Music that doesn't move you

[Barbirollians]

- although eleven pages and 103 replies on, it's lasting longer than the others, and is staying more civil!

Now if Carlos Kleiber had conducted some Lachenmann…...

[MrGongGong]

So are you going to say something about the difference between music and "sonic art"?

I'm waiting for this also
BUT I think it's a wonderful testament to Trevor that folks like Tetrachord refer to his work probably without having knowingly heard any of it.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

I've failed to find anything worthwhile in Philip Glass's stuff despite twice encountering it as a performer and several times as a victim, er listener. Well, maybe it makes me think of telly ads for Bavarian tin boxes with wheels but that's about it.

[Beef Oven!]

I've failed to find anything worthwhile in Philip Glass's stuff despite twice encountering it as a performer and several times as a victim, er listener. Well, maybe it makes me think of telly ads for Bavarian tin boxes with wheels but that's about it.

I’m the same. I did try a number of bits and pieces on Radio3 yesterday, but it did nothing for me. putting his earlier works aside, I just cannot understand why on Earth this composer as popular and programmed as he is. I feel very uncomfortable about dismissing any type of music, approach to music or composer etc, but Glass really stretches me.

[ahinton]

I’m the same. I did try a number of bits and pieces on Radio3 yesterday, but it did nothing for me. putting his earlier works aside, I just cannot understand why on Earth this composer as popular and programmed as he is. I feel very uncomfortable about dismissing any type of music, approach to music or composer etc, but Glass really stretches me.

Thirded.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Thirded.

Fourthed - mebbe a diminished fourth, because I quite like Einstein on the Beach and Music in Twelve Parts, but not nearly as impressive as Reich's Drumming or Music for 18 Musicians. The only work by Glass that really interests me is his book, Opera on the Beach; the Music I imagine when I read this is much, much more thrilling than the vast majority of his works that I've heard.

Like BeefO, I'm loathe to dismiss a composer so generally, but I share his bewilderment that so many people regard him as a good composer.

[ardcarp]

Am I right that Glass was right at the forefront of minimalism? Wasn't Music in 12-parts (or whatever its name is) written in the 60s/70s? The trouble is, it's so hard to say anything new. If you try too hard, it stops being minimal. OTOH, Glass has a big following and has been a big commercial success. Probably the hindsight of 50 more years (which will not be mine to enjoy) will put him in his place. Does it move me? Yes but only minimally.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Am I right that Glass was right at the forefront of minimalism? Wasn't Music in 12-parts (or whatever its name is) written in the 60s/70s? The trouble is, it's so hard to say anything new. If you try too hard, it stops being minimal. OTOH, Glass has a big following and has been a big commercial success. Probably the hindsight of 50 more years (which will not be mine to enjoy) will put him in his place. Does it move me? Yes but only minimally.

Yes - he was involved in the early stages of what became known as "Minimalism" (there's stuff from the early/mid-60s that are even more "Minimal", little more than a revisiting of LaMonte Young's drone pieces), and 12 Parts and Einstein were comparatively early works. It's also true that Glass wasn't able to (or interested in) say anything new in that language; unlike Reich, who did go on to develop his language in new ways in subsequent work. (I don't get as much out of these as I do the work up to the mid-late '70s, but there is genuine development of means that escaped Glass.)

[Beresford]

I've failed to find anything worthwhile in Philip Glass's stuff despite twice encountering it as a performer and several times as a victim, er listener. Well, maybe it makes me think of telly ads for Bavarian tin boxes with wheels but that's about it.

Glass's "Open the Kingdom" from Songs for Liquid Days I always find heroic and uplifting, but whether because of the music or David Byrne's words I cannot tell.
It's interesting to speculate as to why Glass is so popular. His music is very approachable, in ways that Schoenberg and Lachenmann are not, but for me often triggers a "Wish he would try something different" reaction.

[Richard Barrett]

If you try too hard, it stops being minimal.

This might apply to the repetitive kind of minimalism (though cf. Morton Feldman or Bernhard Lang, or La Monte Young's Well-Tuned Piano), but that's not the only kind. I don't think it's a matter of "trying too hard" in Glass's later work but of not trying hard enough, falling back into stuff he learned as a composition student, and ending up with something that has the "flavour" of classical music but without the melodies, structural depth, sense of necessity etc.

[MrGongGong]

I like this one

[Serial_Apologist]

It would move me!

[ahinton]

It would move me!

It would me, too - out of earshot of it, prontissimo - unless by chance the table top concerned had a wine glass on it full of a particularly fine vintage red or white burgundy or grand cru classé bordeaux, in which case I might even feel prepared to make the sacrifice of actually performing it...

[Richard Barrett]

I like this one

He could have, you know, bothered to actually compose it though.

[Serial_Apologist]

It would me, too - out of earshot of it, prontissimo - unless by chance the table top concerned had a wine glass on it full of a particularly fine vintage red or white burgundy or grand cru classé bordeaux, in which case I might even feel prepared to make the sacrifice of actually performing it...

According to legend, after recording the bulk of their 1961 album "Abstract", alto saxophonist Joe Harriott and the rest of the band were starting to back their instruments when one of them absent-mindedly happened to strike a pulse out on a used wine glass, the pitch of which by pure chance turned out to be exactly an octave below that of the drummer's cowbell, as can be heard on the link below. This then became the inspiration for "Modal", a spontaneous improvisation evolved from the two-chord piano figure heard at the outset:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIoA7jfmrqk

(It should be mentioned that for some reason, the final chord has been lopped from this link )