Philip Glass

[Serial_Apologist]

Having listened patiently to this entire week's programmes on Mr Glass, I was wondering if anybody felt their opinions on this composer had been altered by what they heard.

If no one contributes to this thread, I understand.

[MrGongGong]

I only managed to hear the first one
which did confirm my thoughts about his music

which are

Up to and including Einstein mostly wonderful. I was blown away by seeing his ensemble playing Music in 12 parts.
Later works

A bit like Tangerine Dream loosing the plot (IMV) once they were able to play polyphonically and have modulation.
His later music doesn't work for my ears at all. Having being one of those who liberated the repeated pattern from being merely accompaniment he has put it back in the same old 19th Century context.

Are the others worth a listen?

[Serial_Apologist]

I only managed to hear the first one
which did confirm my thoughts about his music

which are

Up to and including Einstein mostly wonderful. I was blown away by seeing his ensemble playing Music in 12 parts.
Later works

A bit like Tangerine Dream loosing the plot (IMV) once they were able to play polyphonically and have modulation.
His later music doesn't work for my ears at all. Having being one of those who liberated the repeated pattern from being merely accompaniment he has put it back in the same old 19th Century context.

Are the others worth a listen?

Much the same really, MrGG, and I'm with you there. Donald Mcleod presents this programme well imv, but concentration on the biographical aspects of a composer or group of same - potentially a strength but not as is often the case nowadays at the expense of talking about the music - was exacerbated by the courtesies necessarily afforded the COTW in question as guest. However, the jumping forward and backwards through the output did serve, in this instance, to illuminate the paradoxical relationship biographers often accord creative artists' development as individuals as reflected through their work, and political backward refractions in the guise of aesthetics of times they may be living through.

[Thropplenoggin]

Tuesday to Friday's episodes were very much a case of déjà entendu for me.

Even Glass-fan the Don kept acknowleging the bleeding obvious: yep, there they are again, those infernal arpeggios, skittering rhythms, tonal shifts...

[Stunsworth]

Shouldn't Donald have recorded one programme and broadcast it 5 times?

I can take or leave Glass, however I enjoyed the solo cello piece yesterday, even though I wondered if it was an attempt at a Bach pastiche.

[MrGongGong]

I don't begrudge mr Glass for his success but I do think that (like Steve Reich) his music was much more interesting when he was driving a taxi to make ends meet. After Einstein he became a "famous composer" so the music was then played by people who didn't really live with it. The compromises necessary to have the work played by 'ordinary' symphony orchestras as opposed to an ensemble of your own, seem to me to have led to the intensity of the music being very much diminished and replaced by a kind of blandness that is a million miles away from the energy of Music in 12 Parts or Dance 1-5.

But, as I said, good luck to him.

(The track "Glass" off this album http://www.7digital.com/artist/king-...ase/happy-hour coming as it does before their most in/famous work )

[Thropplenoggin]

Shouldn't Donald have recorded one programme and broadcast it 5 times?

I can take or leave Glass, however I enjoyed the solo cello piece yesterday, even though I wondered if it was an attempt at a Bach pastiche.

I liked Alex Ross's quote, which Donald Macleod had the cojones to acknowledge as being one of Glass's problems:

'To encounter a new Glass work these days is to pass through a familiar sequence of emotions. More often than not, you start with a disappointed sense of déjà vu: a rapid onset of churning arpeggios and chugging minor-key progressions dashes any hope that the composer may have struck off in a startling new direction. At times, it seems as though he had launched Microsoft Arpeggio on a computer and gone off to have tea with, say, Richard Gere.'

This is what makes COTW essential listening (depending on who the 'C' is!), because it eschews the eternal sunshine/positive spin so beloved of other parts of R3, including so-called 'critical' programmes like CD Review.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Welcome back, Thropple.

I'm with MrGG - up to Einstein (or even, to be generous, Akhnaten) I find Glass' work interesting and very listen to-able, but the works from the mid-late '90s onward I find increasingly lacking in attention-worthy material. I'd far rather listen to Bowie's Low and Heroes than Glass' "take" on them - and the later Symphonies and works like the Timpani Concerto don't appeal to me at all.

[MickyD]

My favourites are "Akhnaten" and the Violin Concerto....the later stuff seems to have lost some of that earlier magic for me.

[Bryn]

Of the more recent stuff, Orphee is one I have some time for, though still not that much.

[Richard Barrett]

- up to Einstein

Same here. Plus The Photographer maybe. I can't bear anything he's written for orchestra or other "classical" ensembles, his orchestration is so totally unimaginative...

[Nick Armstrong]

I can't bear anything he's written for orchestra or other "classical" ensembles, his orchestration is so totally unimaginative...

I lasted about 30 seconds one evening on the way home before the banal repetition had me reaching for the off-button with an oath.... Intolerable, I'm afraid is my view.

[Padraig]

I'm also with MrGongGong in that I admire Philip Glass's success. He's paid his dues, as they say, and he's entitled to pick and choose what he wants to do. I particularly liked his view that real talent raises its head in every genre, and thus bringing talents together in collaboration is something he enjoys trying to do. Far from agreeing with the sour quote from Alex Ross, I like the instant recognition that Glass achieves, and I find that the déjà vu usually resolves eventually into something quite unexpected. Anyway, it's fun enough keeping track of how he gets there in the end. I did not get to hear every programme, but it was refreshing to recognise the Glass sound from time to time in what was a scrappy week for me.

[HighlandDougie]

Continuing my trawl through Dutch Radio's archives:

http://concerthuis.radio4.nl/concert/2789/Holland_Festival_2007_Philip_Glass__Music_in_12_Parts

It is at least split into four more-or-less digestible (or maybe that should be indegistible) chunks

[Thropplenoggin]

Far from agreeing with the sour quote from Alex Ross, I like the instant recognition that Glass achieves, and I find that the déjà vu usually resolves eventually into something quite unexpected. Anyway, it's fun enough keeping track of how he gets there in the end. I did not get to hear every programme, but it was refreshing to recognise the Glass sound from time to time in what was a scrappy week for me.

I took the Ross quote out of context (as did Macleod). Here it can be read in context: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critic...rmu_music_ross I believe he merely highlights one potential pitfall when encountering Glass's music, which clearly puts people off.