Biography of Philip Glass

However, in the mass consciousness, he still remains a minimalist composer. But all the same, it was with his name that minimalism is associated, and in the musical environment they even came up with a joke: “Philip Glass is a good composer, he just focused a little.” The joke reflects the composer’s favorite method - rehearsal, that is, numerous repetitions.

If you do not take additional techniques that expand the boundaries of musical, such as video art, then this will be a small set of funds. These include repetitions, clusters, on the basis of which improvisation, racinchronization, and the reduction of musical sounds to non -musical, a certain texture are made. At some point, academic music ceased to focus on the mass public.

In the year, Milton Babbitt wrote an article “Composer as a specialist”, the name of which the editor changed to “Who excites, are you listening? In the article, he writes that for some reason, of all the spheres of human activity, only two were given to the general public-politics and art. You can collect a congress from mathematicians dedicated to one mathematical problem. More mathematicians cannot be attracted, because only these can understand what it is at all about.

The same with physics, engineering. But art seems to be the sphere where any statement of the layman should be accepted. But this ideology reflected one of the ways of developing the composer and composer schools, which continues to this day. And minimalism appeared as a counterweight of this complexity, as something simple and understandable to a wide circle of listeners.

Minimalism does not turn to some high intellectualized matters, but to human physiology, to a reaction to rhythm, to harmony, if it is in music, or to the concept and itself the social situation of the concert, as was the case of La Monte Yang. The Solo Piano album created in the year, there are seven compositions. Music is based on a repeating pattern in the left hand. The left hand plays sober, sometimes changing it.

In each new work, tonality changes to the one that is not far away, but the principle of organization remains the same. Against its background, a somewhat thoughtful delicate melody of the right hand grows, which is performed by octaves and soars over the waves of accompaniment, like a cloud over the ocean. But this is only at the beginning, and then along the “metamorphosis” we hear how this melody develops: either it changes the pace, then it turns into an arpeggio sixteenth, for the execution of which a certain degree of virtuosity is needed.

Then everything returns to the beginning and the cycle ends. That is, in itself, it is not so expressive as to captivate. It immerses in a certain state from which objects of external reality are perceived. This is an ideal background for, for example, leisurely contemplation of nature. Music can be called boring, not so much interesting in it, but it is intentionally delivered from this.

Rather, this is observation of a rush from a distance or high height. This can be compared with the sensation when a resident of a large metropolis sits on a bench in the city center, and around at a crazy pace the life that he contemplates, but does not take part in it, being in his melancholy space. The composition is built similar to the "metamorphoses" in the way and, as it were, contains all of them.

There are more and less expressive places, successful combinations of relaxation and stress. In the beginning, sounds resembling Citar are heard. You can also hear moments of tonality when the piano plays the sounds of “fa”, “before” and “fa”, that is, pure quint and pure quart, which in themselves do not have a tonal color. Depending on what the fourth sound will be - “la” or “la Bemol”, we will receive a major or minor.

This is either the presence of some root, reason, or just an allusion to Indian music or music, where there is no tonality in the European sense. But this is all a field of possible interpretations. For the listener, it is enough to catch the out of the ear to something similar sounds and the subtlety of the atmosphere to make the impression of music richer. Glass conducted them when he professed minimalism and worked over time, trying to dissolve it and withdraw the audience from a linear perception of art.

This thing is not that commercialized, but it is made intentionally accessible. This is not good and not bad, it is its quality. And we can say that Glass has an accessibility brilliantly.