321
See also: Gruppen 306–307 ■ In C 312–313 ■ Eight Songs for a Mad King
318–319 ■ Six Pianos 320C
reated in collaboration with
the avant-garde theatre
director Robert Wilson,
Philip Glass’s opera Einstein on the
Beach was first performed in 1976,
in Avignon, France. Inspired by the
life of the physicist Albert Einstein,
it has no plot but works through
image, dance, and music, using
recurring projected images to
evoke aspects of Einstein’s world.
There is no orchestra but only an
ensemble of electronic keyboards
and wind instruments. Words are
sparse and incantatory. The work
has no intervals and lasts five
hours, during which the audience
can come and go as they please.Powerful, hypnotic music
Einstein on the Beach was the fruit
of a decade of experimenting. Glass
was classically trained, but like
Reich and others in the emerging
minimalist movement, he rejected
earlier styles. After transcribing
some of Ravi Shankar’s Indian sitar
music and traveling in India and
North Africa in the 1960s, he began
to develop a style of his own based,in his words, “on repetitive and
cyclic structures.” The result was
often hypnotic—arpeggio and
harmonic motifs repeated for long
stretches virtually unchanged.
His success with Einstein
on the Beach was followed by
Satyagraha (1980), Akhnaten (1984),
and a number of other operas,
film scores, symphonies, and other
works. Glass influenced musicians
such as David Bowie, Brian Eno,
and the band Pink Floyd; their
music also influenced his own. ■CONTEMPORARY
WE WERE SO FAR
AHEAD ... BECAUSE
EVERYONE ELSE STAYED
SO FAR BEHIND
EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH (1976),
PHILIP GLASSIN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Minimalism and operaBEFORE
1954 Glass visits Paris and
sees films by Jean Cocteau
that later become the basis for
his operas, Orphée (1993), La
Belle et la bête (1994), and Les
Enfants terribles (1996).1965 In an early involvement
with avant-garde theatre,
Glass writes music for Samuel
Beckett’s one-act Play.AFTER
1977 David Bowie’s albums
Low and “Heroes,” created
with Brian Eno, will later
inspire Glass’s symphonies
No. 1 (1992) and No. 4 (1996).1990 Glass and Indian
musician Ravi Shankar
release Passages, an album
of chamber music that they
have composed together.I was in that generation of
people who could look beyond
the borders of Europe and
North ... and South America.
Philip GlassUS_320-321_Reich_Glass.indd 321 26/03/18 1:02 PM