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
order style technique
In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with.
technique language ifs
A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new.
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.
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.
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.
real drama writing
So the real drama for me is balancing live performances and writing, and one of the ways I balance it is I write in hotel rooms. That's not exactly balancing. Actually, writing in hotel rooms means that I'm refusing to deal with the problem.
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.
thinking careers age
I think it's a great handicap to be discovered at an early age. I didn't have that burden of early success. I had the much more livable and durable career where success comes late, and comes slowly, and you ease into it. So by the time it comes, you're ready to deal with it.
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.
mean writing band
I don't know that I make a big distinction between the big pieces and the little pieces, because I don't experience them in that way. I mean, by the same token, you're out touring with a band and then you're writing string quartets, and in a funny way, isn't it all the same, in a way? It's all just music.
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.
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.