20th Centry Music history - Essay Example

PHILIP GLASS Philip Glass is one of the most important living composers. He was born in Baltimore in 1937 and spent many years going through his family’s record collections which included a lot of modern music. After studying philosophy and music during his education, he discovered he was attracted to minimalist music such as that of Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg. During time spent in Paris, he was also powerfully influenced by the theater of Samuel Beckett,1 which in many ways is similar to Glass’s music: it is repetitive, not especially dynamic, and nothing seems concluded at the end of the piece (which is not to say it is in any way bad.) During much of his life Glass has collaborated with other artists: some of them actors and playwrights, some of them movie directors, and others comedians or painters.

Certainly this cross-pollination has effected and improved his music immeasurably. Many people consider his masterpiece to be an opera called Einstein on the Beach, which is about five hours long and without an intermission. In this very interesting piece, the music is like a repeating cycle that does not resolve the existential anxiety at the centre. It is both an exhilarating and saddening piece of music. But Philip Glass is most famous for introducing art music to the general public and expanding the range and modes in which it can be communicated to people.

This can especially be seen in his collaboration with the director Godfrey Reggio in the movie Koyaanisqatsi, a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance.” The purpose behind the film is to show how the world of human beings and their machines is very different than the natural world and may even be a blight on the natural world. In this magical film, the contemporary world’s technologies and mechanisms are filmed at various speeds and set to a strange and repetitive music that seems in some way to inspire and provide a counterpoint to the endless motion.

The camera takes a wide-angle so as to capture as much life as possible. Some scenes show rockets taking off, others depict factory workers, others show huge parking lots full of cars, still other endless sunrises and sunsets. The effect, when combined with Glass’s music is overwhelming, but somehow neither euphoric nor depressive. As the New Yorker critic Alex Ross wrote in 2005: Composers usually enter the filmmaking process late in the game. They’re given a few weeks to add music to the mix, often under strict instructions as to mood and style; they’re essentially applying a finishing coat of aural stimulus.

But music can do much more than echo the action on the screen. It can evoke hidden lives, unknown destinies, unseen histories, forgotten voices . . . There is no more potent example of a score dominating a film. The relationship between filmmaker and composer extended Eisenstein’s ideal to the nth degree: Glass watched the footage and wrote some music, Reggio and his editors listened to the music and reworked the footage, and the process went on until the appearance of fusion was total.2 A very famous scene from the film which is about 20 minutes in length, shows the full force of human life, sped up as traffic flies by, hot dogs are made in a factory, meanwhile the music speeds up to a breakneck speed, showing how mechanical and empty mass production can be.

As Ross writes, “the viewer is left with little space in which to think or breathe.” In some ways the film is an inspiration to the environmental movement who see much human economic activity as harmful to Mother Earth. At the end of the movie various Hopi prophecies are translated, many of which predict doom for those who don’t treat the world in a sustainable fashion. The accessible way in which Philip Glass presented art music in Koyaanisqatsi is symbolic of much of what he has done to bring art music out into the open.

Everyone can enjoy the abstract music when it is shown with images that heighten its power. This was a crucial discovery he made and will no doubt be a major part of his musical legacy. Works consulted Maycock, Robert. Glass: A biography of Philip Glass. New York: Sanctuary Publishing, 2003. Ross, Alex. “Sound and Vision.” New Yorker. June 27, 2005. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/06/27/050627crmu_music?currentPage=1