatures of ali; they seem longer to acquire of Einstein on the Beach, anda new theater work at the Joyce Theater. quite rare. It seems, though, that it takes much age. But It was, as the Voice said, the "Season of Glass." fluency in the language of music, so we begin at an early that?," I don't know. You get inca For ali the fame and the demands on his time, Philip Glass maintains when you say, "What makes us do pieces when you were four or five. a rather strict schedule. He trys to keep mornings free to compose, and very early memories-hearing the first piece they heard. It limits his contact with the press, the telephone, and interviewers like me Every musician I know can remember be their first piece, but they can remember hearing to one day a week, a far cry from the first time we met, both leaning may not really their first piece. against the back wall at a concert in the old Kitchen, just after Einstein a piece that they will cal! played the Met. Today, Phil tives in a brownstone on the edge of New DUCKW0RTH: What was your first piece? York's Lower East Side, sharing the street with the New York chapter of GLASS: MineS was a chubert crio, che E> piano trio. Everyone has one. the Hell's_Angels anda men's homeless center. It seemed like a Jong way right? from Baltimore; I wondered how it had ali begun. I'm sure you have one, DUCKW0RTH : Yes, Rirnsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade. DUCKW0RTII: Was your family musical? GLASS: It's funny how those pieces c an stick with you chough. e happen to have the sarne is funny in my case, b ecause w . ord store. I began working in the score Schubert GLASS: My father had a rec birthday In !ater years I r esented that, because I real1~ed thhat I when I was twelve, so I knew a lot about ali kinds of music from a · d e The radio stauons ave th concer . oin to be Schubert. I've very early age. But I didn't begin seriously playing until I was eight. would never get the bir ~Y, · · · · those birthday concerts, and 1t s always g . g Actually, I began playing wh I S1){, at a certam pomt mus1- . ' en was but got this o ther dude who already beat me to it. 1 c1ans b~come dedicated in what chey do, and that h appened when 1 pond to the memory of l 1 was eig~t.-I !ater found out that that was considered late. When I DUCKWORTII: How do you think peop e res l was at Ju1U~ard, I discovered that m y friends had ali begun when hearing that firs t piece? . l they were S1){. ber where they were s1cung; GLASS: It's very emotional. They reme~ h It's a very clear memory, o k DUCKW0 RTH: S you were eight years o ld that you they can remember who they werec wit fi.