[Lost81]

Philip Glass Fans: Are you tired of dealing with Philistines with short attention spans?

Me, I have given up trying to explain (let alone demonstrate) the appeal behind Glass's repetitive scores....

These days, I just roll my eyes and mutter, "If you had to ask, you don't get it and never will..."  


-Lost81

[BeeBop]

Amen.

[ghersh]

Philip Glass Fans: Are you tired of dealing with Philistines with short attention spans?

Me, I have given up trying to explain (let alone demonstrate) the appeal behind Glass's repetitive scores....

These days, I just roll my eyes and mutter, "If you had to ask, you don't get it and never will..."  


-Lost81

Hmm... I always thought minimalism and Philip Glass in particular *is* for those with short attention spans ...

[BeeBop]

No that's radio pop.

[Lost81]

"Einstein on the Beach" is about 3 hours long, and is best appreciated in one sitting--recollection of earlier patterns of repetition leads to the recognition of subtle changes in the later tracks. In some sense, it's a memory game. I compare it to the experience / process of reading the novels of Dostoevsky  (Of course, this occurs in classical music as well.)


Cheers,
-Lost81

[Tonto Yoder]

Three hours later:


Notice the subtle change???

But seriously, I'm not sure why you care whether we like Glass or not??
Personally, three hours of him would be sheer torture for me, but you'd probably feel the same way about some of the music I listen to.

[ohenry]

Where's the love here?   If someone doesn't appreciate Philip, it doesn't mean they're "thick".  It would be pretty boring if we were the same.  

[SWG255]

While I'm not a big Phillip Glass fan, I really like his colaboration with Ravi Shankar, "Passages". Great music and good sonics.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000000K4/qid=1092831859/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/t/103-7051289-6482224

[elektratig]

Perhaps there's a way to find some common ground between the pro- and anti-Minimalists.  Although I’m not a big fan of Minimalism, I do love Balinese gamelan music, which was one of the major inspirations for Minimalism.  If you have not heard gamelan, you should – it’s astounding.  When recordings of gamelan first began to circulate in the West in the late ‘20s and early ’30, many Western composers were fascinated.  It ebbs and flows like Western Minimalism, but has a fascinating range of sounds and textures and a shimmering quality (resulting from the fact that instruments are tuned in pairs, with one sharp) that Western music lacks.  Instruments range from xylophones to gongs to flutes to drums to 9-foot long bamboo tubes, beaten with rubber mallets, that put out bass you won’t believe.  Those who don’t care for Western Minimalism will at least understand where it came from; those who like Minimalism should hear its roots.

The Western composer most obviously influenced by gamelan was Colin McPhee (1900-1964), who lived on Bali for a number of years in the 1930s.  His Tabuh-Tabuhan, Toccata for Orchestra (1936) is a great piece.  Although the work is not Minimalist and can be enjoyed in its own right, there are portions that certainly seem to me to have served as the template for later Minimalist composers.  It is fascinating to hear, in retrospect, a style being born.

Some suggestions:

--  Gamelan Semar Pegulingan from the Village of Ketewel, Music of Bali (Lyrichord 7408)
--  The Music of Bali (Celestial Harmonies, 3 separate CDs) (Vol. 1 has those 9-foot bamboo tubes – one of the great bass CDs!)
--  Howard Hanson conducting the Eastman-Rochester Orch. performing works by McPhee and others (Mercury Living Presence CD 434 310-2)

[BeeBop]

If you like Philip Glass, you will probably like Marjan Mozetich...

http://www.cbcshop.ca/CBC/shopping/product.aspx?Product_ID=1038&Variant_ID=MVCD+1038&lang=en-CA

The url is a link to a CBC Records CD. Excellent sonics and a wonderful performance by some of Canada's best musicians.

[Tyson]

Don't like Glass that much, but I do like his fellow minimalist, John Adams.  More interesting music that requires less patience (and I've got to say I'm pretty patient, what with Bruckner being one of my favorite composers and all).

[Thump553]

BeeBop I love your avatar.  The expression on the cat's face is priceless.

[firestic]

Glass can make or break the day . Personally, I love his composition for the aguas de amozonia performed by uakti. It is a beautiful recording.

[Lost81]

Glass can make or break the day . Personally, I love his composition for the aguas de amozonia performed by uakti. It is a beautiful recording.

Uakti is a very interesting recording.
I haven't tried encoding it via Apple Lossless Encoding, but I found out that even if you encode it using 320kbps sampling rate, there would be distortion that is audiable when played through a mildly-revealing system (via both CDR & iPod).


Cheers,
-Lost81

[srayle]

Now, Philip Glass...well, there's a lot of different levels you can touch him. Most difficult for me is his operatic stuff: Einstein on the Beach, Akhnahten. Most easy to get into are the 'QQattsi's, Powa and Koyaana. Even little Naqoyqqatsi has beautiful, approachable music. Try also the soundtrack for 'Kundun'....beautiful, majestic, human, spiritual.

One of my favorites is the sound track to'Dracula'. The first time I heard it, I noticed only one track I could'hear'....I forget which one, #18 possibly, and soon could hear and like a few others, and then a few more, slowly,until, instead of the album sounding mostly the same to me, it became SUBLIME...absolutely beautiful, and poignant and sad and tender and dark...actually became my favorite Glass piece.

I don't get bored or tranced out with Glass, but find some of his stuff hard to listen to, and much more of it magnificent.

With earlier Steve Reich, I can hear the mathematical and musical pprogressions and it engages and pleases a certain level of my mind...that music can really BE meditation or altered state inducing...pleasurably, like my mind and ears reach for it, not boring.