mills

Philip Glass - Einstein On The Beach - Act IV. Scene I - Building

This is dated, a bit absurd. It is not unlike the rest of Einstein on the Beach, which, if I opt to consider critically, can seem a bit ridiculous and even gimmicky. Besides the fact its libretto, excepting a few pieces, is mostly solfège left in place from the composition of the music, there is the endlessness of it. About the briefer Glass opera Satyagraha, critic Henry Heidt said:

“…it is well named, as a deeply felt commitment to passive nonviolence on the part of the audience is required to sit through a full performance.”

Indeed, Chris’ wife Alexi told me her mother broke up with a boyfriend who took her to see Einstein on the Beach, the five-hour exercise in mathematical-musical intricacies and trance-inducing acoustic manipulation evidently not working on her.

That said: I really like it anyway, even the saxophone that glides over the scrum of this piece. It might be my age -synth and sax tones aren’t necessarily ironic to me- or it might be that I feel a certain kind of cerebral hyperstimulation when I listen to it, my mind unified in attention but fragmented in chasing down disconnected harmonic tangents, and this piece in particular adds an odd element with the overarching melody moving between modes.

It often makes me think of scales and spaces: the vacuity of the atomic world and the vacuity of the universe and the teeming, vibrating density of the human perceptual world, nicely in the middle.

Update: Zombie Electroniq shares some excellent observations about Glass and the various critiques of his work here.

Philip Glass - Trial 2 / Prison, “I Feel the Earth Move.”

From Einstein on the Beach, whose fragmentary rhythmic texts are embedding themselves in my mind with increasing force every day, this movement features the work of autistic poet Christopher Knowles. The cadences and repetitions of his words remind me of my internal monologue during states of duress -migraines, manic episodes, fevers- little fugues of iterating speech, staccato and repetitive, that have some compelling structure I can’t identify.

For Mumblelard, whose wonderful tags are sometimes similar.

Philip Glass - Knee 5, from Einstein on the Beach.

K. and I listened to this today, and I was reminded of my mother’s amusement at the strangely intoned description of the lovers at the end. My intellectual ambivalence about Glass has never interfered with my fondness for his music.

See also: Glass’ contribution to Sesame Street.