Page 323 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained
P. 323
CONTEMPORARY 321
WE WERE SO FAR
AHEAD … BECAUSE
EVERYONE ELSE STAYED
SO FAR BEHIND
EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH (1976),
PHILIP GLASS
reated in collaboration with
IN CONTEXT the avant-garde theatre
C director Robert Wilson,
FOCUS Philip Glass’s opera Einstein on the
Minimalism and opera
Beach was first performed in 1976,
BEFORE in Avignon, France. Inspired by the I was in that generation of
1954 Glass visits Paris and life of the physicist Albert Einstein, people who could look beyond
sees films by Jean Cocteau it has no plot but works through the borders of Europe and
that later become the basis for image, dance, and music, using North … and South America.
his operas, Orphée (1993), La recurring projected images to Philip Glass
Belle et la bête (1994), and Les evoke aspects of Einstein’s world.
Enfants terribles (1996). There is no orchestra but only an
ensemble of electronic keyboards
1965 In an early involvement and wind instruments. Words are
with avant-garde theatre, sparse and incantatory. The work
Glass writes music for Samuel has no intervals and lasts five
Beckett’s one-act Play. hours, during which the audience in his words, “on repetitive and
can come and go as they please. cyclic structures.” The result was
AFTER often hypnotic—arpeggio and
1977 David Bowie’s albums Powerful, hypnotic music harmonic motifs repeated for long
Low and “Heroes,” created Einstein on the Beach was the fruit stretches virtually unchanged.
with Brian Eno, will later of a decade of experimenting. Glass His success with Einstein
inspire Glass’s symphonies was classically trained, but like on the Beach was followed by
No. 1 (1992) and No. 4 (1996). Reich and others in the emerging Satyagraha (1980), Akhnaten (1984),
minimalist movement, he rejected and a number of other operas,
1990 Glass and Indian earlier styles. After transcribing film scores, symphonies, and other
musician Ravi Shankar some of Ravi Shankar’s Indian sitar works. Glass influenced musicians
release Passages, an album music and traveling in India and such as David Bowie, Brian Eno,
of chamber music that they North Africa in the 1960s, he began and the band Pink Floyd; their
have composed together. to develop a style of his own based, music also influenced his own. ■
See also: Gruppen 306–307 ■ In C 312–313 ■ Eight Songs for a Mad King
318–319 ■ Six Pianos 320
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