John Sisk writes:

>Which discussion leads me to a point: I find that the Phillip Glass
>pieces that I like the most, and that live up to repeated listening, are
>his collaborations: the "Passages" disc with Ravi Shankar, "The Screens"
>with Fuday Musa Suso, and above all "Aguas de Amazonia" with the Brazilian
>ensemble Uakti - the latter being simply gorgeous.  I understand he also
>did a record with Allen Ginsberg.

The Ginsberg collaboration (in its fullest version) was "Hydrogen Jukebox",
quite possibly Glass's most enduring piece.  But note:  this is only a
collaboration in the sense that Vaughan Williams' "Oxford Elegy" is a
collaboration with Matthew Arnold.  That is, down to one composer only.

Unfortunately, the rest of John's post raised the customary upstanding
hackles that afflict me whenever Glass's Dreadful Name crops up in this
newsgroup, too often through the ironically minimalist repetition of stale
jests, inaccurate description, and criticism which is beside the point.

John Sisk is thoughtfully prepared to praise Glass with faint damns,
but the idea that his collaborative works, charming though they are,
represent his best strikes me as mealy mouthed.  Certainly Glass's later
stuff has become progressively diluted - but that's been true of many
composers down the years.  The Symphonies are ...  well, no duller than
Raff.  Against this, the early trilogy of operas (especially "Akhnaten"),
"Music in Changing Parts", some of the substantial film scores and
"Hydrogen Jukebox" mark an achievement rich, varied in content and subject
matter which appeals to a great many people throughout the Western world.
I'm not sure how someone who hasn't heard all these good works can feel
qualified to discuss the composer's achievement.

I'm frustrated that so many individual list members find poor old Phil
such a bore.  It is their loss.  But I wish I could get one gremlin-idea
out of my head:  that the facetiously fearful attitudes they strike have
much more to do with their quarry's popularity in "non-u" circles than
with the quality of his best music.

It does not matter one jot to us whether Glass is a "great composer"
who will be listened to in hundreds of years.  We patronise here-and-now
popular art music which strikes such an unambiguous chord with so many
enthusiasts at our peril.  After all, if art music is to have any future to
add to its rich past, it has to look beyond the tired and stale formula of
the 19th century orchestra and its formal straightjackets.

Put crudely, it's becoming ever more apparent that these marvellous
old vessels are punctured below the waterline as truly creative forces,
artistically as well as economically; and no amount of theorising about
the need for emotional and intellectual stimulation from music (surely
so obvious it doesn't need harping on at any length, specially as the
distinction between the two is false anyway) can deny the fact that -
for many people - Glass's best music gives precisely these pleasures.

A score of the quality of "Koyaanisquatsi" (especially in its recent
full-length recording, which makes so much better musical sense than the
truncated original CD version) deserves better than tired old wisecracks
and canned laughter.  I put it to John that it's powers as bedtime cocoa
are no more pronounced than "Scott of the Antarctic" or Shostakovich's
"Hamlet", to name but two great film scores worthy to be mentioned in the
same breath as Glass's breathtaking epic.

Give Glass a break!  It's at least possible that his work points the
way to a breaking of the Gordian Knot in which "classical music" seems
determined to strangle itself.  Fifty seven million sales at least should
give us pause for thought - modified rapture, rather than ammunition for
an execution.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"