Kevin Sutton wrote:

>>Here is my list of 10 recent composers/pieces of very high quality ...
>>
>>Glass - Anything
>>Feldman - Anything
>>Cage - Number Pieces (works composed 1987-1992)
>>Nyman - Anything
>>Hovhaness - Anything
>>Gordon - Anything
>>Reich - Anything
>>Stockhausen - Almost Anything
>>Ligeti - Almost Anything
>>Erb - Almost Anything
>
>This is a lame answer, sorry Glenn.  Can you give us some inkling of why
>you think these composers can do no wrong? Philip Glass hasn't written
>anything original since Akhnaten. There's only so much you can do with
>an arpeggio.  ...

Kevin, you're right - there is only so much you can do with an arpeggio,
and if one were merely to repeat for long periods of time sequences of
rapid arpeggios in various instruments, certainly one would not rise to
fame as one of America's finest composers; no, one must have a special
gift, a rare and otherworldly talent, to reach such heights as Glass has -
that is to say, one must be able to combine sequences of rapid arpeggios
in various instruments with the polyrhythm 2 against 3.  (See "Symphony No.
5, Company, the Violin Concerto, Einstein on the Beach, Koyaanisquatsi,
etc.) Then and only then can one claim to have attained Glass' level of
achievement.

Sarcasm aside, the music of Phillip Glass presents an interesting set
of questions for the modern listener.  As a one-time collector of Glass
recordings, I can vouch for the fact that in nearly all of his works Glass
relies upon a relatively limited pattern - leading, of course, to the joke,

"There's this one piece of Glass' that I really like."
"Oh, which one?"
"All of them."

There is stylistic diversity and variance within this pattern, but after
hearing multiple Glass pieces, I can't but feel as if I've somehow been
cheated:  simply put, the musical materials Glass uses in his style do not
reward repeated listenings, at least by these two ears.

I think that Minimalism is rather misnamed.  Take a small musical idea,
and, instead of developing it as per classic sonata or variation forms,
repeat it indefinitely:  isn't this more properly to be considered
Maximalism - for it extrapolates from musical specks a whole speckled
Universe? Turn this magnifying eye upon the world and one ends up with
monochrome infinities - which leads one to another joke:  "If the goal
of art is to reduce cosmic Entropy, we must take away Phillip Glass'
manuscript paper."

Har, har.

On the whole, however, I think that Glass, like Stockhausen, later Cage,
or later Shoenberg, is someone who provides a useful extreme - one not
everyone is very likely to imitate or emulate, especially given the current
neo-conservative swing of the pendulum, but which provides an invaluable
reference point.  They and artists like them delineate and define the
topography of the musical world for later generations of musican/explorers.
So what if some of us find Glass' music dreadfully boring? At the very
least, his music defines one of the far edges of the map:  Here be dragons.

- John Sisk ([log in to unmask])
"Without music, life would be a mistake - I would believe only in a God who
could dance!" - Friedrich Nietzsche