Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Morris Glass is an American composer. He is considered one of the most influential music makers of the late 20th century. His music is also often controversially described as minimal music, along with the work of the other "major minimalists" La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Steve Reich...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth31 January 1937
CityBaltimore, MD
CountryUnited States of America
audiences became discussing liked living maybe modern people question suddenly time urgent
There were audiences for the first time in living memory. People were discussing modern music. Maybe they liked it and maybe they didn't, but the question of what we were doing suddenly became an urgent one.
america considered european gershwin learn musicians people played popular porter whereas
European musicians didn't learn popular music, whereas in America we did, ... So you played in bands, you played in orchestras, you played everything. The high-art/low-art idea, that was a very European idea and not much appreciated in America. People like Cole Porter and Gershwin were considered very important composers.
found handful people york
And then I went back to New York and found other people doing it. A handful of people.
extremely
I just thought it was very interesting, ... How do you write a 30-second piece? Everything is extremely compressed.
nice cities piano
I find that people can't find you. It's kind of quiet. When I go to a city, I can almost always get a piano if I need one. So there's something nice about being on the road and focusing on something you want to do.
sleep eating hardest
The hardest thing about traveling is that mostly you get to a point - and it always happens on every tour - where you can choose between eating and sleeping, but you can't do both.
needs written
It doesn't need to be imagined, it needs to be written down.
writing play symphony
I shift between mediums very frequently. Instead of taking a break from writing, I just write in a different medium or in a different way or for a different purpose, so that I don't actually stop writing - I just go to something else. Like going from a big symphony to a piano piece is great and very refreshing, I find. And then going from that to a big concerto, and then having to go out and play.
order style technique
In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with.
running differences musical
But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I'm not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it's a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say.
thinking play pieces
I consider the first 20 performances just learning the piece. Think about it this way: If you think about a pianist who plays a Schubert sonata through his whole lifetime - if you listen to Rubenstein or Horowitz playing their repertoire later in their life, you understand the richness with which they play that music, and how differently they must have played it when they were younger.
years minimalist description
I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it.
wanted
I always knew what I wanted to do and I did it.
done knows
The work I've done is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing.