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Philip Glass looks upon music pages in this portrait taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer. His music is frequently described as minimalist.
Biography
Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland and studied the
flute as a child at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. He then went on to the Juilliard School of Music where he switched to mostly
play the keyboard. After studying with Nadia Boulanger and working
with Ravi Shankar in France, Glass traveled, mainly for religious reasons,
to North India in 1966, where he came in contact
with Tibetan refugees. He became a Buddhist, and met Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, in 1972. He is a strong supporter of
the Tibetan cause.
It was his work with Ravi Shankar, and his perception of rhythm in Indian music as being entirely additive, that led to his
distinctive style. When he returned home he renounced all his earlier Milhaud and Copland-like compositions and began writing
austere pieces based on additive rhythms and a sense of time influenced by Samuel Beckett whose work he encountered writing for experimental theater. Finding little sympathy from
traditional performers and performance spaces, Glass formed his own ensemble and began performing mainly in art galleries, these
galleries being the only real connection between musical minimalism and minimalist visual art. His works grew increasingly less
austere and more complex, and in his consideration, not minimalist at all, culminating in Music in Twelve Parts. He then
collaborated on the first opera of his trilogy Einstein on
the Beach with Robert Wilson.
Glass orchestrated some of David Bowie's instrumentals from the albums
Low and Heroes in his Low Symphony and Heroes Symphony. He has been prolific throughout his
career, and has scored many films, including Godfrey Reggio's
experimental documentary film trilogy Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi; Errol Morris' biopic A Brief History of Time (based on Stephen Hawking's popular physics book), and Martin
Scorsese's Kundun.
Works
These are some of his most memorable works.
- Einstein on the Beach (opera, 1976)
- Satyagraha (opera, 1980)
- Glassworks (1982)
- The
Photographer (1982)
- Akhnaten (opera, 1983)
- Koyaanisqatsi (film
score, 1983)
- Mishima
(film score, 1984)
- The making of the representative for Planet 8 (opera, 1985-88)
- 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (work for stage, text by David Henry Hwang, 1988)
- Powaqqatsi (film score,
1988)
- String
Quartet No. 5 (1991)
- Anima Mundi (film
score, 1992)
- Orphée
(opera, 1993)
- La belle et
la bête (opera, 1994)
- The marriages between zones three, four, and five (opera, 1997)
- Heroes
Symphony (1997)
- Kundun (film score, 1997)
- The Hours (film score,
2002)
- Naqoyqatsi (film score,
2002)
- The Fog of War (film
score, 2003)
- Music with Changing Parts
- Music in
Twelve Parts
- Hydrogen
Jukebox (libretto by Allen Ginsberg)
- "Solo Piano" (1989)
See also
External links
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